What We Do

iNspire provides the environment to support and develop charitable organisations in the North West of England.  It does this by aligning them with highly skilled and talented people from business, academia and professional services who all provide their skills, knowledge and experience free to help these charitable organisations to be more successful.

To find out more about the individuals and organisations involved in iNspire, please read about us.

With the help of its Leaders, Supporters and Board, iNspire provides support to charitable organisations through three key areas:

Mentoring:
Each charitable organisation involved in iNspire is assigned a successful entrepreneur or business professional (a “Leader”) who works directly with the CEO or principal of that organisation providing leadership and mentoring support. This is achieved through regular group meetings (of not more than 5 non-competing organisations) and one-to-one sessions. The section on the mentoring programme provides more detailed information on this approach.

Training:
Through iNspire’s academic and professional network, the charitable organisations involved in the program are provided with regular free seminars and courses on a diverse range of issues facing the sector including finance, law, marketing and tax.

Connecting:
As part of the mentoring programme, iNspire connects charitable organisations with similar organisations in the third sector, through group mentoring sessions and also through the iNspire network of events.

iNspire also connects these charitable organisations with its Supporters, providers of professional services who have specific skills ranging from law and accounting to marketing, PR, printing and IT. These Supporters have donated a fixed number of free hours or other free resources to help and advise iNspire’s charitable organisations on specific issues. This pool of limited free resource is managed by the iNspire Executive Team who ensure it is effectively distributed between iNspire’s portfolio of charitable organisations.

Through its current Supporters and wider network, iNspire can also negotiate favourable rates for advice and hands on support on larger more time consuming projects such as the drafting of annual accounts, dealing with legal disputes and web design.

All iNspire’s activities are governed by its guiding principles.