CoRe 2019 Case Study: Octopus Community Network
The charity
Octopus Community Network is a network of multi purpose community centres. Each community centre is a designated community hub and currently funded by Islington Council as a strategic neighbourhood partner.
The project
Octopus Community Network applied to CoRe with a request for support to tackle their GDPR uncertainties head on. It was hoped that improvements made to the
charity itself could be filtered down to the 14 additional member community centres within the Octopus Community Network.
Impact on Octopus Community Network as a result of CoRe
Capability:
Significant improvement in:
• Operational processes e.g. IT, HR, etc.
• Staff or volunteers’ knowledge and ability
Recognisable improvement in:
• Governance and/or management
• Organisation’s ability to provide a better service to their beneficiaries
Capacity:
Recognisable improvement in:
• Ability to recruit more of the right volunteers and/or staff
• Ability to provide new or additional services
Sustainability:
Recognisable improvement in:
• Ability to identify opportunities and minimise threats to their organisation e.g. new partnerships, legal contracts etc.
• Ability to continue to deliver services which attract a minimum viable number of participants further into the future
Added value provided by the volunteers
• New Privacy Policy produced
• Materials produced for charity to use in the future, including templates and presentation training materials • Offer of continued support and troubleshooting, including co-delivering training to the other member community centres • Management and direction provided to additional volunteers recruited through City University
Octopus Community Network’s CoRe experience
“The knowledge I’ve now got is tremendous. It’s different to having somebody come in, like a consultant, and saying you’ve got to do this and this. There is part of it where I wouldn’t have known where to start. They really acknowledged the fact that we operate in two different worlds. I think we really worked as a team once they realised we didn’t have a lot of resources” (Julie, Development Manager at Octopus Community Network)
The Octopus Communities Network CoRe Volunteer experience
“It was a stark contrast observing the challenges faced by the charity in terms of time, money and staff against the regulatory expectation to implement GDPR to the same extent as if they had a full-time compliance team on hand. It definitely makes you appreciate the resources and economies of scale our workplaces have available which we take for granted every day. It was a really interesting and rewarding project to work on” (Philippa, Slaughter and May)
For more information on the full CoRe programme visit our CoRe pages. If you'd like to access CoRe for your organisation get in touch with info@thebigalliance.org.uk