Modern slavery statement

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) has a zero-tolerance approach to modern slavery. We strive to act ethically and with integrity in all of our activities and relationships to make sure modern slavery is not taking place anywhere in NCVO or in any of our supply chains. We will also make sure our approach is clear with our partner organisations.

We believe that a modern slavery statement is an important part of our approach to implementing our ethical policy. We have opted to adopt a statement which we will update and publish annually on our website, although we are not required to have such a statement under current regulations.

NCVO represents over 17,000 voluntary organisations, charities, community groups and social enterprises across England. We support our members by developing practical resources designed to support the day-to-day running of their organisations, saving them time to focus on those they are there to serve.

We are governed by our articles of association and a board of trustees who volunteer their time to help direct our work. They oversee our chief executive and directors who manage our circa 85 staff. We have one wholly owned trading subsidiary undertaking – NCVO Trading Limited.

NCVO uses a number of suppliers to enable it to carry out its activities which include:

• the maintenance of our property
• IT support contracts
• marketing agencies
• associates delivering our training.

NCVO carries out employment checks, including making sure that our people have the right to work for us and we pay at least the Living Wage. Where we use recruitment agencies to fill temporary roles, we make sure their practices meet our standards.

NCVO considers the risk of modern slavery to be related to our supply chain and therefore, our procurement policy and procedures are key to this. We will:

• review our procedures and create updated procurement documents
• roll out a risk assessment for current and new suppliers.

The next steps in our work are:

• following approval of our procurement policy, we will review our related policies and documents to make sure these demonstrate the robustness of our approach to removing the risk of modern slavery from our supply chain
• to update our staff on our new policies and procedures
• that we will roll out our procurement approach to all current suppliers
• that we will use our procurement approach to review all new suppliers
• to make sure modern slavery is addressed in all key relevant policies including recruitment, safeguarding and whistleblowing.