Employee volunteering partnership gains charitable status
Howard Lake | 24 June 2004 | News
Leicestershire Cares has become the first Cares partnership to become an independent charity.
Leicestershire Cares was launched in January 2000 by HRH Prince of Wales to offer opportunities for employee involvement in Leicestershire. Nationally, there are 24 such partnerships working to make an impact in local communities. Leicestershire Cares’ focus has been to promote and support the development of sustainable community involvement by increasing the scale and impact of employee volunteering in Leicester and across the County. It does this by brokering relationships between employers and the community. These can be in the form of reading volunteers, one-off team challenges and longer-term professional business advice for charities and social entrepreneurs.
This year over 100 organisations have encouraged more than 5,000 staff to participate in supporting local projects as they understand the benefits to their employees and company of getting involved. The Leicestershire Cares programme is funded through membership and through public support from the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (administered by Leicester City Council), Leicestershire County Council, the Leicestershire Constabulary, Connexions and the East Midlands Development Agency.
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On achieving charitable status, Monica Kimche, Director at Leicestershire Cares, said: “This is a very exciting time for Leicestershire Cares as we move to independent status. We are currently recruiting more staff and will be able to reach out to more community organisations to make an even greater impact.”
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.