Charlotte Walshe is Head of Charity Partnerships at In Kind Direct, responsible for supporting their network of thousands of charity partners, building strategic partnerships, and marketing.
Prior to this role, she has worked in the charity sector for over ten years - managing national projects, grant-giving and fundraising. In Kind Direct is the UK charity ensuring everyone has access to life’s essentials and that no usable product goes to waste. They connect businesses and charitable organisations to make product giving easy – during the pandemic this has meant supporting over 2,500 charities and their communities with essentials like nappies, handwash and feminine care products.
Charlotte is also a trustee of CXK, supporting young people and adults to find employment.
We've been almost overwhelmed by the positive response from manufacturers and retailers, people who were looking to do something during the crisis. Particularly those manufacturing products like toilet roll and hand wash which have been so desperately needed. What we've seen is a real stepping up from the companies we work with. On certain months throughout the crisis we had almost 10 times as much in donated product coming to us as we would outside of the crisis period. So what we're working on now is embedding that support to be able to keep responding to our network like we are in a crisis, without needing a crisis to do it.