CAN has assembled a team of skilled specialists and resources to provide specialist development services and training to co-operatives and community enterprises through business advice, training design and delivery, group facilitation, feasibility studies, development planning support and accessing appropriate funding for the social economy.
CAN delivers these services directly to:
and through contracts with:
To ensure quality of delivery CAN works to a Professional Code of Conduct and Equal Opportunities Policy so you can be certain that whoever CAN provides, they will do the work to the CAN standard.
CAN has developed a series of analytical tools to enable rapid and economic yet accurate benchmarking of strengths and weaknesses of organisations in the social economy and/or their level of legal and governance compliance, resilience, financial performance, or delivery of any project(s). We provide rapid research and analysis and produce management information to enable fast and accurate remedial and improvement actions and progress monitoring.
CAN fields a team of four qualified and experienced trainers with specialisms ranging through the broad spectrum of skills and insight required by people to take forward successful and sustainable co-operatives, credit unions, housing co-operatives and social enterprises. The team can respond to requirements to deliver rapidly, ensuring that the stock of training resources developed in-house over a quarter century are configured to meet the precise needs of a particular cohort of learners by delivering one or a series of workshops, training days or short courses. The CAN team has delivered literally hundreds of training events ranging from 3 hours to 30 days from the most accessible entry level to programmes leading to professional qualifications.
CAN has a qualified assessor and the systems required for the monitoring and support of learners preparing for obtaining recognised qualifications.
CAN develops training from seminars to extensive and accredited training programmes leading to recognised qualifications fitting within the UK qualifications framework. Our training team can develop learning objectives, learning measurement and assessment systems, training programmes, learning materials, and exercises, then alpha test all the above and produce advice notes for trainers and training for other trainers to deliver future iterations.
CAN fields a workforce of four consultants with expertise in all aspects of organisation and management, governance, change management, business planning and finance. The CAN way is to walk the walk before we talk the talk so CAN has run as a co-operative and a social enterprise since 1989. It operates as a sustainable business and accounts for itself financially, socially and environmentally, seeking to operate to the highest standards of good governance, transparency and accountability. Our consultants have worked with organisations large and small, young and old, and across trade sectors from archaeology to zero carbon projects.
CAN provides a key worker support service, twinning them with our own specialist to provide the comfort of knowing that “getting unstuck” or assistance with a particular thorny issue from an empathetic and expert source of support is just an email away.
CAN's in-house experts and working relationships with registration agents enable development of governing documents that meet legal requirements and the precise needs of new co-operatives and social enterprises as Registered Co-operative Societies or Companies. The team also support the acquisition of additional legal status such as Community Interest Company, Mutual Trading Status, complete or partial change of Rules or Articles and migration from a legal form to one more appropriate. CAN has assisted registration, migration or re-registration of more than two hundred enterprises.
CAN has qualified and experienced Accountancy Technicians and the software and infrastructure to provide computerised book-keeping services and/or payroll and pensions administration remotely, deal with VAT and corporate taxation and draw up financial accounts and statements for year end. Our expert and qualified finance workers provide feedback and flag up warnings where needed. They can also handle remedial work to repair flawed accounts, set up new financial management systems or migrate accounts from paper-based to computer-based systems.
We can arrange full audit through our associated qualified auditors.
CAN has two workers with decades of experience in developing, implementing and managing systems to generate financial information from book-keeping data and the skill to interpret the information and brief directors on what the information actually means. Both our finance specialists take the level of responsibility required by our customers up to and including serving on Boards as Finance Directors / Treasurers.
We are able to provide a service to take on any proportion of these roles up to and including taking responsibility for all matters relating to legal / regulatory compliance and record keeping.
Our social accounting team operate to a high level of rigour and are able to help organisations assess what it is they actually need to account for and how a system of accounts can be set up utilising or amending existing data streams to provide real insight into effectiveness in pursuit of mission.
We have a highly qualified and experienced HR professional who can handle any or all aspects of the HR function including drawing up contracts of employment, job descriptions, setting up and operating disciplinary and grievance systems up to and including representation at Industrial Tribunal, ensuring employment related policies meet statutory requirements and good practice standards, trade union recognition agreements, staff appraisal systems and personnel record keeping.
CAN have two experienced practitioners to provide a mediation service aimed specifically at the co-operative and social enterprise sector, providing additional benefit in the reporting of opportunities to improve organisational structure, policy and practice indicated through the process.
CAN has experience of carrying out feasibility studies for individual enterprises considering expansion or diversification, for new enterprises, for spin-outs, buyouts and succession plans. Our team has broad experience of many trade sectors and through our long-established network of associates, sub-contractors and project partners can usually find the specific understanding such studies generally require.
CAN has experience of carrying out social economy mapping exercises across counties and regions and in-depth research exercises into development needs and potential of clusters of social enterprises in different geographical and trade areas and related areas such as Employee Involvement. We have a partnership arrangement with a University to ensure proper reflection on research methodologies and the testing and analysis of data.
CAN has developed systems for managing, monitoring, auditing and accounting for projects, specifically those depending upon European and Government funding with substantial record keeping and reporting requirements.
There is, of course, much more. If your interest is not mentioned here please check this web site for more detail or contact us to make an enquiry.
You can download our Governing Document - the Rules of Co-operative Assistance Network Limited - here.
CAN's policy framework reflects our commitment to the Co-operative Values and Principles and our own mission.
We present this policy set as part of our commitment to Open Source working. They are not copyrighted - you may copy them and modify them for your own purposes - but note that they are not designed as model policies or templates but are presented as examples of actual working policies. Many of them have evolved over a number of years, some of them are a bit rough round the edges and they may be revised at any time.
We do not advocate that you simply copy these policies, either individually or collectively, rather use them as discussion documents for your own policy development. Your co-op is not the same as our co-op. None of these policies comes with any guarantees and you must take full responsibility if you adopt any or any part of them.
Please note also that this policy set does not include purely internal policies such as pay rates, expenses and bad debt handling.
Looking for a policy checklist? There's one here. And you can download the latest version of the template that we use here.
It is important to get policy development and management embedded in governance routines as early as possible in the developmnet of an organisation. Find out why and how, with the benefit of our experience, we can help here.
Anti Bribery and Corruption Policy
Compassionate, Domestic Emergency and Bereavement Leave Policy
Competition With Other CDBs Policy
Contribution to the Co-operative Movement Policy
Core Competency for Directors Policy
Customer Complaints Policy and Procedure
Cyber Essentials Compliance Policy
Disclosure of Company Information Policy
Environmental Policy and Strategy
Health and Safety Implementation Policy
Health And Safety Policy And Risk Assessment Annual Statement
Interest on Member Shares Policy
Internal Code of Behaviour Policy
Payment of Professional Body Fees and Qualifications
Policy on Account Holding Services for Customers
Policy on Assigning Intellectual Property Rights to Materials Published by CAN
Policy on CAN Workers taking up external Directorships
Policy on Use of Material Copyrighted to Others
Policy on what level polices are passed at
Press and Media Handling Policy
Privacy Policy for Website Users
Professional Development Time Allocation Policy
Quality Assurance in Training Delivery Policy and Procedure
Recruitment Policy and Procedures
Social Policy and Social Impact Measurement Policy
Stress Management Policy, Procedure and Guidance
Trading in Local Currencies Policy
Vulnerable Adults Protection Policy
Wages And Collective Performance Related Pay Policy
For further information, suggestions for improvement or other feedback, please contact our Society Secretary Brian Titley: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or use the Contact Form.
All prices below are exclusive of VAT.
Business services [Doing it for you; Setting it up for you]
For other services we have two tariffs:
Training courses & workshops [Training you]
Consultancy [Support and consultancy]
Training courses and workshops [Training you]
Consultancy [Support and consultancy]
Normally, CAN will not charge travel and accommodation costs if service is delivered either:
Normally, CAN will charge travel and accommodation costs if service is delivered face-to-face outside of the 5 regions (unless the journey cost is not significant).
In general, there are no other charges. Unless agreed in advance, we do not charge for preparation, research, travel downtime etc. and there are no hidden extras.
Regional Managers have authority to negotiate prices, including travel and accommodation charges.
We can only deliver services to customers with whom we have a contract. Some customers have their own contracting system but most choose to use one of our As And When Contracts (AAWC) that we have developed and refined over many years and which you can download here.
The AAWC enables services covered by our professional indemnity insurance to be drawn down as and when required. The scope and price of the work is set out in a confirmation of instruction which is approved by the customer before work can begin.
We offer the first consultation with a customer free of charge, but we cannot deliver any advice, guidance, training or business services until a contract is in place. Work will not be chargeable until a contract is in place and a confirmation of instruction approved.
All advice and guidance will be provided in writing.
Training can be purchased for delivery to members or clients of one organisation, or to a consortium or network of several organisations sharing the costs. The price is the same.
Our training is all in the context of the development of co-operative and social enterprises, often at start up, so there are strong elements of workshopping and consultancy. We do not simply broadcast information nor are we simply training functionary workers to do jobs.
We try to understand the particular learning requirements of the client group within the context of the subject area so that we can best support them and we often form our client groups into cohorts so that they can support and learn from each other.
Our preparation involves identifying trainees’ current levels of expertise and any barrier to inclusion that they might have such as sensory impairment or a need for assistive technology and we do our best to mitigate against them.
Training can be delivered online or in person.
Online training
We use a dedicated Zoom account to deliver online training and secure cloud space to manage distribution of downloads, student uploads and feedback. Before training starts, we give all students a guide to getting set up and participating effectively.
In person training
We provide learning materials for up to 16 trainees. If the venue does not have laptop and projector facilities, we can provide these. It would be helpful if the venue could provide a flipchart or whiteboard facilities.
The customer is asked to provide:
Prices updated 01 March 2022
Terms of Trade updated 14 November 2022
Additional Information updated 21 February 2023
Our Mission Statement combines our commercial and social objectives:
In pursuance of this mission CAN has the following aims:
Do you support our mission? We have a loanstock offer that enables people to support our mission and work financially; click here for details.
Make an Enquiry content page, which is linked to from Type 1 & 2 templates. This might link to a contact form, or be a contact form later on.
