We support organisations - Journey to Excellence©

The J2E framework covers four key management areas: leadership and strategic direction, people management, financial management and sustainability, and performance and impact.

Each charity starts its development journey at a different point and consultancy projects focus on a main area for development. We work with a broad range of charities, not just selecting those with high potential for growth and development, we want to support all our client charities to address their individual issues.

The J2E assessment is carried out with the charity by the Cranfield Trust Regional Manager ahead of the consultancy project, and many charities use the pre-project assessment as the basis for development discussions with their Boards and teams, as well as using it to frame their work with Cranfield Trust. Completing the J2E again after the project has concluded allows each charity to celebrate its successes and consider the next steps in its development. Charities give us very positive feedback on J2E, they find it valuable in assessing their development needs over time, and in action-oriented discussions with Cranfield Trust Regional Managers.

We do not use J2E in every consultancy project, for example, a short project with a volunteer facilitating a discussion or awayday would not be appropriate for J2E. J2E was designed to be of value to each charity client, as well as to enable the Trust to aggregate information across the broad range of our consultancy projects. As well as looking at our clients from the last year, we are starting to review data on particular sectors, groups of organisations, and geographical areas. This provides useful insight for the Trust which can also be shared with partners to see the impact of programmes they have funded in a specific sub-sector, benchmarked against our whole sample. Aggregated results provide interesting discussion points, but J2E is a self assessment process so ratings are individual to each charity, and grouped results are indicative, rather than statistically robust.

In July 2025 we reported on five years of J2E data, using our whole sample of 645 pre-consultancy project and 541 post-consultancy project J2Es broken down by year. 

Since the report, in our financial 2024-25 year, we completed 166 J2Es. Overall, our clients improved their performance by an average of 16% in the period of time that they received our consultancy support. J2E results are based on self-assessment, and in aggregate they are indicative, so we are looking for a positive number or increase in score with this measurement.

83% of the completed J2Es related to consultancy projects in the leadership and strategic direction area, which is consistent with the 66% of consultancy projects in the year falling within this area.

82% of charity leaders found thinking about their organisation in the structured way the J2E process offers useful, 72% said the J2E evaluation before and after their project made them pause and think holistically about their organisation and 60% said the reports they received helped them to consider their next steps towards continued improvement.

Five years of Journey to Excellence

The Journey to Excellence (J2E) evaluation and impact framework gives us deep insight into how small to medium-sized charities are managing, and the challenges they face.

Every organisation starts its journey in a different place, but taken together, these journeys give us evidence of where they feel most and least confident before working with Cranfield Trust, and how we can help them become stronger for the future.

2025 marked five years of Journey to Excellence. We developed and released a landmark report charting the highs and lows of charity management, drawn from 645 pre- consultancy project and 541 post-consultancy project J2Es.

Our ‘Five years of insight and impact: Cranfield Trust’s Journey to Excellence’ report tells a story of incredible resilience in small to medium charities, but also flags where sustained support and investment are most urgently needed – particularly in the areas of leadership development, succession planning, and financial sustainability.