GuideStar restructure sees Les Hems promoted to director 1

Governance | Tania Mason | 29 Sep 2009

GuideStar International has integrated its free website GuideStar UK and its Data Services trading subsidiary and appointed Les Hems, formerly director of third sector data and analysis at GuideStar Data Services CIC, as director of the combined programme.

The charity underwent a restructuring during the summer to ensure its survival in the recession and made two of its directors redundant, including the chief executive of GuideStar Data Services, David Brocklebank.

His departure came just a few months after the resignation of Lewis Temple, former director of GuideStar UK, who returned to the international development sector as chief executive of IDE-UK.

The combined programme now has five full-time equivalent staff, down from a peak of 13 a couple of years ago. They work on income generation, data management, and the free website www.guidestar.co.uk. GuideStar International provides IT, finance and administration support.

Hems said: “We are operating GuideStar UK and GuideStar Data Services as a single programme and will be exploiting the synergies to help us achieve both our charitable and revenue goals. We believe this integration will help us become a sustainable data and information resource for all our users and clients.”

Free online filing

GuideStar UK is also about to launch its free online filing system for charities with annual income of £10,000 to £25,000. By law, those charities still have to prepare annual accounts and make them available to any member of the public who requests them but do not have to file them with the Charity Commission and the Commission will not upload them to its website if they are submitted.

Hems believes this puts smaller charities at a disadvantage and so GuideStar is offering to present those accounts on its own website, for free. “Many small charities want to be considered on a par with larger charities, especially in terms of their presence on the web.

“Small charities can either fill in the figures online using the wizard we have developed or send them to us in an email or in hard copy and we’ll do it for them,” he said.

Who's Who: Tania Mason | Les Hems

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Les Hems
Director
GuideStar UK
1 Oct 2009

In case the .co.uk web address confuses people - GuideStar's free charity website is www.guidestar.org.uk . If you would like to know more about our data services - then go to www.gs-ds.co.uk .

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