Mergers and due diligence
More and more charities are considering how they can work collaboratively. This makes sense as supporters want to see charities working for the cause, not competing with each other. There are various levels of collaboration you may wish to consider
Feasibility and options appraisals
Before you embark on any collaborative working exercise, you may wish to develop the options further and consider which ones are feasible. This is also a chance to explore everyone's appetite for collaboration and establish "no-go" areas before you get too far into a detailed process.
Sharing services
If you decide that you want to share services, then you need to be clear on the level of service to be provided, both in terms of quality and quantity. You may wish to jointly purchase a service from another provider - you will need to develop service specifications, contracts and performance standards.
Merger of two or more organisations
The merger process needs to give each set of trustees enough confidence that they know what they are getting into it. However, you do not want to get bogged down in bureaucratic processes.
At Sayer Vincent, we have developed charity-specific merger processes that will help each charity to understand the key issues. This recognises that charities are not commercial organisations and that one is not buying the other - it is more often a mutual process where information needs to be exchanged efficiently so that the new organisation can move forward rapidly with the real work of achieving the strategic objectives.