The Journey to Inspire North
We are Inspire North, and we’re here to create a world where everyone matters.
On 31st March 2025 Foundation, Community Links and Inspire North all amalgamated to form one organisation called Inspire North.
We set out on our journey in 2018 when we brought together the work of Community Links and Foundation, two outstanding charities with decades of experience in mental health and housing, setting up Inspire North as a parent organisation so we could bring together this expertise and find innovative ways to provide the very best for the communities we serve. This particular part of the journey (the amalgamation) has been a work in progress since December 2022 when we hit a big bump in the road.
December 2022 was an exceedingly tough time and if I am honest, I didn’t know what to do, so I reached out and spoke to some trusted colleagues (CEOs of other organisations). I talked through the challenges we were facing with them, in confidence, and kicked ideas around.
Out of those conversations came a contact, a firm of solicitors (Trowers) that may be able to help us find solutions to our challenges which could potentially be solved by changing our structure.
Over the next 6 months, we had conversations at Board, starting in March 2023 to look to change our structure, by June 2023 we had an agreement in principle to collapse the group structure and in Sept 2024 finally commissioned work from Trowers that set out in full our options, including an equality impact assessment, and Board finally took the decision to proceed in March 2024.
We had options, options I had thought were closed to us for a variety of reasons (pensions and regulators being just 2), but it was still a bold decision.
The first step was converting all 3 companies into CBS’s, we completed this on 1 Oct 2024. The next step was amalgamation. As it was a legal process, and whilst we had a very detailed project plan, ably led by our strategic governance lead Helen Ferguson, much of the work consisted of making decisions, holding special general meetings and lodging papers with the correct regulators etc alongside writing to commissioners and key partners regarding contracts, leases and agreements. There was a lot of work to do, not least bringing together our data and systems, but we will no longer have to do everything 3 times.
A final shout out to those who have supported me along the way, my action learning set (you know who you are). A key decision was what to call the newly amalgamated organisation and I nearly made a mistake. Having the opportunity and space to talk decisions through, again with trusted colleagues, enabled me to change my mind (yes really), reach out to our colleagues across the group to check my thinking and settle on Inspire North as the name we would keep.
So, what has this amalgamation brought us? Was it worth the time and money?
Absolutely, unequivocally, it has been worth the time and money. While the benefit of having one organisation to run as opposed to 3 has yet to be realised as we have barely begun, the organisation is immediately in a strong financial, cultural, and structural position to weather the storms that inevitably come in the world we live and work in.
We will have finally truly brought together Community Links and Foundation into one, and I am hugely excited about our future. I can clearly see our ability to thrive, to truly maximise our potential for the benefit of our clients and tenants and this is a fabulous place to be.