Who we are
This is the area where on all those nice glossy websites they publish cheesy pictures of key company people in suitably corporate poses. We are really sorry, but we have all whimped out of the picture bit for the moment - not because we don't want you to know what we look like, simply because most of us want to loose a significant proportion of our body weight before setting foot in front of a camera. But just as soon as we either become the lean, fit beings we dream of, or get rich enough to employ some really good photo "touch up" wizards, we promise to endow the website with our wonderful pictures!
But in the meantime, here is a quick - and portrait-free - introduction.
Anne Skinner - Managing Director
Anne has worked in the IT industry for more years than she would wish to admit to, originally training as an engineer but later moving into general IT and network management, then into the general business and operations areas, working at a number of IT consultancy and supply companies.
She is a founder director of Charity Solutions and is the person ultimately responsible for ensuring that the company does the best job it possibly can, in as honest and ethical a way as possible.
You can contact Anne by email - anne@charitysolutions.co.uk or by phone on the main Charity Solutions number.
David Skinner - Technical Director
David has worked in the IT industry since almost the "birth" of PCs. The stories of him, as a lowly technical support engineer, dealing with a salesman called Alan Sugar are all totally true. He has moved on a lot since them - through a number of senior management and director roles at high profile IT organisations (though sadly not into Mr Sugar's millions) and there isn't much in the IT industry that he hasn't seen, fixed, modified or taken apart, so he is the perfect person to help if you are in a technical "fix". He is the king of gadgets and can make hardware and software do things that the makers never dreamed of!
David is also a founder director of Charity Solutions and he is responsible for the IT consultancy division and also has a watching brief to ensure that the new Charity Solutions software works as well on our customers hardware as it does on the developers' machines!
You can contact David by email - david@charitysolutions.co.uk or by phone on the main Charity Solutions number.
Our Supporting Cast
Anne and Dave are backed by a great bunch of people on the technical, sales and administration sides who are all too shy to be named on the website but who do sterling service keeping everything running smoothly.
You can contact them by phone on the main Charity Solutions number.
email: sales@charitysolutions.co.uk
tel: 0118 932 8338
Our history - why we are here
Charity Solutions was born from TigerRidge, a long established IT consultancy company which has been working with a variety of customers, including charities and NFPs, for many years.
While working with charities, the TigerRidge directors and staff became aware that many of these organisations were uncertain about dealing with IT companies that also had commercial organisations as customers. For a variety of reasons, many charities and NFPs only wished to deal with companies that devoted themselves solely to their specific arena. However, as IT professionals, TigerRidge saw that not every charity-centred IT company out there was as good as it could be - some were great, some were average and some were (frankly) using the lack of IT knowledge within some charities to completely rip them off - charging astronomical prices for products and services which were pretty average at best and often pretty substandard.
As both IT professionals and people who cared about the charities involved (both the people working there and all the donors who had given money to those charities), TigerRidge were not happy to see this happening. But since many charities were still distrustful of TigerRidge simply because of its commercial customers, there was only a certain amount that TigerRidge could do to help.
The idea of starting a new company devoted solely to charities and NFPs had been "simmering" on the TigerRidge burner for some time, when the opportunity came to develop a new charity database system - which, just like the bionic man trailer used to say, is going to be better, stronger & faster than what is out there at the moment!
It was now time to put our money (and time and knowledge) where our mouths were. So in February 2007 our new company was officially "born", and, after we explained to the Charity Commission why we wanted to start the company, we were allowed to call it Charity Solutions Limited - something we are very proud of.
Charity Solutions is now fully "open for business" for IT consultancy, and our new "bionic" software is in the final stages of development. We are all proud to be providing a professional, honest and ethical service to charities and NFP organisations all over England and the rest of the UK - and in time to places further afield.
There are exciting times ahead - Watch this space!
