Review of values
YMCA Edinburgh
May 2026
Summary
YMCA Edinburgh worked with Cranfield Trust volunteer, Adrian Swinscoe, to develop a set of organisational values that truly reflected who they are. Rather than a top-down exercise, Adrian and CEO Mike Kerracher ran an inclusive process, surveying everyone from board members to service users, to create values that the whole organisation feelsz ownership over. The result is a living framework now embedded into day-to-day decision-making, supervision, and planning.
Background
YMCA Edinburgh is a charity based in Leith, one of Edinburgh's most vibrant and complex communities. The area has seen significant change over the years, with pockets of genuine deprivation sitting side by side with rapid gentrification.
It's a community that needs real, on-the-ground support, and that's exactly what YMCA Edinburgh provides. Through three interconnected strands of work, Youth and Play, Mentoring, and Adult and Families, the charity supports around 200 people each year. From one-to-one mentoring for young people at risk of disengaging from school to a thriving women's wellbeing group, YMCA Edinburgh is deeply woven into the fabric of the local community.
Challenge
Mike Kerracher has been with YMCA Edinburgh for over 12 years, and in a leadership role for around seven of them. In that time, he'd watched the charity grow into something he was genuinely proud of: a tight-knit team with a strong, supportive culture and a real feel for the needs of the community it serves.
Despite this, he felt the charity could do with greater clarity regarding its values. “We've got a very strong culture as a team and the way we work with people," Mike explains, "but I was beginning to feel that there was nothing concrete underpinning that. If key people were to leave or things were to change, what if you lost some aspects of the values and how we go about having a big impact in Leith?"
The charity had a mission statement of sorts, but it had drifted over the years and didn't feel like it truly reflected the way the team lived and worked. Mike wanted a set of values that were genuinely owned by everyone connected to the organisation, from the board right down to the young people and families accessing services.
He reached out to a contact at YMCA Scotland, who pointed him towards Cranfield Trust.
Support
Stephen Cahill, Cranfield Trust's Scotland Manager, connected with Mike to get a full picture of where the organisation was and where it wanted to go. Stephen quickly identified the right person for the job: Adrian Swinscoe, an experienced volunteer consultant with deep expertise in customer experience and how organisations can map values to the work they actually do day to day.
As it turned out, Adrian lives in Leith. He already knew of YMCA Edinburgh, his wife had previously volunteered as a mentor with the charity, and he had a genuine affinity with the community. "There was a shared understanding of Leith and some of the issues people are facing there," says Mike. "That was a great starting point."
The approach Adrian took was deliberately informal and iterative. Rather than arriving with a template and asking the charity to fill in the blanks, he and Mike co-designed a process that would genuinely reflect what YMCA Edinburgh actually stood for, not what they thought they should say they stood for.
"The problem with a lot of corporate value statements is that they exist in an unconnected way relative to the communities you engage with," Adrian explains. "So why not go through a process where we ask people to weigh in, from the board to the staff to the volunteers to the people you serve, and actually capture what matters to them?"
A survey went out to everyone connected to the organisation, gathering views from across the board. The responses were then discussed in workshops with staff and volunteers, allowing the team to sense-check, refine, and ultimately take ownership of what emerged.
Impact
YMCA Edinburgh now has a set of organisational values, complete with supporting statements and behavioural indicators, that the whole team helped shape.
"It's not that they're markedly different from what we'd said before," Adrian reflects, "but the real difference is how people feel about them. Rather than just being a set of statements that someone handed down, everyone feels they actually own these things, and they can live by them."
For Mike, that sense of ownership matters enormously. The values will be woven into supervision sessions, team meetings, and decision-making processes. "When we're deciding whether to take on a piece of work or chase a bit of funding, we can look at the values and ask: does this actually fit? They become a benchmark."
There's also a longer-term benefit that Mike is particularly pleased about. If key people move on, as they inevitably do, the values help preserve the culture that's been built. New staff and volunteers can step into something defined and meaningful, rather than relying on institutional memory that walks out the door.
And the impact stretches outward, too. Because the values were shaped with input from service users as well as staff, they reflect what the people YMCA Edinburgh serves actually need and expect. That means a more consistent experience, families and young people can have a clearer sense of what the charity stands for and what they can count on when they walk through the door. Whether someone is coming for mentoring support, a youth session, or the women’s group, the same values and behaviours underpin every interaction.
Stephen Cahill sums up why projects like this have lasting value:
"It's not just about getting over the hump and having something articulated. It becomes a reference point for everything: partnership working, future development, operational decisions. You see the real benefit longitudinally."
For Mike, the experience with Cranfield Trust has been a positive one all round. "I didn't know much about Cranfield Trust before this," he admits, "but I think it's a fantastic service. I'm keen to continue working with them.”
