Our pro bono services on offer to you
Our support activities are delivered by Cranfield Trust volunteers who are management professionals.
How do we deliver the support?
Our Regional Managers monitor each activity through to conclusion, they are highly experienced in supporting small to medium size voluntary organisations, and work with many frontline organisations each year.
Our support activities are delivered by Cranfield Trust volunteers who are management professionals. Regional Managers will identify the right volunteer for you based on their experience. They will be briefed on the needs and challenges of the rape and sexual violence sector, drawn from our experience of working with our charity clients in the sector.
Organisation diagnostic
One of our Regional Managers will take you through our diagnostic framework, Journey to Excellence (J2E), to identify strengths, how you’re performing and areas you want to improve.
J2E analysis is divided into four main management areas and the Regional Manager will take you through questions in each of the following areas:
- Leadership and strategic direction
- Financial management and sustainability
- Performance and impact
- People
You won’t need lots of paperwork or to do lots of preparation. J2E helps to identify how you think you’re performing and it’s a measure for you to prioritise and allocate resources to areas where you want to improve.
Examples of the types of questions you’ll be asked to rate on a scale are:
- We are clear about our organisational purpose
- We prepare regular management accounts
- We have the skills in house to deliver our purpose
- Our board have the skills required to be effective
When you’ve identified areas for improvement, we can provide tailored guidance and support through our network of expert volunteers across a range of services.
Find our more about Journey to Excellence.
Organisation consultancy
We have a 35-year history of successfully providing management consultancy support to frontline organisations. Working with our network of 1,400 volunteers, we find the right person, with the right skills, for each charity we support.
Management consultancy can cover a range of areas including (but not limited to):
- Strategy development and business planning
- Financial performance and reporting
- Forecasting and scenario planning
- Financial process improvements
- Developing performance tools and systems
- Impact reporting
- Marketing and communications
- Charity governance
- Building a strong board
- Staff recruitment and retention
Our volunteers will work alongside you, helping to develop skills and confidence, and improve resilience. Each project is tailored to an organisation’s needs, timescale and availability and is managed through a structured process and robust confidentiality and safeguarding policies.
Take a look at some of the management consultancy support we have provided to a range of our charity clients.
Peer group consultancy support
Being a charity leader can be a lonely place, and both professionally and personally challenging as you face so many demands and pressures. Our groups enable peers to discuss their challenges in a safe, moderated environment, guided by an experienced volunteer facilitator.
The sessions will allow you to develop your leadership capacity, strengthen your professional resilience and enhance professional effectiveness and productivity. Through peer interaction participants often improve their ability to respond from a fresh perspective and find new solutions to leadership challenges.
As a grantee charity, you can choose to join peer sessions dedicated to your sector, or you can be with charity leaders from other sectors.
Find our more about our Peer to Peer Exchange.
Webinars and learning sessions
We run webinars on a range of management topics – usually for an hour over lunchtime or nearer the end of the day, and we also have a library of recordings which are all available free to you as a grantee charity.
Four bespoke webinars will be delivered from January 2024. As a grantees you will receive links to webinar recordings, so you can join live or watch when convenient to you. Until then, you can also sign up to our live Essentials to Excellence webinars and watch back a range of previous webinars.
Find out more and sign up
To sign up to your free tailored support, please contact our Programme Coordinator, Vanessa by email or call 01794 830338. We're looking forward to hearing from you.