A new membership group was launched today to support the growth of health and social care charities and reduce their costs.

The Social Interest Group was developed by London-based social care charity Penrose Options and aims to bring together like-minded not-for-profit organisations to build individual capacities and reduce costs.

Gill Arukpe, group chief executive of the Social Interest Group and chief executive of Penrose, told Civil Society News that the new group would enable charities to retain their identities and remain locally-focused while avoiding having to merge with larger charities to survive.

“Over the last couple of years, we looked at opportunities to grow our own charity,” said Arukpe. “In doing that we have often come across other organisations that are quite happy to merge with us – often much larger - and when you start discussions, you find that probably you are going to lose over time the local knowledge that you’ve built up and local cultures and different ways of working, and the services themselves potentially.

“We thought, to reduce the costs of our central services at the same time as increasing quality, we want to set up a social interest group and invite like-minded charities to join so we can share resources.”

The group is formed with three founding member organisations – Penrose Options, Equinox Care and Penrose Works Ltd - the Penrose trading arm. It will offer a range of resources to charities who join.

“What we are going to provide is development in terms of the normal fundraising team and the development team, IT, human resources and finance,” said Arukpe. “There’s a great capacity to provide things that we couldn’t previously afford to have ourselves. The Social Interest Group will provide workforce development so that we can ensure that staff are getting access to good quality training at all times – either internally or externally because they will be sharing those types of resources together.”

According to Arukpe, charities wanting to join the Social Interest Group, can either join as a “full subsidiary”  - which includes importing an existing governance structure – or can also join up to jointly bid for work or fundraise for a particular type of service.

“Charities might want us to provide a payroll service and HR facility,” said Arukpe. “Because the Social Interest Group is a charity in itself, it will have a greater understanding of the business of those charities.”

Organisations who join will pay a management fee which will be reduced as more charities sign up.

“What the charity will get in return for their finances will be greater than what they can afford on their own,” said Arukpe.

Bill Puddicombe, former chief executive of Equinox Care, said: “In the current environment we see joining the Social Interest Group as a way to [secure the organisation for the future]. We can continue to provide our innovative solutions in our unique way, while benefiting from the security of a larger group. This is a great way forward for the organisation, its beneficiaries and the communities that we serve.”

Charities looking to sign up can email: [email protected]