About

Local Business supporting Local Communities

Northants Community Aid is a Northamptonshire based charity set up and run by a group of impassioned local people. It is supported by local small businesses keen to give back to the communities they work with.

Small charities often support our most vulnerable people, but don’t attract the funding which larger charities can access. In these cases, even a modest amount of money can make a huge difference. This is why we’ve set up Northampton Community Aid and we need your help.

For the wellbeing of Northamptonshire

Our Trustees

Northants Community Aid is managed by a Board of Trustees who are responsible for our governance and strategic direction. The Trustees ensure funds are granted to responsible charities, and drive engagement activities such as events and outreach to raise funds.

Sam Sayer

Chair

Founder and Creative Director at DeType Ltd since 2012, with over 16 years previous experience in the design industry, working for some of the leading design agencies in the Midlands on brand, motion, UX, and web projects. Active in local community events and keen networker, Sam has been a member of NCA since 2020 and elected to the board of trustees in 2022.

Martin Crooke

Trustee

Martin is Practice Manager at kilby Fox Accountants, and plays a large part in our audit team and his analytical mind has led him to become part of our Forensic Accounting team also. Martin is married with three young daughters; enjoys escaping to walk his Labrador and is occasionally allowed to play golf...!

Tracy Whittaker-Smith MBE

Secretary

Tracy has a love for sport, helping people develop and has represented Team GB at 5 Olympic Games (coach). She is currently a Performance Director and Head of Performance in the sport of trampoline gymnastics, a board member of Breaking GB and works with UK Sport on their Female Coach Leadership Programme. Previously, Tracy worked at Barclaycard and was managing director at Northamptonshire Trampoline Gymnastics Academy, a local community club with a 1000+ members. Having experienced an unsettled childhood to developing success in herself and others Tracy is passionate about giving back to the local community and is very proud to be involved with NCA and the opportunity to support those in need.

Paul Green

Marketing and Engagement

Paul is an independent business advisor/coach and founder of The Business Community - a membership organisation helping businesses grow. He adopts a collaborative and supportive approach when working with small businesses helping them to capitalise on opportunities and overcome any hurdles.

Born and bred in Northamptonshire, he wants to help build the bridge between the wider business community and charities within the county looking at ways that collaboration and support can contribute to a stronger local community; hence his involvement with NCA.

Cathy Armstrong

Diligence and Engagement

Cathy has been active across various Northamptonshire committees and boards, currently managing the Business Exchange in Kettering.

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Kathryn Ozlati

Relations and Engagement

Having been associated with St Gyles Jewellers since 1982, Kathryn became sole owner in 2012. Situated in the heart of Northampton on St Giles Street, St Gyles are qualified, experienced jewellers that consider personal service and quality to be vital and have been awarded the title 'Best Jewellers in Northamptonshire'. Kathryn is a very dedicated, hard working individual and has been involved in the local business community for many years at board level.

Our History

The genesis of Northants Community Aid dates back to 2006 when Firoz Makhani, a Northampton GP, initiated a fundraising event to raise funds for a breast screen unit at Northampton General hospital.

He approached fellow medical staff, patients and local business to help in this effort and the centrepiece of this effort was a sponsored walk around Pitsford reservoir; from this Walk for a Cause was born, taking the perimeter map of the reservoir as their logo.

Firoz continued to develop the initiative registering Walk for a Cause as a charity and securing the support of local business, principally those from his own African/Indian community. For the next few years the charity prospered, more fundraising events were organised and it was in 2014 that Steve Adams was introduced to the charity as a potential source of funds for his charity Teach Africa.

Our application was successful, and in fact we also secured a second tranche of funding. Around 2016 Steve got involved in some of the fundraising for Walk for a Cause using the facilities of his events company, Go Beyond. This then led to Steve being invited to become a trustee and subsequently chair of the charity.

Unfortunately, at this time for one reason or another, ironically ill health, many of the original trustees and benefactors were longer being able to support the charity resulting in an almost complete breakdown in the original funding model.

Together with Kathryn Ozlati, Steve did his best to “keep the show on the road” but it soon became clear to both of us that unless we made some fundamental changes the charity would not survive beyond the reserve funds we held.

Enter Paul Bone, who Steve met while Paul’s company was re-roofing his house; and in conversation, Paul expressed an enthusiasm for doing some fundraising for local social enterprise groups who he felt were adding significant value to the communities he grew up in.

The conversation developed to include other small businesses and the possibility of using a renamed and restructured version of Walk for a Cause as the platform for the initiative. Paul was also involved in a local networking group, as was Kathryn where we could engage with other small businesses and for the three of us it felt very much like the basis of a plan.

And so in 2020 and in the heart of a global pandemic, Northants Community Aid came into being with Paul joining the committee as a Trustee joining Bob Walder, Val Bridges, Kathryn Ozlati and Steve. We refocused our funding support to local small charities, particularly those focused on the health and well being of the communities they served, while Paul and Kathryn recruited other local businesses to the cause into our membership model.

To date we have provided support to more than a dozen charities, have a growing membership of small businesses and have a new set of fundraising events such as a Golf Day, Quiz Night and a Gala Ball. We have also been joined by three new trustees: Paul Green, Tracy Whittaker Smith MBE and Sam Sayer who from January 2023 will take over as chair.

At the heart of our ambition is to extend the membership we currently enjoy and in so doing extent the extent of the support we can provide to local small charities and social enterprise groups which in the post pandemic, global financial crisis environment, has never been more desperately needed.