The Eastside Primetimers Foundation

Eastside Primetimers operates as a social enterprise and recycles a percentage of its profits into its Foundation.  The Foundation’s role is then to invest this money in the support, development, knowledge and ideas of its members.

Members are individuals providing consultancy, interim, mentoring, coaching and governance support in the social sector generally either as volunteers/pro bono or on paid assignments.

We believe that this is the best way that we can reinvest a part of our annual profits to build a stronger talent pool for the sector as a whole, energise our members and diminish the sense of professional isolation they can feel – many of them work remotely and are spread geographically across different regions of the country. Above all, they want to be part of a vibrant professional community.

Over time this will strengthen the human capital available to charities and social enterprises, ensuring that future leaders have access to the best, well informed, most experienced and most enthusiastic group of professional advisors.

Here is how we plan to do it:

Support through transition

• The Foundation will continue to recruit a high-quality talent pool well equipped to advise charity managers. These could be senior managers in transition from the commercial or public sectors who want to work in the social sector, or charity professionals looking to take on a portfolio career including consultancy and trustee roles.  The Foundation identifies these individuals and then works with them to ensure that the change of working life (and lifestyle) is carried through successfully.

Development and diminishing the sense of isolation

• The Foundation helps new and existing members to continue to build their skills through providing, or signposting, relevant social sector knowledge and other professional development. We organise educational events for members around sectors (e.g. mental health or child poverty) and skillsets (e.g. fundraising or governance), and give opportunities for peer networking.

Ideas brought to life

• The Foundation will back members’ ideas, offering seed corn funding that might make the difference between, say, a novel event, meeting, conference, publication or service happening and it failing for lack of funds or lack of support. If a member has a passion for something, we will do what we can to help bring that passion to life.

Ruth Cane is the Foundation Manager. Ruth oversees the work of the Foundation, which involves working with our members, organising events and supporting more people to transition into the not-for-profit sector. You can contact her at ruthc@ep-uk.org.