Hallmark Scheme for Community Buildings
The Hallmark Accreditation Scheme
Hallmark is a nationally-recognised quality standard for village halls and community buildings. Many halls in Cambridgeshire are already operating to a high standard of administration and management, however achieving the Hallmark standard will give halls an independent assessment of their hall so they can have confidence that their hall is well-run when assessed against nationally-set benchmarks. The award recognises the commitment and enthusiasm management committees bring to running their community facilities.
There are three levels to the Scheme, undertaken in sequence:
- Hallmark One checks charity essentials and administration;
- Hallmark Two checks compliance with legislation: safety, licensing and maintenance; and
- Hallmark Three checks community and social awareness, forward planning and development.
Assessments are undertaken by a team of trained volunteer ‘visitors’. Each Hallmark accreditation level is valid for 3 years, then a revisit is arranged to ensure the principles set out in the Hallmark scheme are still embedded and being acted upon at the community building.
Currently, there are over 20 community buildings in Cambridgeshire actively participating in the scheme, with three of these achieving all three levels of Hallmark.
Getting involved is simple
The first step is to discuss Hallmark at one of your regular meetings, ensuring the committee agrees to take part in the scheme. After this, you contact our Village Halls Advisor who will provide trustees with a checklist of criteria pertinent to the level of Hallmark being sought.
Each level of Hallmark (1, 2 or 3) has a checklist setting out all the points that need to be achieved to gain accreditation. As a committee, you then work through the checklist ensuring that you can comfortably achieve each point and gather any evidence required, such as policy documents or sets of minutes; each checkpoint describes the evidence that’s required. If you have any questions along the way, our Village Halls Advisor can provide support.
Once you are confident that your committee can evidence each checkpoint, get in touch with us and we will arrange for our volunteer visitors to come along to your hall to meet members of the committee (along with staff and volunteers who might like to attend) and go through the checklist. The visitors will check the evidence to see that you can demonstrate you have achieved each of the points on the list. We will request that some information is sent in advance by email so our visitors can prepare for your visit.
Our visitors then write a report of their visit to your hall including any recommendations they might have for your committee.
What are the benefits of taking part?
- Hallmark helps to build stronger management committees.
- It gives confidence to trustees to know they are running their facility in line with best practice.
- It provides the local community with an independent assurance that their facility is a safe and high quality venue to hire.
- It gives potential funders the assurance the charity is well run.
Updates
Watch the trustees from Little Gransden Village Hall speak about their involvement in Hallmark.
“Achieving all 3 Hallmark Accreditations was a great thing for Fowlmere Village Hall. It is something we are extremely proud of and our hirers are delighted to know we have received these accreditations.
Hallmark 1 was very simple as we already had everything in place. We achieved all 38 check points. It was very useful to talk with the Visitors and exchange ideas. Hallmark 2 was a bit more difficult but again we had most things in place and managed to achieve this. Hallmark 3 (which we requested to take place at the same time as Hallmark 2) was much more in depth. However, following lots of advice and working with the Visitors we also achieved this.
We would recommend anyone to go for this. We are now really assured we are operating a well-run and managed hall with financially sound facility, with very good financial management processes in place.”
Dorothy Wood Chairman – Fowlmere Village Hall
“The one thing that has been most noticeable since I first started volunteering as a Village Hall Trustee is the large increase in statutory compliance requirements. Charity Law has always been there, but now there are so many other additional areas where legal compliance is required and those demands are not always fully understood by Trustees.
The combination of incredibly supportive expertise from Cambridgeshire ACRE and the Hallmark accreditation process goes a very long way to help Trustees with running their Charities and to make sure they “know what they didn’t know” in diverse range of areas such as, business planning, legal requirements, finance & auditing, health & safety, maintenance, marketing, web site design, data protection and safeguarding, to name but a few.
The Hallmark visits from volunteers, such as me, act as a two way process of sharing ideas and best practice information with the host organisation in a very collaborative way. In this way, accredited standards of compliance and effective management of the facilities are achieved, whilst at the same time sharing good and useful ideas with the visitors that can then be passed on to other organisations at future Hallmark visits.
Our committee wholeheartedly support the Hallmark programme and they appreciate the support and benefits of both Cambridgeshire ACRE and Hallmark. I would have no hesitation in recommending it to any Village Hall, for the reasons above and in order to formally recognise all the hard work that their respective volunteer Trustees put in to the benefit of their organisations.”
Steve Scott Chairman – Abbotsley Village Hall and Hallmark Visitor
Useful links
- Start your Hallmark journey today by downloading the Hallmark 1 checklist to see what’s involved.
- If you are ready to express an interest in participating in the Scheme, complete this form.
