CTT

Business leads and "no-worry site management"

The Charity Technology Trust (CTT) has been one of CAN Mezzanine's longest-standing customers. The origins of the Trust go back to the earlier days of the dotcom era. Chief Executive William Hoyle expands. "Charities, like businesses, needed help to understand how to make better use or indeed how to better exploit emerging new technology. Ten years ago, everybody was trying to find out what the internet meant for their businesses. Charities were trying to figure out what it meant for their work as well."

Now, nine years later, the Trust's work falls into two broad categories. The first is the Charity Technology Exchange - a scheme which enables the world's biggest technology companies to donate their technology to charities as part of their corporate social responsibility agenda. The second is providing technology services to charities that they can use to communicate and fundraise. For instance, they send out about two million newsletters a month on behalf of the several hundred organisations they work with and provide facilities to enable them to accept payment by credit cards for donations online or membership payments.

"We teach organisations how to use digital media and how to use it to more accurately target their audience with information that they're interested in," says William. Through being based at CAN Mezzanine they have found many clients among the hundred or so charities and social enterprises that share office space in CAN Mezzanine's three buildings. The British Youth Council and the Institute of Conservation are just two examples. From our perspective as a provider of services to the sector, we're surrounded by potential clients or in some cases, actual clients. Over the years, we've gradually acquired customers who've been neighbours." Even CAN uses their online tool to send out the CAN Mezzanine intranet roundup!

The Trust has expanded within the Mezzanine, from an initial three desks to their current sixteen. As one of the first organisations at CAN Mezzanine's first Waterloo site they moved to the London Bridge building and are now based in the Old Street building north of the river. They made the decision to stay with CAN Mezzanine for a number of reasons. "The flexibility that we've had - both to expand and decrease - has been fabulous; it works really well. When the Waterloo office closed, we thought about other options but we always came back to the fact that the other options would always be more work for us, " says William..

The fundamental draw for the organisation as been the no-worry site management that CAN Mezzanine offers. "In the same way that we say to charities, ‘worrying about fundraising systems and digital media systems is not your core business, you should use an expert', when it comes to managing property, the same applies, " says  William. "The great advantage of CAN Mezzanine is that we don't have to worry about any of the hassles of security, photocopiers breaking down, or coffee machines not working, or whiteboards falling off the walls. It's all handled for us."

William also appreciates the social element of being in an office. "My team go down to the monthly network breakfasts and the drinks organised by CAN Mezzanine and get to know other people in the building. Even if you're an organisation with a couple of desks, you don't feel isolated. You can feel part of a ‘bigger something' which I think is great. I think the ethos associated with the organisation, does make a difference. There are commercial providers of serviced office space but they just don't have the same focus. So for me, this still is the right choice for the organisation."

For more information on Charity Technology Trust visit http://www.ctt.org/