Trust Advice: An excellent resource for charities

16 September 2021

This month we want to highlight an excellent resource for charities; Trust Advice, formerly Advice For the Voluntary Sector (AFVS), one of our partners, that has provided expert advice, training, and resources to the charitable sector for over ten years. Their founder has many more years of experience working with charities as the CEO of Independent Examiners (IE), which helps charities and CICs with year-end accounts, independent examinations, submissions, and advice.

Having started IE 25 years ago, Daryl Martin saw a need for continuous charity support and set up AFVS in 2010, which in 2020 became Trust Advice. Trust Advice has grown from being an off-shoot organisation off of IE to a membership organisation still run within the family and powered by a great team of people.

These changes have enabled Trust Advice to provide even more value to its members and the wider charity sector in the form of monthly webinars, Q&As, bespoke training and advice for trustees and leadership teams, GDPR training, briefings, financial toolkits and access to a library of white papers, policy documents and templates. The briefings and templates cover essential topics such as charity governance, trustee responsibilities, risk assessments, VAT submissions and charity formations. Some briefings are also available free to download and well worth checking out to see the membership’s value.

In addition, outside of its membership offerings, although intrinsic to it, is its services. Charities can access tailored support for setting up their charity, a Gift Aid scheme, or a GDPR policy. Whether you’re running a night shelter, food bank, outreach mission, service or raising awareness, it can be challenging to nail down support when needed, especially with many charities struggling in the events of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The charity sector has been forced to re-evaluate its activities, some to pause or narrow their focuses, whilst others expand and broaden theirs to find new ways of creating sustainable impact and obtaining future funding.

While some charities evaluate their impact over the last year and what direction they should take, others may have already started implementing more complex yet robust systems. Whatever situation your charity finds itself in, it’s important to make the most of your existing resources and build a support network. Trust Advice has positioned itself well to support charities as they develop, change, and grow. It has an exciting future ahead as it expands its network, membership, and range of services.

Trust Advice has worked with Access to create a resource to help charities manage risk. This guide is available for free, which you can download here.