Venture Trust

Edinburgh, UK

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GIVING YOUNG PEOPLE A SECOND CHANCE

Venture Trust is a charity in Scotland that gives vulnerable young people a second chance. We worked with them on ways to grow the support they get from corporate partners.

Young people, regardless of their background, deserve equal opportunities and the chance to live a fulfilled life.

That is what the Venture Trust is all about.

The Scotland-based charity works with vulnerable young people, many of whom are ex offenders, to provide them with an opportunity to take the next steps in their lives. 


CAF's work with the team

As with many other charities, Venture Trust is working to grow its corporate donor base and create meaningful partnerships with businesses.

The organisation has had corporate partners in the past, but has more recently been looking at forming more strategic and long-term partnerships.

The charity was put in touch with CAF through Impetus, who help fund charities that work with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

To start the process off, the charity gave CAF’s advisory team a brief of what they were expecting and what they hoped to gain from the relationship.

CAF’s team in turn provided them with market research around other charities and what they are doing, in addition to a review of what the organisation had been doing and what they might need internally to support their growing corporate fundraising strategy.

The charity worked with CAF over six months, scheduling in monthly discussions to assess what was working and what wasn’t.

Rachael McCrea, Fundraising Manager at Venture Trust, said: “We already had corporate relationships and fundraising going on but we hadn’t looked externally in terms of consultancy to support the development of it.

“I think the whole process threw up things that we would probably never have considered, for example thinking about cause-related marketing and the potential in those types of relationships. We may have underestimated just how valuable it would be to spend some dedicated time on this.”

A cultural change at a ‘critical time’

Amelia Morgan, the charity’s CEO, also spoke to us about the work with CAF.

She said: “The support we’ve had from CAF has come at a really critical time for us in terms of where we’re headed strategically but also how we are changing the culture of the organisation over time. With that very collaborative approach with CAF it’s really shone a light on what might be possible for Venture Trust in the future.”

Rachael added: “It gave us tangible goals to share with our team and has allowed us to really confidently put in place an implementation plan. It's also allowed us to identify some sectors that we won't focus on and approach other organisations with the feeling that we are bringing a little bit more to the table.

“We are also putting in more resources to focus on corporate. We have for example set up a corporate working group just to dedicate more resource into implementing the strategy.

“It’s definitely given us more of a confidence in starting to generate leads and do more approaching.”

To find out more about Venture Trust, visit www.venturetrust.org.uk

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