About RAISE

Our Mission

RAISE exists to champion the Voluntary and Community Sector’s unique contribution to making South East England socially, economically and environmentally sustainable.

Our role

• We make regional policy makers aware of the scale, diversity and value of the Voluntary and Community Sector.
• We make sure the voice of Voluntary and Community Sector Organisations is heard and acted on by regional policy makers.
• We enable Voluntary and Community Sector Organisations to campaign effectively for change.
• We build Voluntary and Community Sector organisations’ capacity to contribute to a sustainable region.

How will we run RAISE?

1. Constitution
   RAISE is a company limited by guarantee and a registered charity and is governed by its Memorandum and Articles of Association. We continually review these Memorandum and Articles of Association in order to ensure that they accurately reflect our proposed mission as the champion of the Voluntary and Community Sector.

2. Governance
   RAISE will continue to be governed by a non-executive Board of up to 30 people elected by RAISE’s voting members. There are four voting colleges – one for each sub-region. Elections are held every two years – most recently in July 2009.

   The Board is the primary decision making body of RAISE. It meets once a month. There are no sub-committees. As well as attending the Board Meetings, Board members represent RAISE at strategic meetings, champion a specific policy or project within the RAISE Business Plan, get involved in consultations, and support key operational activity such as staff recruitment.

You can find out more about Board members by clicking here.

3. Staff
   RAISE employs eight staff and we don’t expect this to change significantly in the next three years. Senior managers within the organisation comprise the Leadership Team. This team meets bi-monthly to review progress against the RAISE action plans and to make operational decisions.

   You can find out more about RAISE staff by clicking here.

4. Accountability
   We are primarily accountable to our core members. But we are also accountable in specific areas to our partners and funders without whom we wouldn’t be able to fulfil our mission.

5. Social audit
   A pilot social audit was completed in 2005, and a further one in 2008. All stakeholders had the opportunity to comment on RAISE’s performance. The results of the social audit were reviewed by the Board which agreed the action required to tackle areas for improvement.

6. Investors in People
   RAISE was reaccredited as an Investor in People (IIP) organisation in March 2008 with a very positive post-recognition report. This was particularly encouraging as the standards had become more demanding since we originally received accreditation in 2003.

7. Monitoring and evaluation on grant-funded projects
   We have robust systems and processes in place which enable us to meet all the reporting requirements of our grant funders. RAISE has developed an excellent reputation for the quality of its ‘back office’ work which is why we are often asked to take on the accountable body role for partners’ projects.

8. Face-to-face contact with members
   We get out and about meeting our members (both front-line and infrastructure members) one-to-one, in small groups and at our regular events. This enables us to get feedback first hand from the people we are primarily accountable to and is a very important part of what we do.

9. Systematic feedback from our events programme
   Everyone that comes to a RAISE event is invited to give us their feedback via an evaluation form. Completed forms are systematically reviewed and acted on by RAISE staff, so that we continuously improve what we offer to our members.

10. Recording our influence on regional policies
    Our policy officers systematically record where we have made a difference on regional policy making.