The most-recent session was held at the KGV over two hours on Friday.
It was organised by the Community Foundation and included two presentations focusing on insurance requirements and health and safety guidance.
Two industry professionals donated their time to the seminar, which was free to attend, with all costs covered by the guest speakers and the Community Foundation.
Joni Nettleship is the Third Sector Liaison Officer for the Community Foundation. She works directly with charities to help them meet their aims, including by providing training courses.
“The reason we do that is because they are trying to provide services and support to the Guernsey community and very often they are doing it with very little money and not much time and not many staff,” said Ms Nettleship. “So my role is really to support them.
“What I love about what I do is I work with the charities and help them with things like governance and insurance and health and safety.”
The guest speakers at Friday’s training session were Gareth Le Page from Channel Insurance Brokers and Jonathan Coyde from CopCoy, health and safety advisors.
Ms Nettleship said the charities which benefit from the free training sessions are varied and for some it might be the only formal training they can attend.
“You’ve got Mind, which is a national organisation and has it all in place, but at the other end of the scale you’ve got people setting up a trust or charity in memory of their child and everything in between,” she said.
“It’s a huge range of community services, people working with children, disabled people, the elderly, the Pollinator Project. For every charity which is providing a service, they’ve got to provide accounts, they’ve got to have treasurers and secretaries. They’ve got to make sure they are doing the right thing legally as well as morally.
“I listen to charities to find out what they need and then plan a raft of courses and I get people in to do them – out of the goodness of their heart as well. I don’t charge the charities.
“As an example of how lovely people are, I was talking to Gareth because he’s involved in a charity [Channel Islands Air Search] and he said: ‘if you need to do a presentation on insurance for charities so they understand what they’re doing and their competence and their duties, I know a fella who can come and do the second half’. A lot of charities do a lot of fundraising events and health and safety is a huge issue. So those two, out of the goodness of their hearts, have come along to do a 45-minute session each. It’s a lovely thing to do.”
The sessions are held on an ad-hoc basis. There were two last week and a presentation from Liberate as well.
Ms Nettleship said she is always keen to speak to other people who might be able to offer training and guidance to charities.
“I try and do a couple a month,” she said. “There are 450 charities and there are 200 very active charities.
“The nice thing is that they can share the information among their members. They are really well attended. I think the more of these we do the more they will be attended.
“I’m always looking for people who have got something, on a whole range of things, like mental health or HR – all of those back office services. And one thing which charities are really desperate for is social media help. I’m trying to get a digital day together. That relies on sitting down with people on their iPads and going through the basics – it’s as simple as that. So anyone with any kind of skill, we’d be interested to hear from you.”
