The challenging financial climate has brought together CEO’s from local charities; Young Gloucestershire and Infobuzz.

1 June 2016

The current climate is challenging for the voluntary sector, funding is being cut, services reduced and opportunities are disappearing. This means it can be hard to be a small voluntary organisation right now.

It takes a range of skills and a lot of people to run a successful voluntary organisation. Someone to focus on fundraising, someone to focus on securing contracts, someone to manage the staff and make sure the funding secured is being used properly. Someone with finance knowledge and someone with HR knowledge. Some of this can be provided by volunteers but much of it needs paying for. Therefore, it can be very difficult for smaller organisations to afford all these overheads. Over the last month YG has found itself in conversation with infobuzz who have been facing many of these challenges. As a result, a decision was made to work much closer together. The press release we have shared tells the story in a little more detail:

Two local charities are joining forces to secure the future of young people’s services in the county. The challenging financial climate has brought together CEO’s from local charities; Young Gloucestershire and Infobuzz to explore options to work together to ensure the future of the youth services carried out by both charities.

Infobuzz started life as a project within Young Gloucestershire, delivering drug education and advice to young people. The project quickly gained expertise and reputation for delivering high quality services and interventions, which led to Infobuzz establishing itself as an independent charity in 2005. Having delivered 10 years of excellent services across the county the charity is now returning to work more closely with its former partner.

Tony France the current CEO of Infobuzz has decided to step down from his role to focus on the development of a new community interest company; Headspace. Infobuzz will go on to be supported by the management team of Young Gloucestershire where the two charities hope to continue to develop their services and strengths by working together.

Tracy Clark, CEO of Young Gloucestershire said “Infobuzz separated from YG at a time that was appropriate for there to be a specialist service around drugs and alcohol for young people. The world has changed and resources are limited. Whilst remaining independent charities, the work Infobuzz and Young Gloucestershire do is now quite similar and it feels appropriate for the two charities to work closer together.

“Work has started this week on reviewing the two charities, to become more efficient and increase the offer to young people. We are pleased to welcome on board the skills and talents of Infobuzz which will complement YG’s broad range of services for young people”

Hugh Gladman, Chair of YG’s Board of Trustee and Jamie Eykyn Chair of Infobuzz expressed their commitment to working together to share resources within the two organisations and, above all, enhance the services provided to young people.

It is a time of change, a time of challenge but hopefully a time of opportunity where two charities come together to achieve outcomes for young people. It is also exciting to be entering new territories and able to offer innovative new services for young people as a result. Watch this space to see how this develops.