Supporting you as a volunteer
On this page, you'll find the guidance and policies you'll need to support you in your role as a Cranfield Trust volunteer. Please take some time to familiarise yourself with the content of these policies.
If you would like to discuss any of the information on this page, please contact Alice Dabrowska, Head of Operations
Policies and insurance
Please find below downloadable PDFs of our insurance, and important policies to support in your voluntary role including:
Safeguarding Policy
Professional Indemnity and Malpractice Insurance Cover
Code of Conduct
Scope of Services
Data Protection Policy. Please also view the videos below prepared by Cranfield Trust to brief you Data Protection.
If you have any questions on any of these policies, please speak with your Regional Manager or Alice Dabrowska, Head of Operations
Safeguarding Policy
Summary of Professional Indemnity and Malpractice Insurance Cover
Code of Conduct
Scope of Services
Data Protection Policy Dec 22
Volunteer expenses claim form
Forms and templates
If you are a management consultant volunteer or mentor, you will need to complete the time card so we can include this within the monitoring and evaluation of the project.
If you incur any expenses when volunteering, please complete the expense form.
Volunteer Consultant Time Card
Jim Lennard, Cranfield Trust Head of Finance, Administration and Control has prepared videos for guidance on Data Protection. Please take some time to view them through the links below:
Data Protection Essentials #1 - Data and the Law
Data Protection Essentials #2 - Data and Activities
Data Protection Essentials #3 - Data and Reporting
Describing Cranfield Trust
The information below is how we talk about Cranfield Trust and helps to consistently explain who we are and what we do. This is useful for you as a volunteer and also useful for you to share with the charities you are working with and supporting.
Our 'Elevator Pitch'
Cranfield Trust is a national charity which aims to ensure that social welfare charities and not for profit organisations have the skills and support they need to manage themselves and deliver effectively for their beneficiaries.
We are a leading management support organisation for social welfare charities and not-for-profits. We deliver consultancy, mentoring, training, peer support, advice and resources to thousands of charities every year.
We deliver our support through a UK-wide network of volunteers, who are highly skilled in a broad range of management and business disciplines, and our staff team of project managers and coordinators based throughout England, Wales and Scotland.
In one sentence
Cranfield Trust is a national charity that helps welfare organisations to be successful and thrive by providing free management support, services and advice.
In three sentences
Cranfield Trust is a national charity that delivers free management support, training, advice and mentoring to thousands of human welfare organisations every year.
We match skilled volunteers with local charities to provide tailored, high-quality support.
We are a leading provider of support to the sector, strengthening and empowering welfare organisations with the capabilities and confidence to thrive and change lives.
Describing your role, and the support and services we offer
Our core services and support are delivered in three key areas and below is how we describe them:
Support for Organisations
Management Consultancy: Pro bono consultancy offers charities free intensive, tailored, 1:1 support to address critical organisational challenges and development. Each project is tailored to the needs of the individual client charity. Our Project Manager meets with charities to help scope their business needs. We assess organisations’ development needs at the start and end of each assignment using our Journey to Excellence impact assessment framework.
On Call: Our On Call service is a telephone advice service that offers voluntary sector
leaders an opportunity to book a call with an expert and talk over a particular challenge, gaining helpful short-term advice without a full consultancy project.
Support for Leaders
Mentoring: Mentoring enables leaders to discuss a range of issues, rather than focusing on particular business challenge or project.
Cranfield Trust has developed its own Mentoring framework for the voluntary sector in partnership with a leading Mentoring practitioner, Professor David Clutterbuck. We train
our volunteers as mentors and match them with charity leaders and
managers. Mentoring assignments typically last 6-8 months but many volunteers remain in touch with mentees after the formal assignment finishes.
Peer to Peer Exchange (P2P) has been developed specifically to meet the needs of voluntary sector leaders in smaller organisations. Our trained volunteer facilitators support groups of 6 to 8 leaders over four fortnightly sessions lasting up to 90
minutes. This enables them to explore issues and challenges in a safe and confidential environment and addresses the isolating nature of leadership roles, helping to develop a sense of resilience within the individual leader, the group and by default the sector.
‘Open Access’ support
Learning events and webinars: Cranfield Trust runs a programme of webinars on management topics, which are available to charity delegates anywhere in the UK. Since 2020, we have established two popular series of online training events:
Essentials to Excellence – covering key management topics and business areas
Learning with Leaders – fresh thinking and new views from leading practitioners and management academics
Our live webinars are available to view again in our online webinar library. We do not cover voluntary sector specific topics in our webinar series.
Information: we offer charities a range of useful information and resources via our website
Your role
Please describe your role as a Cranfield Trust Management Consultant Volunteer.