Alliance & Leicester supports Home-Start with a technology boost

Issued: 28 June 2005

When Alliance & Leicester was asked to sponsor the intranet development of the UK's leading family support charity, a new kind of sponsorship deal was forged.

The project comes to fruition on 1 July 2005 when the charity's first intranet site goes live to 100 of its national staff, who are spread across all the counties and regions in the UK and have ambitious plans to support families in every corner of the country.

Home-Start was set up in 1973 and last year helped nearly 30,000 families and more than 60,000 children across the UK. In 2004 the government provided Home-Start with £5million to expand into every region in England. The charity currently has more than 12,000 home-visiting volunteers who spend a few hours a week supporting parents with children under five years old.

Alliance & Leicester plc supported the intranet project with a donation of nearly £40,000 to help Home-Start introduce and develop an intranet site. But that wasn't the end of the deal. "Like most organisations Alliance & Leicester has learnt a lot about running an intranet over the past five years and wanted to share this knowledge "I was keen to ensure that Home-Start had a second generation site. They won't then have to waste money, effort or time redesigning and upgrading their intranet in the next few years," says Audrey Philbrooks, group intranet manager at Alliance & Leicester plc.

"It's about doing the job well," she continues. "We could just give Home-Start the cash and walk away but we like to do a little bit more than just give the donation, and build a relationship with the charity."

That little bit more included helping recruit and support the charity's new IT manager; contributing to planning meetings; sharing information and expertise; and securing advice from the British Psychological Society who had also just gone through the same process.

"The additional parts of the sponsorship package have provided us with as much, if not more, value than the original financial donation," says Vivien Waterfield, director of fundraising and communications for Home-Start. "And every time we meet the Alliance & Leicester they come up with more ways to help." she adds, "Such as offering at-desk training for our staff when we launch the intranet."

"We couldn't really have asked for more," adds Vivien Waterfield. "The final value to Home-Start will be immeasurable. We can be confident that we have got the project right from the start. And the money and time the intranet will save us in our day-to-day work, and the opportunity it will give us to concentrate on our core work helping schemes to support families."

ENDS

Geography: Home-Start's central office is spread over two buildings in Leicester. Training is run from Sheffield, and policy and practice from Cambridge. There are also now 46 regional consultants and team leaders spread across the UK

Cost savings: on the printing and distribution of Home-Start's monthly newsletter:

• Photocopying, envelopes, paper and postage = over £1,000/month.
• Labour costs for collation and distribution = 26 hours

Putting the monthly newsletter stories onto the intranet will save us £14,000 each year

There will be similar activities where money and resources can be saved: Eg moving from a paper-based organisational address book to a searchable electronic one.

Home-Start is the UK's leading family support charity. It supports parents and families with children under five years old. Since it was set up 32 years ago its volunteers have helped more than 250,000 families and 500,000 children in the UK and with British Forces in Germany and Cyprus. Home-Start International was established five years ago and now has volunteers supporting families in countries as diverse as Australia, Russia and Uganda.

Alliance & Leicester is one of the UK's major financial services groups. It offers a broad range of financial services to personal and commercial customers. Alliance & Leicester has been a member of the FTSE 100 index of leading shares since 1997, when it converted from its original mutual building society status.

Further information:

Annie O'Brian, Press and PR Manager, Home-Start.

Alliance& Leicester: Lisa Hallam, Corporate Social Responsibility Assistant; t: 0116 200 3386; e: lisa.hallam@alliance-leicester.co.uk

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