It’s My Business Info

Welcome to everyone reading this. I am a blog virgin but my three teenagers and tech geek hubby have tried their best to explain how I should be going about this. Feedback from any readers is welcome!
I am a project manager of a ‘third sector’ organisation, and for those of you who are now thinking you must be reading the wrong site think, Big Issue, innocent smoothies or Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Fifteen. The third sector is made up of social enterprises and community and voluntary organisations. Of course, most of us are nothing like as big, but the definition would be something about being a business in every sense except that any “profit” we generate goes back into the project. We have no share holders and are normally managed by a voluntary committee. Some social enterprises are also registered charities and the enterprise takes place under a trading arm. This is because there is a lot of charity law about trading which we need to be mindful of.
Enough of the boring compliance stuff (no doubt it will rear its head as time goes on) so on to what we actually do.
The organisation I work for is called Station House Community Association Ltd (Sunday name) or just Station House to our friends. We are a community group based in Thurnscoe, a large ex-mining village on the very edge of Barnsley/Doncaster boarder. Just like in the film Brassed Off, it is a typical poor Yorkshire village full of characters with a strong traditional culture, men are men and women wear the trousers in most homes. Unemployment is still a huge problem and this community still has a way to go to even meet anything like average living standards. Where there is work, it is normally low skilled and very low paid. Our biggest local employer is a call centre, and if you ever drive past it at a shift change it would remind you of the old factory culture: hoards of individuals streaming in and out. My daughter worked there last summer and at one point was told that if she needed to go to the loo she would have to put her hand up to ask permission! When you treat people with that level of disrespect you tend to develop a culture where employees only do the bare minimum. The pay is set just above national minimum wage and the prospects are very limited.
At Station House our primary activity is childcare. We offer the traditional playgroup (children aged 2-3 years) which prepares them for nursery provision, and we also offer an after school and holiday club for children aged 5-11 years. All our services are OFSTED registered. This demonstrated that we deliver a quality provision, and also means that some working parents can claim financial support for the childcare. This is an important selling point for our after school and holiday club. Parents do pay for all the services, but this is a subsidised rate, as it would work out at about £12 an hour per child, which would make it financially unfeasible for most working parents. The subsidy has to be made up from somewhere and this is where we have to be really enterprising.
Traditionally organisations like this one applied for funding from the Lottery, Children In Need and other such organisations. It won’t be any great surprise to anyone that these sources of funding are drying up rapidly. This year we have lost both Lottery funding and Children in Need money. This is causing a massive strain on our cash flow, we employ 8 people, 3 full time and the rest part time. Contrary to popular belief we do get a wage, however practice shows that it is often less than the occupational average. We still have to pay all the costs that a “normal” business has, however there is a concession for some rates relief. Of course, as employers we have all the same responsibilities as any employer, and in addition we have a strong team of volunteers. Volunteers do what they do for a variety of reasons and we could not operate without them. For people who have never managed volunteers it must seem like a dream, staff who don’t want pay! Remember everything comes at a cost….they still need managing. Managing volunteers can be a bit like managing an unruly child, and at the and of the day you can use the line “I pay your wage so you will do it my way” The management skill for volunteers is subtly different to that of paid staff, one time I will give you a bit more insider info on what can happen!
As for me, well I am 35 + VAT (you do the maths), was a total teachers nightmare at school, left with very limited qualifications, did an old style apprenticeship in catering, had my family, did the stop at home mum bit. The as I reached 30, by fluke I ended up at University studying for a Business Studies Degree. No one was more surprised than me, but thanks to a great years work placement and an acceptable 2:2 I walked straight into a job for a training agency, working on a business link contract, advising new small businesses. From there I worked for a local school, developing community activities and managing the site and eventually ended up working for the local education authority on an extended school project. In the last eight year I have worked in the private sector, the statutory sector and now the third sector. In my very young years I had many different jobs, working in catering, factory work, and even spent a summer fruit picking. This variety of experiences has given me an insight into many aspects of life, business and people, and I hope I bring that into my management style.
On my blog I want to share with others the great highs and lows of working in the Third sector, I promise to share an honest account of how I see things and one thing is for sure, we will have a laugh along the way. This month I have annual staff appraisals and a meeting with the local authority to discuss a possible service level agreement so that will probably be the focus of the next blog, but who knows?
See you then.
PS please leave me some comments, in cyber space, it can be a very lonely place!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Charlotte. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.