Home-Start Hampshire are a volunteer-led charity who provide vital support to families with young children across Hampshire. The support they offer includes home visits and hosting support groups, advising families on a range of topics to ensure that all children get the best start in life.
Their challenges
When Family Fund Business Services began working with Home-Start Hampshire in early 2022, the charity had been awarded funding from Hampshire County Council to provide families with vital cost of living support, including grocery vouchers, support with utility bills, and essential white goods and furniture. They needed support to ensure that the procurement and delivery process was as smooth as possible for both the charity and their beneficiaries, with minimal administrative burden for Home-Start Hampshire. Additionally, they needed a supplier who could provide reporting, in order to satisfy funders and auditors.
Our solution
With a range of different support being offered through the scheme, Home-Start Hampshire needed just one supplier who could deliver a wide variety of different products and services. Our one-stop-shop online fulfilment portal meant that Home-Start Hampshire were able to order both goods and vouchers from one place, with just one monthly consolidated invoice. This streamlined system has alleviated administrative pressures, saving the team valuable time and making awarding grants simple. Additionally, this streamlined procurement process, from ordering to delivery, means that grants are delivered to beneficiaries swiftly and no one is left waiting for support.
This streamlined process was supported by FFBS’ dedicated customer support. Home-Start Hampshire had regular account manager meetings, and access to our Helpdesk, ensuring that queries are dealt with quickly and that the whole process runs smoothly.
FFBS also provides extensive reporting through our online fulfilment portal. This makes it easy to manage budgets, track spend, and monitor what orders have been placed. For Home-Start Hampshire, this made it easier to provide reports to funders and auditors.
The results
The project ran smoothly, with positive feedback from both staff at Home-Start Hampshire and beneficiaries. Since the funding was first awarded by Hampshire County Council, the charity have subsequently been awarded two lots of continuation funding, and continue to work in partnership with FFBS to deliver support to families across Hampshire.
Home-Start Hampshire said:
“We would thoroughly recommend working with FFBS as we have found the relationship to be invaluable in running our project, helping us distribute support to families across Hampshire. The ordering process from start to finish is very straightforward, it has significantly reduced the admin work for Home Start Hampshire and our families have felt empowered when liaising with suppliers directly to book in delivery of their furniture or white goods.
We have had regular updates from our Account Manager and any queries have been dealt with quickly and efficiently by the Helpdesk team. We would not hesitate in recommending them to other organisations; the whole team have been a pleasure to deal with.”
From pre-payment cards to white goods, we make procuring and distributing practical support to households easy. Find out how we can help your organisation save time and money by getting in touch at businessdevelopment@familyfundservices.co.uk.
