RBS Supports Charity Technology Trust with New Government Scheme

23rd April 2009

London – April 2009 – The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has backed charity and social enterprise, Charity Technology Trust (CTT) with funding from the recently launched Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) Scheme.

Based in London Bridge, CTT was launched seven years ago and provides charities with a range of services, such as e-communications and payments services, designed to increase efficiency in the core areas of activity; fundraising, campaigns, communications, finance and IT.

Over the past two years, CTT has also developed a technology donation programme, Charity Technology Exchange (CTX), which has delivered close to £20m of savings for the sector and at the same time has massively raised the charity’s profile. This programme now supports over 7,000 UK charities and the CTX website is rapidly becoming the number one destination for UK charities looking for help with IT.

In the current economic climate, the services that CTT provides are proving to be even more vital to the sector and the charity’s board agreed that the charity should seek new funding to enable the charity to accelerate its growth.  In order to move quickly, the funding injection needed to be more dependable and more quickly available than waiting for funding through grants and donations. James Redhead, CTT’s Finance Director turned to his Relationship Manager, Gavin Parker to discuss options.

RBS provided a £250k funding package from the Government-backed EFG Scheme.  The scheme aims to provide necessary working capital or investment finance for profitable businesses to help them through the difficult economic climate.  Under the EFG Scheme the Government will guarantee 75% of any loans made, with the bank covering the remaining 25%.

James Redhead, Finance Director at Charity Technology Trust said:
“The funding will enable us to invest in a number of areas, for example to improve our own internal IT infrastructure, which will alleviate a great deal of time, allowing us to serve many more charities and thereby substantially increase our impact on the sector. It will also allow improvements to our product portfolio to ensure we stay ahead of rapidly changing legislation; particularly in the area of payments security.”
 
Gavin Parker, Relationship Manager at RBS, added:
“CTT are a long-standing customer of ours and an established brand in the charity sector. They are a particularly good fit for the EFG Scheme and we’re really pleased that we could offer the funding that will help James and the team grow the organisation to the next level.”

Click Here to go back to news headlines