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Strengthening Our Future Through Strategic Collaboration
We are pleased to share some important – and exciting – news about The Brunswick Centre’s next steps to ensure our long-term resilience and growth.
As most people are aware, the past few years have placed enormous pressure on VCSE organisations like ours. The ongoing impact of COVID-19, inflation not seen since the 1970s, and increased demand for services amid cutbacks and longer waiting lists have created a highly challenging landscape – particularly for the people and communities we support. In the face of this, The Brunswick Centre has remained dynamic and responsive.
We’ve introduced new services, secured funding from a range of sources, and continued to challenge inequalities across Calderdale and Kirklees. To sustain this progress – and to strengthen our operational resilience – we’ve recently undertaken a strategic review of how we operate behind the scenes.
We’re delighted to let you know that we’ve now entered into a formal collaboration agreement with Gaddum, one of the North’s longest-established charities.
Founded in Manchester in the 1830s, Gaddum has a proven track record of supporting communities and smaller, values-aligned charities like ours to flourish. They currently provide back-office services to over a dozen organisations and have developed efficient systems that reduce duplication and enable their partners to focus on what matters: frontline delivery to individuals and communities.
Under this new agreement, Gaddum will provide operational and management-level back-office support to The Brunswick Centre. This includes safeguarding, HR, IT, finance, policy development and more – all at cost, and all while enabling savings that we can reinvest directly into our services.
Importantly, what this is NOT, is a merger: The Brunswick Centre will remain fully independent, with its own identity, services, governance and local focus. What this collaboration offers is practical support to weather an increasingly complex commissioning and funding environment – and space to grow.
The partnership is already showing real benefits: shared policy development, streamlined recruitment support, and early conversations about professional development pathways across both organisations.
In the longer term, we believe this collaboration will create even greater career opportunities for our teams and support innovation in how we respond to local needs – not to mention the importance of how it will strengthen our innovative and high quality frontline services. We’re confident this is the right step at the right time. It builds on our strengths, ensures our sustainability, and safeguards the quality of our work for years to come.
If you’d like to discuss this further or have any questions, please email our Chief Officer, John McKernaghan , or phone, 07703 187 968