The Charities Consortium IT Directors Group voted to change its name to Charity IT Leaders and appointed a new chair at its annual conference last week.
Laura Dawson, who is information systems director at Save the Children, has been voted chair of the organisation. She has been the meeting organiser for CCITDG since 2006 and is taking over from Peter Heather, head of IT and systems at WaterAid.
From the conference Dawson revealed the new name, tweeting: “Hurrah we have a new name – Charity IT Leaders. Watch this space.”
She told civilsociety.co.uk that the main reason for changing the name was: “Watching people give presentations and tripping over the name.”
The committee had been thinking of changing the name for about a year and Dawson added that the organisation had become known as “CCITDG (we must change that name)”.
She had been planning to propose the new name at the AGM but the decision “happened through serendipity” as at the conference there was a “Room 101, as a fun element, and somebody suggested putting CCITDG in” which provided an opportunity to share the proposed new name and take a vote.
At the moment there are just under 100 members of the networking group. Membership requires organisations to be a UK registered charity with an income of at least £25m and an IT spend of around £2m.
Dawson said the committee would meet in November to discuss further details of changing its name. She also revealed that in the coming months “we want to look at creating a legal entity for the organisation, so that we can think about employing staff”.
CCITDG currently has no paid staff but does use an online PA service.
The full committee voted in at the conference is:
- Laura Dawson (Save the Children) – chair
- Brychan Watkins (Action for Children) – treasurer
- Dan Hall (Blind Veterans UK) – meetings organiser
- Nick Napier (Zoological Society) – communications officer
- Stuart McSkimming (Shelter) – corporate liaison and benchmarking officer
- Andy Fenton (British Heart Foundation) – strategic development officer
