by Alice Clementi, Co-Founder and CEO, Charterpath
At a time when charities across the UK continue to face difficult economic conditions, financial expertise has never been more vital. Many organisations are juggling increased demand, with diminishing resources and uncertainty over future funding. Financial stability is essential for charities to keep the lights on. Yet, organisations find it hard to recruit financial expertise, leaving them vulnerable to mismanagement and potentially missing out on opportunities for growth.
By charting a path between charities and volunteers with financial skills, Charterpath’s free service aims to help you better manage your resources, navigate financial challenges and allow you to focus on your mission, delivering lasting change for your communities.
Making volunteers with financial expertise count
Volunteers with financial expertise can transform charities or charitable trusts of all sizes. From financial planning and governance to budgeting and risk management, they can provide invaluable support to improve financial decision-making and help your organisation operate more effectively and sustainably.
Financial volunteers can also help charities unlock new funding opportunities, improve reporting to funders, and ensure compliance with financial regulations. Their skills can empower charities to be more strategic with their resources
Smarter grant-making starts here
For grant-making trusts, financial expertise is especially crucial. Grant-making is a complex and resource-intensive process. Volunteers can ensure that the cost of assessing and approving grants is minimised, making the process more efficient and maximising the funds available for distribution. As a grant-making trust, you may also use your financial expertise to upskill the charities you fund, equipping them with better financial management capabilities to strengthen their overall effectiveness. Having strong financial knowledge at both the grant-maker and the grant-recipient can lead to a greater appetite for longer-term funding models, offering smaller organisations the stability they need to thrive.
Strength in numbers
To make the most of volunteers with financial skills, it’s important to ensure their role is manageable. All too often organisations place too much responsibility on a single individual for all things financial, which makes the role overwhelming and hard to recruit for! At Charterpath we recommend charities and trusts consider recruiting multiple financial volunteers to share the workload and provide continuity when volunteers need to step away.
Encouraging a culture that values financial expertise is also key. Charities and trusts alike should prioritise financial literacy across their teams, ensuring that finance is embedded within strategic discussions rather than treated as a separate function. This approach not only strengthens financial governance but also builds the confidence of all trustees, who after all, are all responsible for the organisation’s financial performance and long-term viability.
How Charterpath can help
Charterpath makes it easy for charities and grant-making trusts to access volunteers with financial skills. Whether your organisation is looking for ad-hoc financial project support or seeking a permanent trustee with financial experience, we can help you find well qualified, motivated and diverse individuals (for free). Volunteer roles can be submitted directly through our website here.
Since we launched in 2020, Charterpath (registered charity no. 1207509) has supported over 250 charities and inspired over 650 finance professionals to volunteer their skills, contributing 20,000 hours to the charity sector. Please do get in touch and find out how we can help.
Click HERE to view a short film (2.4 mins) from Claire at Manchester Deaf Centre, to learn how two Charterpath volunteers have made a huge difference over the past couple of years. Their work included improved reporting, advice to Trustees, supporting the charity’s forecasting to ensure it is accurate helping Manchester Deaf Centre remain viable as a going concern following the impact of Covid and the cost-of-living crisis.
