Our 5 guiding principles
- We pledge to offer the best possible respite to family carers free of charge.
- We commit to meet best-practice standards with sound policies and procedures.
- We pledge the utmost level of ethics, decency and transparency in our dealing with donors, carers and all stakeholders.
- We pledge to give our donors the best value for their money and keep them regularly updated on how we are spending it.
- We commit to work with our donors as true partners for the cause we are both serving.
Our Goal
Our Goal is to create an operation that is strong, reliable and capable of delivering the best respite-support service possible to dementia family carers within Buckinghamshire. We will grow the number of families we help, year on year, subject to funds raised and without compromising quality.
Within 6 months of being fully operational, we will set qualitative and quantitative metrics. This will allow us to objectively assess our performance in various parts of our operation.
We will set internal processes to qualitatively and quantitatively monitor the care we are providing to families and act promptly and decisively to address any shortfalls.
In parallel to operational goals, we will aim to establish excellent working relationships with stakeholders including Buckinghamshire County Councillors, Members of Parliament, carers’ organisations and sister charities.
Last but not least, without donors nothing will happen. We will work closely with all sources of funds to maximise the number of families we can serve. We will spend every penny wisely, update our donors on their contributions and how we are spending them.
The Outcome
With our target of being fully operational in year 1, will we set ourselves internal efficiency targets. The most important measures of success or failure for the Charity are:
- Our effectiveness in terms ratio of funds spent on family carers support as a proportion of total income. This ratio varies widely within the charity sector with some having ratios as low as 25% and others as high as 85%. We will aim to be above 60% when we set a target for year 2.
- The number of family carers we can help and the level of satisfaction. Ideally, we would like to reach all families and achieve 100% satisfaction, but we know this will depend on so many factors that it is not realistic in the short term.
HOWEVER, we will be doing our best all the times and we will give ourselves tough but achievable targets to reach from year 2 onwards.