The Venture Partnership Foundation

• You will be working with senior management from the voluntary sector who are open to your support. You will often be working on the most important and core issues facing that organisation at the time.
• Your skills will be effectively matched with an organisation that you are passionate about – interactions will be customised and flexible around your time commitments. We know that you are busy!
• VPF has already established a partnership of trust with these organisations based on multi-year funding commitment. Your volunteering time will be more effective as a result of pre-existing goodwill and trust, backed up by funds.
• You will be supporting an important new philanthropic concept.

Please contact Leonora Fitzgibbons with a description of your skills and experience and what sort of opportunity you are interested in.

• Due diligence

VPF runs a volunteer-led due diligence process, whereby our members and volunteers conduct research according to our carefully selected assessment criteria. This year, we have over 20 volunteers conducting web-based due diligence followed by face-to-face interviews with a range of charities/social entreprises that VPF is interested. The VPF charities committee, consisting of the Executive Director, Joanna Monaghan and Vik Anderson, inducts the volunteers and guides and manages the due diligence process.

• Charity contact points 

• The VPF charity key contact is responsible for developing the partnership upon which the mission of VPF is based. As a flexible and entrepreneurial organisation, we do not want to set rigid perameters about what such a partnership should entail. Indeed, the relationship between the key contact and the charity management will develop over time and evolve as the strategic situation and context changes.  

However, broadly defined, the charity contact point would:

• Be involved in setting out the perameters of the grant, in particular in the identification of the non-financial capacity building support (such as strategic help), which the charity would like VPF to help with.
  
  
• Provide the agreed capacity-building support, enlisting the help of the experience within the VPF community as appropriate. For example, there might be a specific issue that the charity is dealing with which VPF can provide an expert to advise on: e.g. franchising or insurance or types of financing deals.
  
  
• Build a strong relationship with the management, providing peer mentoring and a sounding board for high-level issues if appropriate. Become someone that the founders can turn to.
  
  
• Liaise with VPF about how the charity is getting on and what the support is being provided.