Amanda Tincknell, CEO of the Cranfield Trust discusses the impact training costs can have on current and emerging charity leaders.
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Being a leader or a manager in a small voluntary organisation is demanding in all sorts of ways: demanding our time, our energy, our emotions and our courage. Every day we have to face challenges - around the services we’re delivering, supporting the colleagues we’re working with or raising the income we need - we have to manage multiple activities and relationships to sustain our work.

Thinking about our personal development in this demanding context can seem less important. We have few resources to invest and little time to dedicate to building our own capabilities. However, having all the skills and knowledge we need to carry out our roles effectively will ensure our organisational performance is strong.

For emerging charity leaders, access to the right training can be crucial to individual and organisational success. This is why it has been surprising to learn that only 3% of existing training courses focus on learning for new leaders. This discovery has resulted from our Charity Management Matters research project which launched in February of this year.

Funded by the Masonic Charitable Foundation, our research has been led by Matilda Gosling, a social research consultant, to explore what management training is currently available for charity leaders and to understand any barriers to such training.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the cost of training presents a barrier, with less than half of existing training being available to charities for free and the average course costing around £282.
Interestingly, we have also learned that almost 50% of training is delivered on a regional basis, meaning many organisations could be missing out on crucial development due to their location. However, our research did also discover that 67% of training is being delivered online which could help to counteract this issue.

Cranfield Trust has a big reach, but we know we can’t reach everyone in management roles, so we’ve been thinking about how we can help more people to acquire the skills and knowledge that would help them in their roles, and benefit their organisations and ultimately, the people they support. This research is just the first step in that process.

We have started to think about the possibility of a comprehensive management learning programme which would cover key management areas – leadership and strategic direction, financial management and sustainability, people management and performance and impact. We want people working in the sector to be able to ‘top up’ knowledge in particular areas or to undertake a whole programme of learning and receive accreditation. As far as we know, there is no ‘joined up’ programme like this available free or at low cost – but there are lots of individual courses on different topics.

While envisioning a bespoke programme as a long-term ambition, in the shorter term, we feel that drawing together existing offers, covering a range of topics, and creating a ‘virtual’ programme of online training in key management areas could be extremely beneficial.
We are excited about the opportunity to work with others in the sector, using our own webinars and other learning activities to complement online and hybrid courses from other providers. We want to see whether we can put together a learning programme from existing activities, to engage more people with management learning, in a collaborative and cost-effective way.

In terms of a new, comprehensive programme, we will be learning about what’s needed and what’s possible over the next few years – and working with others in the sector to ensure that we all have the skills, knowledge and confidence we need to manage our organisations confidently, and to meet the needs of the people we support.

More about the findings of this research project can be found here.

These discoveries are just part of our research project, the full findings of which will be released in a report in the autumn. Keep an eye on our social media for updates.

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