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13 November 2015, 16:43

Could your charity host a Charity Accounting and Financial Management MSc student?

Charities are needed to host students doing a Cass MSc course. It not only helps the students to gain insights into charity operations, but has plenty of benefits for charities, too.

Cass Business School runs a MSc in Charity Accounting and Financial Management. As part of the course, students are placed in charities to undertake a short project. The placements help the students to gain an insight into different charity operations, but are intended to be beneficial for organisations, too. Cass is currently looking forward to the 2016 course assignments, which will take place between April and August. They try hard to match the candidates experience and skills to the charities taking part, but are in need of charities to take on a candidate for a week’s assignment in 2016. One of the previous students has provided an overview of his placement assignment at Cats Protection, which you can read below. If your charity is interested in hosting a student on a placement, or finding out more about the placement projects, please email Michael Rogerson at Cass.

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An insight into the MSc Fieldwork Exercise

By Mark Beale

I currently have a role within the Finance Division at the London School of Economics, although I spent much of my earlier career in the commercial world before moving across to the charity sector in 2012. I’ve now just completed the two year MSc in Voluntary Sector Management at Cass.

In the first year, I majored in finance and this brought me the ICAEW accreditation of Diploma in Charity Accounting (DChA). The first year of the course provides an in-depth knowledge of specialist charity accounting, audit and taxation, and the distinctive techniques for financial management and investment management within the not-for-profit sector. Other modules provide a general background of the sector with many guest speakers from different charities.

I had recently given a home to a rescue cat from Cats Protection and became interested in the work this charity did. I managed to get myself a link to Cats Protection and was put in contact with Sharon Martin, the Head of Finance. Sharon and I met and discussed a few options of what I might look at in order to help. For my placement, I chose to look at the monthly Management Financial Report which Sharon prepares for the Trustees and Senior Management, to assess if it was truly what the Trustees wanted and needed.

Sharon had been with Cats Protection for only one year, and as yet hadn’t had time to take on this particular project herself. She also felt it could be useful and add value by having an independent view rather than, or at least in addition to, her own. I visited the head office and met the Chief Executive. We discussed his thoughts on the content of the current Trustee report, which had been added to over the years, but had not been subjected to a good review or revision for a while. We discussed the experience of each of the Trustees which highlighted to me that unsurprisingly, whilst some had a financial background, others didn’t.

Following this meeting, and some further discussion with Sharon, I was able to distribute to the Trustees a concise questionnaire, asking them what information in the report they found most useful, what information was less helpful, and what additional information would help them improve their governance roles at Cats Protection. Having collected the responses and reviewed them, I was able to suggest changes and alternative ways of presenting some of the KPIs, the financial results and the supporting narrative, both in graphical form and as text. I gave specific examples and produced a presentation highlighting the findings from the questionnaire and the suggested changes, which Sharon said she’d found particularly useful. I understand some of the suggestions have been taken on board, and I therefore felt I’d been able to add value to the charity through this fieldwork exercise.Had I needed help I was supported through the exercise by Cass and was also given an individual mentor – Mark Lever, Chief Executive of the National Autistic Society.

The fieldwork exercise is a key and important part of the Cass course. It helps the student to see how a charity works from the inside, and can help the charity to carry out a project or task with some independent insight.

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