Managing organisational change & collaborative working

The charity sector is looking at many and any way to contain costs and maximise efficiencies. To date these have included mergers (such as Help the Aged and the national Age Concern operations), grouping within sub sectors (such as that achieved by Action for Blind People working with Royal National Institute for the Blind) and behind the scenes department sharing which is taking place across many smaller charities in England and Wales.

These are all excellent ways to achieve the cost containment and efficiency drives going on across the sector.

What is important also is to identify and consider who has responsibility for which key risks and ensure that these are suitably addressed through risk management and where helpful, through insurance as a corollary of risk management.

Let us consider an example of 3 smaller charities that each has an Accounts Department of 2 people. They can see immediately that for the 3 of them really only 4 people would be needed rather than 6 if they all joined together and used the same accounting package (already in place with one of the charities).

So the questions to consider here are:

1. How can you select who stays and who goes?
2. Where would the remaining people be based?
3. Are there any peaks in work that might result in additional staff being needed?
4. Whose system is used and what inbuilt safeguards does it have?
5. Who would insure the accountancy risks such as electronic funds transfers and third party computer fraud?
6. What happens if something goes wrong? Can they sue each other? Would an insurer understanding the collaborative working relationship want to pay up?

These questions are merely examples and not the full set we recommend should be considered but at the heart of each question you will have noted is the point that risks need to be identified, assessed and allocated BEFORE any action is taken otherwise it will be difficult to know what will happen if something goes wrong.

Another, perhaps less ‘sexy’ aspect of mergers is the managing of the insurance programme as the merger progresses. It is rare for a merger to begin in the certainty of what locations will remain, what  people will remain etc. This uncertainty means that careful management and communication is  necessary between the newly merged charity and their insurance broker. A project plan is recommended that incorporates frequent teleconferences to ensure the insurance programme does not slip behind the merger programme.

Slippage could mean that you are uninsured or perhaps worse in times of recession over-insured.

The Oval Charity Team has helped several major charities move through either mergers or the centralisation of charity insurance programmes, and this experience can really benefit those undertaking this for the first time.

For more information contact Alyson Pepperill on
07824 492665 or email alyson.pepperill@theovalgroup.com