Community Furniture Stores logo

September 2026

Summary

Community Furniture Stores worked with Cranfield Trust volunteer Jonathan Cook to manage the merger of its three York, Selby and Scarborough charities into one organisation with a trading subsidiary. CEO Katy Ridsdill-Smith needed support to navigate a complex governance project that nobody on the senior team or board had tackled before. Jonathan's role grew from scoping and project planning into an ongoing coaching relationship, helping Katy and the board move confidently from decision to delivery. The merger completed in March 2026 without a hitch, giving Community Furniture Stores a clearer structure, greater eligibility for grant funding, and a stronger platform from which to grow its work tackling furniture and digital poverty across North Yorkshire. 

Background 

Community Furniture Stores collects pre-loved furniture, IT equipment and more from communities across York, Selby and Scarborough before giving it a new home with families who need it most. Behind the scenes, the organisation had been operating as three separate charities, a structure set up years ago, largely for funding reasons. As Community Furniture Stores grew, its senior management team knew they needed to bring these three strands together under one roof. 

Challenge 

CEO Katy Ridsdill-Smith and the board had already agreed that a merger, alongside setting up a trading subsidiary, was the right move. But it was a complex governance project, and not one anyone internally had experience of delivering. 

“It wasn’t something internally, in our senior leadership team or on the board, anybody had experience of doing,” Katy explains. What the charity needed was an outside pair of hands who understood how to shape a project of this scale and see it through safely, from board approval to completion. 

Solution 

Cranfield Trust matched Community Furniture Stores with volunteer Jonathan Cook, who brought years of experience in business cases, strategy and change programmes. “They were looking for support with scoping their merger project,” he says. “It was really a matter of let’s get some professional expertise in to make sure we go about this in a good way, and don’t miss any tricks.” 

What started as project management support soon grew into something more collaborative. “It developed more into a coaching, mentoring relationship, rather than being project management advice,” Jonathan says. Katy felt the benefit of that approach directly: “We had a very good working relationship in terms of starting at the big picture and the vision, and working backwards, bouncing ideas around and using each other as sounding boards.” 

Jonathan also helped the charity see beyond the merger itself, spotting that other changes, including a rebrand, were brewing alongside it. “One of the things I was able to do was help them really break that down into a programme of change, rather than everything being lumped into the merger project.” 

Impact 

The merger completed on 31 March 2026, and went entirely to plan. “We didn’t have any issues,” says Katy, “and I think that was primarily down to the fact that Jon had helped us plan it so meticulously. It was a slightly underwhelming day, actually, which I think is a sign of a very, very good project!” 

Community Furniture Stores is now one charity with a trading subsidiary: the stores sit within the trading arm, while projects like IT ReUse and the new Community Bike Project sit within the charity itself. The new structure is already paying off. “The charity arm will be under the £500k threshold for a lot of grant funders, making us more eligible for grant funding,” says Katy. It has also freed up admin time once spent on “numbers of recharges and submissions” to instead go “into supporting the work of the charity.” 

For Jonathan, the clearest win is one of clarity. “They were looking to get clarity between the retail operation and the broader anti-poverty agenda they want to develop further,” he says. “They’re now in a really good position” to build on that with a fresh rebrand and a clean slate for what comes next. 

Looking back on the wider support Cranfield Trust has provided, Katy is in no doubt about the difference it has made: “We’d not be where we are today without Cranfield Trust, for sure. It really has been an incredible resource.”