Medway’s New Charity Alliance The Story So Far

Medway's new VCS Transformation Academy & Alliance is now well underway allowing for the opportunity for Medway’s VCS to radically transform how it operates and allow this generation of leaders to shape the future of the VCS both locally and, thanks to our academic partners in this initiative, nationally.

The VCS Transformation Academy & Alliance is funded by the Lottery Community Fund, which MVA secured the funding for (and are secretariat of) with the view to helping Medway's VCS to get together and lead the change for Medway.

Want to hear more about the story so far? Keep reading...

The Medway Charity Alliance part of the project, supported by project lead John Norley, will focus on the sharing of resources between members for various functions, that a lot of organisation's share such as: HR, IT, Legal etc.

This is with the view that sharing resources and reducing costs in areas like these will help ensure that more money can go towards service delivery and communities in Medway.

The project is making good progress in line with it's initial plans and expectations, and a series of meetings has now taken place with potential interested partners.

Progress on scoping the first support services offer is well underway, with Mid-Kent College stepping forward to offer a detailed VCS network survey in July to assess current IT support needs and priorities in the sector.

Conversations will begin soon to move the second offer of support services forward. Following a generous offer from Medway Community Healthcare, discussions on the supplying of specialist HR advice and support to members are next on the agenda.

The project will then work towards launching it's first two shared services to the VCS network by September of this year (so there is still time to get involved). Alongside these first two supports services, we also anticipate Payroll and Fundraising to follow very soon.

We still require a range of other services delivered by experts from within the new Alliance, so we are encouraging members of the network to think not only about what they might 'take out' from the alliance, but also about what they might contribute to the project.

"Through generous leadership and the sharing of resources we aim to help build the Alliance package into a relevant and wide ranging programme of support services which can support the wider VCS with cost reduction and effective quality support". John Norley – Project Lead, Medway Charities Alliance

Click HERE to read more about both projects on MVA's website.

Click HERE to download a pdf overview of the Medway Charity Alliance.