Small Charities Conference 2024, 'People Partnerships and The Pinch'

With the enduring challenges of the last few years, as well as fresh uncertainty ahead, it's no wonder the confidence of small charity leaders is taking a hit.

Join The Small Charity Friendly Collective on Wednesday 1st May from 9.45am for a day of learning, sharing experiences, connecting with other 'smalls', and thinking outside the box when it comes to dealing with the ongoing impact of 'The Pinch'. We'll explore people, partnerships, and personal experiences as we consider new ways to navigate these challenging waters.

Places are free and open to all in the small charity sector.

The Small Charity Friendly Collective is an informal collective of small charity friendly specialists who have come together to respond to the challenge set in the Small Charities Coalition’s (SCC) “Small and Mighty” final report: to provide dedicated and trusted support to small charities.

We have a shared commitment to working in a small charity friendly way, which you can read more about here.

This event is supported by gunnercooke LLP. We hope that you can join us for the whole day, but if not, session recordings will be available to access or relisten later.

9.45am Conference starts

10.00am - 10.10am Sufina Ahmad, John Ellerman Foundation - Keynote

10.10am - 10.30am Michele Price-Maximising certainty through governance and best practice

Governance underpins every organisation and it is your north star when navigating uncertainty and embracing new opportunities. Michele will take you through key points of governance to encourage your organisation to improve where it is now and be ready to meet challenges.  Many organisations are looking to mergers, partnerships, changes to objects and new ways of meeting purpose - Michele will explain how this can work for you from a legal and regulatory point of view.

10.30am - 11.15am Laura Salisbury- Seeking the holy grail: How to increase unrestricted income and create financial resilience in uncertain times

This session is an introduction for small charities interested in raising income from the general public. In general this type of funding is unrestricted, and once these income channels are established they can lead to significant donations, such as from legacies. We’ll cover how to initially engage with the general public, and will very briefly touch on the basics of individual giving, community fundraising and legacy giving. For some charities, a generous and loyal individual donor base is one of the best ways to achieve financial resilience in uncertain times.

11.15am - 12.00am Mike Zywina- Mobilising for change in an Election year

As charity sector professionals, we often feel hopeless and helpless about the state of the world and the plight of the people we care about. So much of our work is focused on battling injustice and division, and compensating for broken systems that are failing people. Finally, 2024 brings an opportunity for real change – but how can you be a part of that, and meaningfully engage your service users and supporters? This session will provide some practical tips suitable for any small charity, even if you’re short on time and nervous about getting involved in any form of campaigning activity.

12.00pm - 12.45pm Lunch

12.45 - 13.30 Yasmin Glover- Clichés, connections and cutting through: how can we overcome audience apathy and inspire engagement?

'Our services are needed more than ever'. In challenging times, it's particularly vital that our messages cut through the noise and inspire our target audiences to support us. Join this comms session to think about how to resist clichés and create effective messages to engage the people you need.

13.30pm - 14.15pm  Sonia Wilson- The people part: Changes in 2024 and how best to respond to uncertainty

After several years of stalling on any new employment legislation, 2024 looks to be a bumper year! This session will outline i) the recent changes in employment law in the first half of 2024; ii) what we might see in the employment arena if there is a change in Government at the end of this year; and iii) how good people practices around areas such as employee engagement and development may help small charities ride the storm of uncertainty and change.

14.15 - 15.00 Liz Pepler- Why financial efficiency is the enemy of financial resilience

In times of financial uncertainty, and financial difficulty, it can be tempting to want to cut back on costs. We might want to reduce our spend on our internal infrastructure, on our HR support, our IT, our staff training, our fundraising, our finance support. In this session we explore why actually these short term cuts can lead to even greater longer term problems and why a good robust finance system is essential. Not only can it tell us when we have a problem but a really good robust finance system will buy us valuable time to fix it. In this session we explore some common elephant traps and how, sometimes, spending more can strengthen rather than weaken our financial position.

15.00 - 15.15 André Clarke- Director of Charity Development at Lloyds Bank Foundation