CoRe 2023 Impact Report highlights

Written by Marija Mikne, Senior Project Manager, BIG Alliance

Now in its 16^th year, CoRe is BIG Alliance’s flagship capacity building programme, run in partnership with Macquarie Group, Slaughter and May, and Expedia Group.  Started in  2009, CoRe has seen the participation of 500+ volunteers who have supported 100+ Islington-based community organisations with their capacity, capabilities and long-term sustainability.

Islington is home to some 2,200 charitable organisations, with the majority being grassroots organisations with no paid staff and an annual income of less than £10,000.

Since the start of the Cost of Living crisis, charities have been experiencing an increase in the cost of running the organisations, while public donations have been falling.   According to NCVO, 73% of charities say they cannot meet the current demand for the public services they deliver with the current funding they receive. The options for them are bleak – charities will either have to stop operating completely or cease delivering much needed services.

These are all incredibly worrying facts and statistics but this is exactly why CoRe is such an important programme. The outputs delivered by the CoRe volunteers is something that most of the community organisations don’t have the capacity, skills or resources to do themselves as they’re so busy ‘doing the doing’ – delivering the services to their beneficiaries.

Throughout the CoRe 2023 programme, the corporate volunteers worked on specific areas such as marketing, comms, corporate partnerships, HR, and governance. This support is hugely beneficial to the organisations’ strategic planning, and links back to their capacity, capabilities and long term sustainability – areas that all CoRe 2023 community organisations reported an increase and improvement in as a result of the programme. Keep an eye out for our full Programme Impact Report with details about all projects. It will be released in the coming days.

– Miriam Ashwell, Chair of Caledonian Park Friends Group

We are always striving to make the programme as effective and efficient as possible. Having reflected on the previous participants’ feedback, this year we’ll be trialling out a different timeline with the programme launch date being in September instead of April. If you’re a community partner who needs support, or a corporate employee who’d like to volunteer your professional skills, we have a plethora of other opportunities to take part in, in the interim. Please get in touch by emailing Marija Mikne at marija.mikne@thebigaliiance.org.uk.

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