A: Diversifying your Income

Lateral thinking and income generation

This workshop aims to help community groups consider ways to expand their income generation options. It will look at generating income from trusts and foundations, sponsors and earned income sources and encourage participants to identify potential income sources that may suit the needs of their own organisations. With practical exercises and opportunities to discuss case studies this session aims to improve participants fundraising and income generation skills.

B: Personalisation, what's in it for me?

An introduction to personalisation

Personalisation has been coming for a few years. You may have heard of direct payments, person-centred planning and person-centred care. The idea behind personalisation is that the individual decides what service they want to meet their needs, rather than someone else deciding according to the services that happen to be there. It will be a major change to the way in which social care is delivered.

This workshop will help organisations consider how to adapt to the opportunities that personalisation presents.

C: Why should I fund you?

Proving your work makes a difference

How much do you really know about the effects and reach of your organisation's work? Funders are increasingly looking for the difference your project makes to your beneficiaries not just the outputs. What systems do you have in place to monitor, evaluate and demonstrate the outcome of your work?

What tools are there to help monitor and capture the effect a project makes; how do you go about proving to a funder to back a specific area of work which is likely to have made a difference?

WThis workshop will give you an understanding of the tools and mechanisms to prove the outcome of your work and the difference it makes.

D: Writing better funding applications

Discuss, draft and submit

This will be a fun but practical workshop in which participants will work together to discuss, draft and submit an application to a leading small grants programme on behalf of a local charity.

The experience and insight gained could enable you to leave the day ready to put together an application and submit your own bid to the funder within the week!

E: New income / trading

What are my options?

This workshop will explore from a legal perspective some of the options, risks and opportunities as organisations explore new funding opportunities and more sustainable funding options.

There is no easy definition of what constitutes trading by a charity. What are the restrictions, does it have to pay tax, when should it consider setting up a "trading arm"? Alongside trading as a sustainable source of funding, new funding mechanisms are likely to become more common, sub contracting and personalisation being two areas which are expanding.

What are the risks and what should you be looking for when negotiating / developing these opportunities?

F: The Business Sector

Benefits and challenges

A workshop for charities keen to explore the benefits and challenges of involving the business sector in their fundraising and capacity building plans.

The workshop will look at alternative ways a charity can harness the skills, capacity and enthusiasm of local employers and their staff to help them overcome some of the challenges they are faced with on a daily basis.

G: Making the most of what you have

Maximising your finance

This workshop will suit anyone in a management or trustee's role within a charity where, the issues of funding and financial management are key.

The aim of the workshop is to develop participants'understanding of the underlying principles of financial management and the practical application of these principles to their organisation.

It also aims to enable participants to get a better understanding of the basics of budgeting, pricing and full cost recovery, improve their understanding of the wider issues of financial management as a key part of understanding charity resource management.

H: But aren't volunteers free?

Core principles of good volunteer involvement

Deciding when and how to employ volunteers is an issue facing many voluntary and statutory organisations. In order to look at ways of addressing this question, there needs to be a careful examination of a number of points;. Firstly what are the costs and resource implications associated with involving volunteers and can the organisation meet these?

If an organisation wants to work within a volunteer involvement good practice framework, it needs to recruit volunteers and provide them with training and support. Many volunteer roles will also call for supervision and detailed selection procedures (e.g. CRB checks). Of course Volunteers should also be offered reimbursement for their out-of-pocket expenses.

This workshop will look at the core principles of good volunteer involvement with an overview to better volunteer management and clearer costing of an effective work force.