1818 Society UK Chapter

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Assignment: Helping a UK charity to better integrate its operations into bilateral and multilateral donor operations.

Client : UK charity specialising in road transport.

Initial contact : Referral via Cranfield Trust to Roger Slade and Christine Purdy.

Principal Investigator : Ian G Heggie.

Reviewer : Peter Watson.

Start date : Initial working meeting, 5 April 2007.

Completion date : Final report delivered, end June 2007.

Fee basis: Pro bono, with UK travel expenses.

Final Report: 31 pages, plus 15 pages of Annexes.

Total time taken: About 20 days (equivalent to a fee of £10,000).

The charity is owned by a number of UK-based transport companies who work to improve the delivery of public and private transport services in developing and transition countries. They do this by providing short, sharply focussed hands-on assistance through short-term staff seconded from their member organisations. Currently, they mainly operate in Sub-Saharan Africa. Several successful projects have been delivered – or are ongoing -- covering hospital transport, road safety (including HGV driver training and testing) and transport cooperatives for market women.

To diversify their business, and integrate it more closely into ongoing donor operations, the charity approached the 1818Society and asked for help in preparing a new Business Plan. The work was carried out early in 2007 and a Final Report was submitted at the end of June. The report explained how donors prepare their projects (i.e., the Project Cycle), how they procure goods & services from others, outlined how the charity might broaden the range of products and services it currently offers, how it might set about building a wider network of contacts to enable it to play a more prominent leadership role, and recommended next steps.

The report was well received and the chapters on the Project Cycle and Procurement Procedures – which provide a simple guide on how the donor community operates -- could be adapted and used by others providing services on behalf of the Society.