Hertfordshire Community Foundation’s Building Effectiveness programme
In order to strengthen the Management and Leadership of the charity we have been involved throughout the year in the Hertfordshire Community Foundation’s Building Effectiveness programme. As one of the 10 charities selected this year for the programme we have received 6 training events for leaders of charities and additional mentoring towards our specific goals. This programme provides expert independent support from business mentors and support and guidance to help identify how your organisation can perform better, helps after an initial baseline assessment of the organisation through their DevelopApp tool for you to develop an improvement plan that addresses the issues that will improve the organisation’s function and helps to challenge the thinking of the board and senior managers.
It was agreed that we could attend the programme with both the Director and Deputy Director attending some workshops, Stuart the Chair of Trustees has also attended one training event and has been at all of the meetings with the mentors. Thus the senior team at the top of Playskill has had training and development this year. This is key as both the Director and Deputy Director are physiotherapists by background, and it has served as useful training for the Deputy Director as she joined the organisation in May 2017 in this role, so it has allowed her to become more up aware in her role of the Director’s role and the reasoning behind the direction of Playskill.
As part of the DeveloppApp assessment we identified some key issues to address within the organisation, but also 3 main aims. These were
1] To develop a clear strategy for the future of Playskill
2] To develop a clear plan for fundraising for Playskill
3] To strengthen the trustee board
We have just finalised the overall strategy and the fundraising strategy with our mentors and then with the trustee board. We have strengthened the trustee board by updating the trustee portfolios and have had 2 new trustees elected, we are interviewing currently for a new trustee for finance. We have a trustee away day with trustee training planned for April 2019 funded by the Building Effectiveness programme. Trustees are working in project teams on the key business plan objectives that have arisen from the DevelopApp assessment.
Playskill is grateful to the support of Chris Luff our business mentor for all the help to enable us to write our strategy, and to Hertfordshire Community Foundation and to Will Hobhouse for all that we have learnt through this programme.
More about the Building Effectiveness 2018 awards >>>
