Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation

Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation
– Information Distribution

Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation (GMCVO) is the voluntary and community sector infrastructure organisation for the sub-region of Greater Manchester.  Their aim is to strengthen the voluntary and community sector, build bridges with other sectors, and influence local and national policy.  Their work is representing, promoting and developing voluntary and community organisations, working in partnership with local, regional and national infrastructure.

the original system

Before the implementation of thankQ for GMCVO, the organisation held data in more than 80 separate databases, which caused problems sharing and maintaining consistent information throughout the organisation. The data management was done on an ad hoc basis and with no network capacity, information sharing throughout the organisation was difficult.

the new system

“We use thankQ across our teams to keep our contacts informed on the topics that are relevant to them”
Nora Brinkley, 5 Counties Information Development Officer

GMCVO went live with thankQ in August 2003 and have since developed their system, which is now "key to our operation" in the words of Nora Brinkley, 5 Counties Information Development Officer.

Originally, only a few members of staff made use of the thankQ system, but since the turn of 2005, GMCVO have invested time in training more staff members on the thankQ system, which is now used across the whole organization to keep in touch with 4,000+ voluntary organisations.

GMCVO's role is to disseminate information throughout its 4,000-strong voluntary organisation contact list. This is mainly done through e-mail and the thankQ system matches their business processes.

The Mail Manager module contains a number of rules to manage the mailing and email preferences of individuals and organisations. This enables GMCVO to maintain accurate channels of communication with all of its contacts.

GMCVO's use of the thankQ system is unusual in that GMCVO focus on distributing information across interest groups which are themed and it is less concerned with the ability of thankQ to manage and track individual or personal communication with contacts.

In addition to their responsibility of providing information, GMCVO also run their own events. thankQ’s Events module is used to manage conferences, workshops and training courses, ranging from the Annual General Meeting, to special interest topics such as Governance, Pensions or training on ‘Developing Effective Committees’. In addition, the St. Thomas Centre (where GMCVO is based), uses a Bookings module for the booking of conference rooms/meetings and refreshments.

the benefits

• Improved data storage
• Accessible information throughout the organisation
• Reliable and consistent contact data
• Quick and accurate dissemination of information to contact organisations

GMCVO (PDF - 58KB)