C A Plus actually has a long history. In the early 1980's a group of voluntary organisations in Nottingham met together with the City Council to see what could be done to help groups receiving grant aid. At the time a small number of community accounting projects were starting in other towns and cities - Hackney, Liverpool, Oldham etc. With funding through the Urban Programme, a Community Accounting Support Unit was established under the leadership of a secondee from a major bank. The Unit was established and managed by John Pike of Action Resource Centre (now part of Business in the Community).
Funding was agreed in 1983 and the Unit was fully operational in early 1984. Richard Harrison and then Cyril Morris were on secondment to the Action Resource Centre and they began to offer support to local voluntary organisations. Bill Pugh was the first employee, shortly followed by Chris Zielinski. Among the earliest clients was Stonebridge City Farm - still using CA Plus today. The first formal training session was held on Saturday 7th April, 1984. Early members of the team included Debbie Anscombe, Gill Williams and Samantha Mann.
For a number of years the CAS Unit worked in the City, doing accounts and training work, but in 1991 the Unit became an independent organisation and a new era began. Nottingham Community Accounting Services (NCAS) was launched in July 1991 as an independent charity working throughout Nottinghamshire. John O'Brien, stil our Chief Exec, joined at that time. Our first Chair was Kay Burkhill MBE. Staff numbers and services were expanded and the volume of work increased significantly over the next few years. NCAS also began to play a key role in the development of the National Network of similar services throughout the UK - helping to organise and hosting the annual conference for a number of years.
As the organisation grew, the range of demand increased and it was time to think about the legal structure of the organisation. In July 2000, NCAS was formally dissolved and all operations transferred to the new charity Community Accounting Plus....
Now, over 30 years since we began, we have a team of 14 staff, providing direct services to over 500 organisations each year and we continue to grow. With changes in technology we can suport charities and CIC's across the country, but our roots remain firmly in Nottingham. World domination is not our aim. Our goal remains to support charitable voluntary and not for profit organsations with the financial side of life, so that they in turn can better support the communities they serve.
and on we go....