"Your training session still remains the most enjoyable, appropriate and useful one which I have ever attended."
Participant on Volunteers and the law course
organised by Portsmouth City Council, November 2006 - commenting a year later

SANDY ADIRONDACK has been a freelance trainer and consultant in the voluntary sector since 1980, working primarily on governance issues with a wide range of charities, campaigns and community-based organisations. Her main specialism is legal aspects of voluntary sector management.

She writes widely about voluntary sector management. Her best known books, both referred to as "voluntary sector bibles", are Just About Managing? Effective management for voluntary organisations and community groups (first published in 1989 and now in its 4th edition) and The Voluntary Sector Legal Handbook (published in 1996 and 2001, with a 3rd edition scheduled for 2008).

Initially, her freelance work was primarily with individual organisations to help them with their administration, fundraising, publicity and publications. By 1981 her experience had been distilled into Peaceworking: A campaigning guide for local groups and in 1982 she edited and contributed to Martin Jelfs' Manual for Action: Techniques to enable social change groups to increase their effectiveness.

Later that year she developed a 10-evening course for the Workers Educational Association, on "Running a community organisation". She still, more than 20 years on, offers a similar 10-evening course, usually organised by councils for voluntary service or a local authority.

Much of her work is now open training on a wide range of legal and governance topics. Training is provided for councils for voluntary service and other local infrastructure support organisations, and many national and local umbrella and voluntary sector support agencies. Her main courses are Management Committee/Trustee Roles and Responsibilities, Legal Structures and Charitable Status, Charity and Company Law Update, Considering Incorporation, Reviewing your Constitution, Legal Responsibilities of Voluntary Organisations, Legal Update for Voluntary Organisations, Introduction to Employment Law, Volunteers and the Law, and Risk Assessment and Management for Small Organisations. For a full list of her training topics see open training.

She also runs courses on these topics specifically designed for CVS and other infrastructure support workers who have to advise and support organisations, and provides training about the voluntary sector for local authorities and other funders.

She also provides in-house training for individual organisations, ranging from tiny local groups to national organisations.

As well as training she provides non-managerial supervision or mentoring on a one-to-one basis, and facilitation of discussion sessions and awaydays to help groups identify and resolve problems, review achievements and/or plan for the future. Groups always receive a detailed written report on the facilitated sessions.

She also undertakes consultancies to help with in-depth problems, organisational restructuring, constitutional reviews and other major changes.

She writes extensively and is well known for her many publications about local organising, voluntary sector governance and management, and how the law affects voluntary organisations. Her free legal update website for voluntary organisations and the email notification service when the website is updated are widely used.

Prior to starting freelance work she worked as a social psychology researcher on community care (mid-1960s), in academic microfilm publishing (1972-76), and as coordinator of the Campaign Against Arms Trade (1975-80). She also worked as a sub-editor in financial publishing from 1983-85.

She has been since 1991 a convenor of the Management Development Network, a network of freelance management trainers and consultants who work primarily or exclusively with voluntary organisations, and is on the advisory committee for PEACe, the Personnel Employment Advice and Conciliation service at London Voluntary Service Council. She was an external examiner for Goldsmiths College's voluntary sector management courses for three years, and has been an executive committee member of the National Peace Council (most of the time from 1981 to 1998), a trustee and secretary of a peace movement educational charity, the United World Education and Research Trust (1980-2006), and secretary of her tenants and residents association (2001-2006).

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SANDY ADIRONDACK
Governance and legal training and consultancy
for the voluntary sector
39 Gabriel House, 10 Odessa Street, London SE16 7HQ
Tel 020-7232 0726; fax 020-7237 8117
Email:
Home page: www.sandy-a.co.uk