For charities and not‑for‑profits, every pound spent on overheads is a pound that cannot be spent directly on service delivery. We help executive teams gain the confidence – and the evidence – to show donors, trustees and regulators that their contracts represent good value and are being managed professionally. Our focus is on the “hard” office administration and overhead costs, not people or property, so that you can demonstrate that the essential infrastructure of your organisation is being bought well and monitored properly. If your charity spends more than £500,000 a year on these non‑people overheads, there is usually scope to tighten contracts, improve control and reduce waste without compromising service quality. We work on a no‑savings, no‑fee basis, so you know fees are only ever paid out of real, verified savings, not out of already‑stretched budgets

Who we work with and what we cover

We typically work with UK charities and not‑for‑profits whose annual spend on office and administrative overheads (excluding staff and property) exceeds £500,000. Engagements are sponsored at CEO / COO / FD level, with close involvement from finance, facilities and operations teams.
Typical categories we manage include:
● Office and meeting room cleaning
● Waste and recycling
● Electricity, gas and water
● Telecoms and data services
● Copiers, printers and scanners
● Confidential waste destruction and off‑site document storage
● General office consumables
● Medical waste and related consumables where relevant
In each of these, we look at price, specification, control and whether the arrangements still reflect how your organisation operates today.

Typical problems we fix

● Contracts that have not been reviewed for a long time, often rolled over by default while attention is rightly focused on front-line services.
● Lack of control over consumables purchasing, with different teams buying ad-hoc from multiple suppliers at different prices.
● Multiple contracts for the same service across sites, with different term dates and suppliers, making oversight and negotiation harder than it needs to be.
● Back‑billing disputes and historical billing errors that overstretch already tight budgets and soak up precious staff time.
● Limited access to best practice from other sectors, leaving you unsure whether your current deals are really competitive.
● Contracts that are simply the wrong size – too much capacity in some areas, too little in others – because your services and sites have evolved.
● Legacy suppliers whose contracts no longer line up with your current needs, but where there has never been the time or data to revisit them.
● Under‑resourced internal teams who are expected to “fit procurement in” around their core responsibilities, without specialist support.

How our process works

1. Understand what “good” looks like for you
We sit down with your facilities and finance teams, under the sponsorship of the executive leadership, to define what utopia looks like for each of them – in terms of service levels, risk, reporting and stakeholder expectations.
2. Map and analyse your current spend
We gather contracts, invoices and usage data to understand exactly what you are paying today, to whom, and for which services across your sites and categories. This gives us a clear, shared picture of the current position.
3. Benchmark and recommend improvements
We determine what a fair price looks like for your specific requirements, drawing on experience across sectors. We then identify where contracts should be aligned, right‑sized, consolidated, re‑specified or re‑tendered. You get clear recommendations, not theory, and we talk them through with you before any decision is made.
4. Implement and support ongoing management
Once you have chosen your preferred options, we implement the decisions – negotiating new terms, resolving disputes, aligning contract dates and setting up improved controls. We then check bills, submit meter reads where appropriate and stay alongside you through the life of the contracts so that savings and service standards are maintained.

Commercial model and timescales

For charities and not‑for‑profits we work on a straightforward no‑savings, no‑fee basis:
● No upfront charges
● Fees calculated as a percentage of actual, delivered unit‑price savings
● Fees paid monthly in arrears, so the engagement is both P&L and cash‑flow
enhancing
You will typically have our recommendations on your desk within six weeks. Implementation timescales then depend on your existing contract terms and your own decision‑making processes, but we manage the work so that internal teams remain free to focus on service delivery.

Giving stakeholders confidence

A core part of our work in the charity sector is giving trustees, donors, senior leadership and auditors the confidence that funds are being sensibly deployed on overheads. That means clear documentation, transparent calculations of savings, and a simple narrative that can be shared in board packs and stakeholder communications.