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Our Charity Excellence 2.0 strategy will see our existing platform slowly broken up and deployed to any of the 600+ infrastructure charities and networks who want it. Moving from a single platform to a UK wide shared system where everyone contributes and benefits, and has a real say in decision making.
Our development work is always user led and, the next step, is to work with you on 2 things.
Listed below and in our survey are a whole range of ways we might help you. We've listed lots to give you lots of choice. However, you know best what you need, so we also want to hear your own ideas, to ensure what we build will work really well for everyone.
The pilot is open to any infrastructure body that wishes to participate. We'll launch as soon as ready, there are no numbers and no deadline. We'll just keep going until we have what we need to build a system that works extremely well for you. If you might wish to join in contact me - ian@charityexcellence.co.uk.
| Help us build the support system charities actually need — and be the first to use it.
The pilot infrastructure bodies will also be:
The first to qualify as AI Ready - demonstrable evidence to stakeholders and funders that you use AI responsibly and that your data and financial information are used ethically and kept safe. |
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This is not about training you how to use technology but designing the technology around your needs and what you want. Actually, it's not really about technology at all but a fundamental change in the way sector level support is made available, not least, by giving everyone a real voice in how that is done.
For those who prefer more formal language, we're using social franchising to build a distributed leadership and data network. AI is what makes that possible.
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The only way to deliver large scale functional support to large numbers and at very low cost, is by building a digital platform to do that. That's Charity Excellence 1.0.
But you told us that whilst you love what we provide,. you want local/specialist provision not national and you don't want AI only solutions. Charity Excellence 2.0 resolves that un-reconcilable need by managing data and systems centrally but deploying these to individual bodies and networks. Embedded within the model is our Righteous Cycle that ensures you get everything you told us you want and in a way that creates a powerful self-reinforcing loop. |
Better support → Reduced workload → Stronger networks → More income → Greater influence → Even better support
Its purpose is to help non profits to survive, stabilise and then thrive.
We become Kentucky Fried Chicken for the charity sector! Everyone must maintain standards and policies that we've all agreed on but, within that framework, each partner is free to work in the way(s) that work best for them. If there is agreement on changing the framework, we do and everyone then follows the new rules. The pilot will help us to understand how you want that to work.
Options to ensure you are directly involved in decision making might include giving members a seat on the planned Strategic Leadership body, changing the Charity Excellence charity to a membership charity to give everyone a vote, having nominated trustees, and/or requiring specific trustee representation by particular groups, such as small charities and marginalised groups.
The aim is to break up our system into its components (eg Funding Finder) and give each to those who want them. But we need to use AI to do that and we can't until we know what you want (and we have some funding). For the pilot, we will give you our registration and login to embed on your website, giving you access to the whole eco system. Logging in gives you access to the Funding Finder grants directory, the multi-function Help Finder directory (including company support and donations finder), the Data Finder directory, health check system and AI bunny that can carry out a whole series of tasks, including bid writing. For 2.0, these will be available individually to those who want them.
New capabilities we will deploy as part of the pilot:
We're currently working with our friends at Charity Accounting Partners to look at adding an online charity risk register and library and also a new Gift Aid system aimed at enabling you to help people to easily access a lot more of the £500m we fail to claim each year.
We don't know, yet. What do you want? For example, you might wish to brand it as Charity Excellence because we are so well known and trusted. And you might make use of some of our popular guidance, in areas such as deciding what policies are required. But we don't really mind. Instead, making the capability you've asked for part of your existing website might work better for you. There’s no fixed model — flexibility is the point.
The pilot programme will help us to identify the new capabilities of most value to you but we are also carrying out a survey to give everyone a voice in what we're doing. We ask you to rate a range of our ideas and to add your own. Our ideas include corporate funding support, volunteering support, grant writer, Awards for All specific grant writer, sourcing comms support, a venue finder, Gift Aid support etc.
What would make your life easier, reduce workload or enable you to do even more of the brilliant work you do already? Maybe, support with managing admin, safeguarding, or induction and training admin, ...... Don't forget to add details, so we're clear on what you want.
The survey is open to everyone, including the most junior individuals and other types of non profit such as councils and social enterprises. Everyone is important and everyone's views matter.
Once the pilot programme is completed, we will begin building the new capabilities you have told us you want and also turning our existing capabilities into AI people can just chat to. Effectively, creating our own little mini App Store. The sector is hugely diverse, so we will allow organisations to choose which capabilities would be of value to them so that everyone gets what they want and nothing they don't.
We also have the capability to deploy individual data sets. That can either be an existing one (we track data geographically, by cause and also size) or by creating what we call a super group. That is, your charities opt in to join your group when they set up their My Profile page. This enables you to have your own group dashboard and tools.
We appreciate that many work with your local councils, so we've built that in to the system too. The Charity Excellence system carries out a far more sophisticated level of audit than most councils are able to (eg Section 11 checks), it's automated and free. The quality mark also acts as due diligence and the data reporting systems enable trends and any emerging weaknesses to be easily identified. There is scope for both to work together using our technology to reduce administrative workload, improve safety and accountability, and allocate limited funding and resources more effectively.
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Our existing Quality Mark was always intended to be the 'basic one', with charities adding additional checks of their own to create their own Quality Mark.
For example, requiring charities to submit their completed action plan (the system generates these automatically) and maybe additional documentation or information you consider important. Because this would be underpinned by our detailed assessments, the additional workload would be limited. |
The initial deployment will be via embedding web links into buttons on your website. It is very simple to do and costs nothing.
There is no cost in being part of the pilot and we hope to make Charity Excellence 2.0 free, but cannot guarantee that as it is potentially hugely scalable and we have very little money. However, you can remove the website functionality at any time if you wish to.
We hope to launch the pilot within the next month. The full Charity Excellence 2.0 programme timelines are on its web page.
If you'd like to know more, you can download the Charity Excellence 2 Programme Delivery Plan.
