Enabling a Thriving Community

What do we do?

We exist to serve as the strategic body representing the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector across Basingstoke & Deane. We fulfil this strategic remit via several key workstreams including an umbrella membership body for VCSE organisations. This is through our free membership offer, organisations can access a wide range of development, information, and guidance services to help them flourish.

We serve the community through representation & partnerships via our wide-reaching presence and connections amongst local, county, and national networks, ensuring that the voice of the VCSE sector is represented at a strategic level and our member’s voices are heard. Our Volunteering Centre of Excellence works to ensure that our members are equipped with a volunteer workforce fit to meet the needs of our community. Through our promotion of volunteering amongst residents we ensure the VCSE sector is connected to, and represented by, the people it serves.

We pride ourselves on taking lead in community action, from the coordination of large-scale community efforts to support emergency situations, through to bringing together key partners and managing consortia to design and deliver community initiatives. We identify needs and create voluntary action.

What We Stand For:

Our Vision

Healthy and happy residents backed up by first class community services.

Our Mission

‘Enabling community organisations to thrive’. As the membership body for non-profit organisations, we facilitate a vibrant, sustainable, and far-reaching voluntary sector to champion the needs of Basingstoke & Deane residents.

Our Values

Integrity – We serve our members and ultimately the residents of Basingstoke & Deane, through actions that are guided by strong principles of fairness, equity, and community benefit.
Professionalism – We continually strive to deliver a first-class customer service our stakeholders can rely upon, delivered by a competent and skilled workforce.
Empowerment – We believe our services have the greatest impact when done ‘with’ people rather than done ‘to’ people. Everything we do is therefore underpinned by an ethos of upskilling and empowering VCSE organisations to stand strongly on their own two feet. We are committed to helping communities overcome challenges as they arise.
Innovation – We understand that the needs of the VCSE sector are ever changing and evolving. As an organisation we are committed to positive development and adaptation of our services in a thought provoking and ‘outside the box’ manner to ensure we meet the needs of our beneficiaries in the best possible way.

Our Team

Governance

Basingstoke Voluntary Action is governed by a Board of Trustees that come from a variety of business and charity backgrounds and bring with them a wealth of knowledge and expertise. Click on the blue box below to find out more about our board.

Our Board

Meet the BVA Board Members

Neil Morrow: Chair

Neil has spent 30 years in Financial Services, gaining a broad range of experience from working within large corporations and many small startups. This led him to join BVA in early 2020 following the sale of his own IFA firm. Having been part of the team that sourced food, support and many volunteers during the pandemic, he was asked to become a Trustee in 2021 as his career took him elsewhere.

Beth Linklater: Vice Chair

Beth is a highly experienced Education and Project Management professional with a variety of management, teaching, research, administration and leadership roles for 26 years in both academia and the wider educational sector. She is also a fluent German speaker.

Beth currently holds the position of Enterprise Coordinator at the Careers & Enterprise Company. She works to advise schools on their careers programmes, and link education and business.

Having lived in Basingstoke for 14 years and been a school governor and Vice Chair at The Costello Academy, Beth wishes to continue to contribute to the town and give back to the community. She very much enjoys volunteering and learning a wide range of new skills!

David Bowers: Treasurer

David is a CIMA qualified Finance Director with 30 plus years experience of working in finance for SME’s, 25 years at board level. Joined the amazing team at BVA at the beginning of 2021 and took up the role of Treasurer in April 2021. It is an honour to play a small part in the fantastic work BVA does and it is heart warming to see first hand the care and professionalism of the whole team as they strive to to facilitate a vibrant, sustainable and far-reaching voluntary sector in the local community.

Karen Chillman: Trustee

Karen has over 30 years’ experience of working in the sector, more than 15 years of which in senior management positions and currently holds the position of Head of Volunteering at Croydon Voluntary Action. Karen has also spent 6 years as a Trustee of Greater London Volunteering and is an active member of the South London Volunteering Networks.

Since taking on her current role, it has moved from a small back street office to a prominent location in the centre of Croydon and despite cuts in funding, she has developed new and innovative ways of working that has enabled it to maintain an open access service for 6 days per week to support VCS organisations and those who want to connect with their local communities. She is recognised as a leader within the volunteering community in London receiving a Police Commendation for the work she has been doing around the appropriate adult volunteer scheme. She has many years’ experience of income generation and fundraising, and an understanding of leveraging private sector finances and support for third sector organisations.

Karen moved to Basingstoke recently to be nearer family and now wants to contribute to her local community.

Sue Brown: Trustee

Sue joined HMRC straight from school and Tax has been her profession ever since. Sue is currently Head of Tax Operations at RSM UK.

Sue has lived in the town for over 35 years during which time she was President of the Women in Business Group for several years. Having been approached to become a Trustee in 2023 Sue was keen to accept, give something back to the town, learn about the voluntary sector and the excellent work BVA delivers to the residents of Basingstoke and Deane.

Francesca Maritan: Trustee

David Telford: Trustee

David has international experience in senior leadership roles in diverse sectors including food (Cadbury and McVities) and technology (SAP and Microsoft), primarily in sales and marketing but also in roles building partner networks. This has given David experience of developing and executing strategy, managing complex projects, and delivering organisational transformation which he hopes to use to support BVA in its future development.
Since retiring, David has sought opportunities to support voluntary and not for profit organisations and is excited about the great work the team at BVA consistently deliver for the community.