Jonathan Fitzpatrick Email & Phone Number

Nottingham, Gb

Oxford, United Kingdom

I became the Director of The Porch in 2010. After stepping into the role I restructured the staff team and reviewed the opening times of the day centre. We then looked at the current sources of income and sought to cover all salaries. Once we had secured salaries we built relationships with local schools and religious organisations. After meeting with these groups we were able to secure the anticipated costs of utilities. I increased the reserves fund from 3 months funding to 6 months. All other surplus funds were invested into a charity's Global Equities Investment Fund. We produced monthly management accounts, income and expenditure against budget as well as having the end-of-year accounts audited to demonstrate financial security, transparency and overall value for money. Once we had secured the income streams I then shifted my attention to the staff team (18 staff - 150 volunteers) ensuring that they were receiving regular supervision and felt supported in their roles and that adequate training was provided. With all of the annual running costs secured, I explored capital funding to upgrade the environment from which we delivered services from. This led us to discover some significant structural issues and the decision was made to explore alternative premises. I identified an unused church that was on the same street as the existing service and was structurally sound. After taking both legal and financial advice I made the decision not to borrow from a bank or any mainstream lender instead negotiating an interest-free long-term loan of 500k. Due to Covid we were unable to deliver services from the centre in the traditional way and so we began to take an outreach approach and provided food to rough sleepers in the city centre and also to those living in supported housing. This took us from serving approximately 70 people a day over two sessions to approximately 200 people per day.

Oxford, England, United Kingdom