Z/Yen is immensely proud that it helped to establish Charityshare, the IT services joint venture, originally between NSPCC and The Children’s Society, and is now prouder still. The Alzheimer’s Society has recently joined the venture. Several hundred Alzheimer’s staff in major offices already enjoy the Charityshare service, while Charityshare is rolling out the service to Alzheimer’s Society branches as well, for some 1,200 additional Charityshare users. Ian Harris and Mary O’Callaghan have a continuing role with Charityshare helping with strategic direction and project management of the Alzheimer’s Society transition respectively.

Z/Yen bathes in reflected glory as Charityshare won the Best Charity Partnership Award at the 2007 Third Sector Excellence Awards last month. Ian Harris took great pleasure in joining the Charityshare team on the night; especially as Ian had written the award nomination. John Stoker, one of the judges, described Charityshare as “a really good, sensible collaboration offering high-quality IT services at good value for money”. (Why couldn’t Ian have summed it up that succinctly?) As the venture is saving about £1,000,000 per annum compared with the cost of its constituent parts, doesn’t Mr Stoker make a very good point? Many congratulations to CharityShare!