Plymouth & District Mind Association first formed in 1984. A number of concerned professionals and representatives from the voluntary sector met with users of mental health services to examine provision and to identify gaps in service delivery. The Association’s staff and volunteers are committed to the personal care of vulnerable people with mental health issues.

1. Case study
Plymouth & District Mind
Plymouth & District Mind Association works smarter with Huddle.
About Plymouth & District Mind
Plymouth & District Mind Association first formed in 1984. A number of concerned professionals
and representatives from the voluntary sector met with users of mental health services to examine
provision and to identify gaps in service delivery. The Association’s staff and volunteers are
committed to the personal care of vulnerable people with mental health issues.
Location UK Challenge To effectively manage large
Sector Third sector international projects and enable
Industry Charity staff members to collaborate and
aceess documents.
The Plymouth & District Mind Association is a charity that provides opportunities, facilities and
services for those who have experience of mental health problems. The Plymouth and District Mind “As an organization, we can store all our
Association has been serving people in the region since 1984 and aim to promote social inclusion for policies and accounts on Huddle. When
all, and to empower people no matter what their mental health situation. we make a funding application, it often
requires information that we’ve used
Having large international projects to manage, the charity looked to the Charity Technology Exchange before – we can now get immediate
to obtain new tools for project management. Through CTX, Plymouth and District Mind obtained access to this without having to locate
Huddle Workspaces, currently being used by 41 staff members located in Plymouth. old filing. Other big advantages are the
secure access and offsite backups.”
Graham Nicholls is the charity’s Financial Controller, and the person who first contacted the CTX - Graham Nicholls, Financial Controller
scheme for a donation. As a reasonably large and successful regional charity, Plymouth & District
Mind has a good IT infrastructure and software base. But there was a particular area where the
organisation was looking for help.
“What we were severely lacking was a management system,” explains Graham. “We’re currently
developing pan-European projects, working with countries such as Romania, Poland and Greece.
This is what attracted us to Huddle.”
Huddle is a network of secure online workspaces for sharing files, collaborating on ideas, managing
projects and organizing virtual meetings. It enables teams to work more effectively across boundaries,
both inside and outside the enterprise. Huddle is new to the CTX scheme and looks set to make a big
difference to UK charities.
“We’ve had it for a couple of months,” Graham says, “and it’s already heavily used. We have many,
many documents to pass around, particularly in this project – information to share and to edit. When
you send emails back and forth you get multiple versions of files, whereas with Huddle we have a full
audit trail.”
“I’ve run an initial search on GRANT finder – the UK’s leading grants and funding search database,
obtained at a dramatic discount through CTX – for the areas that would be appropriate for us,” says
Graham. “This has given me thirty pages of results already. But instead of going through this myself
and organizing with the different managers what they should look at, I’ve been able to upload the
whole thing onto Huddle. Now the managers can look at it themselves, and be semi-autonomous in
looking for funding – it’s enabled us to work far smarter than before.”
www.huddle.com USA: +1 (415) 376 0870 UK & EU: +44 08709 772 212 sales@huddle.com

2. “As an organization, we can store all our policies and accounts on Huddle. When we make a funding
application, it often requires information that we’ve used before – we can now get immediate access
to this without having to locate old filing. Other big advantages are the secure access and offsite
backups.”
The CTX scheme is often used to enable UK charities to perform back-office functions faster and
easier, by providing up-to-date software that otherwise they couldn’t afford. But with Huddle, the
potential is there to transform the very way that they operate.
“I’m so thankful that I could get it through CTX,” Graham says.
www.huddle.com USA: +1 (415) 376 0870 UK & EU: +44 08709 772 212 sales@huddle.com