# OR Society marks 200 pro bono projects completed

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2025/06/05/or-society-marks-200-pro-bono-projects-completed/
- Published: 2025-06-05T11:48:48+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**To mark Volunteering Week in the UK a group of professional problem solvers has
announced that its volunteers have now completed over 200 free projects for UK charities.
The OR Society’s Pro Bono Operational Research (OR) volunteers are skilled professionals
who offer vital support to third sector organisations, often stepping in “to solve
the most complex and tricky challenges where there are no obvious answers”.**

Isma Shafqat, Pro Bono Manager at The Operational Research Society, explains the
value that the Society’s volunteers bring to charities:

“With charities facing increased demand and tighter budgets, many are using operational
research – a scientific, data-driven approach to decision-making. Our expert volunteers
contribute their time and skills to help charities plan, adapt, and improve their
work, especially when faced with problems that lack straightforward solutions.”

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## What the Pro Bono OR scheme offers

The Pro Bono OR scheme provides charities with various types of support. This includes
strategic planning and data analysis, which helps them make informed decisions even
in uncertain situations. Volunteers also assist with improving daily operations 
and measuring their impact.

The Welcome Centre, for example, received help to streamline how they support people
in crisis, enabling them to manage growing needs more effectively despite complex
operational hurdles.

Volunteers also assisted RUHX, an NHS charity, in understanding their donors better,
leading to more focused and effective fundraising campaigns that improved supporter
engagement by uncovering insights from vast amounts of data.

![The Operational Research Society - social media header](https://wfay6x.infiniteuploads.
cloud/2025/06/operational-research-society-header.jpeg)

Image: OR Society

## Help for smaller charities

The scheme also provides help to smaller charities.

The Harvey Hext Trust, a bereavement charity that provides personalised Memory Boxes
and Bears to grieving children, needed help to track their impact. An OR volunteer
helped deliver a structured system for this by building a functional database from
past invoices. This now allows the Trust to measure clearly their achievements, 
identify areas needing more support, and strengthen future grant applications.

Shafqat commented:

> “These examples demonstrate how operational research can make a significant difference,
> particularly by tackling those difficult questions where intuition alone isn’t
> enough.
> “Our Pro Bono OR scheme offers crucial support, especially when many charities
> have limited resources, providing a unique and valuable tool to address problems
> they might otherwise be unable to tackle.”

[The OR Society is actively looking for more charities](https://www.theorsociety.com/ORS/Outreach/Pro-Bono/Pro-Bono-OR.aspx)
who could benefit from this expert, free support.

 * **[OR Society offers free services to help charities build back better](https://fundraising.co.uk/2021/04/13/or-society-offers-free-services-to-help-charities-build-back-better/)(
   13 April 2021)**