The quality mark provides demonstrable evidence to stakeholders and funders, of your commitment to excellence, reassurance for trustees that your charity is well run and recognition for staff and volunteers for what they are achieving.
Organisations that own their own CEF may be given approval to issue their own enhanced Quality Mark and logo. This provides an even higher level of assurance, because CEF owners have additional specialist assessment statements and carry out follow-up checks of their member’s action plans.
Your assessment covers every area of activity: promoting good governance, effective strategy, leading and managing people well, effective delivery of operations, efficient use of finance and resources, maximising income generation and effective communications.
The system also assesses key crisis health check indicators, including maximising impact, short-term resilience, longer-term sustainability, how good you are at getting funding to front line activities, legal & compliance and how well everyone is kept safe from harm.
“more thought-provoking than other Quality Mark systems that I have seen and/or used”. 4Sight Vision Support
Each of your 8 questionnaires must be completed at least once within the previous 12 month period. The system automatically tracks and assesses scoring patterns and will not award the quality mark, unless you have a quality rating of at least Pass. If yours isn’t, click the ? symbol in the Quality Mark area at the bottom of your dashboard to find out how to fix this.
It is only awarded once these criteria have been met and is automatically withdrawn, if any are not. Your quality mark progress is reported on your dashboard, with traffic light indicators warning when any questionnaires need to be rescored. Once qualified, you will be sent the Charity Excellence Quality Mark logo.
It is awarded to charities, CICs and schools at the sole discretion of Charity Excellence, which reserves the right to withhold or withdraw this, if in the view of Charity Excellence, a voluntary organisation falls below the standards expected of a well-run not for profit. This may include, but is not restricted to, any attempt to ‘game’ the system, behaviour or standards that fall below the professionalism expected of a well-run charity, being subject to censure by the Charity Commission, or other regulatory authority, or an adverse audit or other report, the disqualification of directors, or being found against in legal proceedings.
In the event that a Quality Mark award is withheld or withdrawn, the charity will be advised and may appeal the decision in writing, within one calendar month, stating the grounds on which the appeal is based. The appeal will be considered and the charity advised of the outcome, the decision of which will be final.