The Young Gamers and Gamblers Education Trust (YGAM) has recently achieved the Trusted Charity Mark Level 2 award recognising the exceptional work it does as a third sector organisation.

YGAM was assessed against the 11 standards of effective practice in Trusted Charity, including in governance, leadership and management, managing staff and volunteers and managing money, and proved to meet all standards. Trusted Charity is part of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) and is the only UK quality standard designed to help third sector organisations operate more effectively and efficiently.

Caroline Gallagher, Director of Quality Assurance at YGAM said “We are pleased to receive this recognition following a vigorous external assessment. As a registered charity, one of our key priorities is to maintain outstanding governance, systems and management together with continual improvement. This achievement demonstrates the exceptional level to which the charity is currently operating at and reflects the professionalism we have in our fantastic staff team.  The robust processes which we have implemented ensure our independence is strong and our standards are high.”

Nick Snow, Trusted Charity Programme Manager, NCVO said “We are delighted for the trustees, staff and volunteers of YGAM that they have achieved the Trusted Charity Mark Level 2. We know that organisations using the Trusted Charity standard benefit by having better governance, better systems and procedures and better quality of services for their users and it is great that the community of Trusted Charity users is growing”.

YGAM has established an organisation Quality Management System across the entirety of the charity to ensure consistent and impactful delivery. The charity is led by a Board of Trustees who are all independent of the gambling industry and who all give their time voluntarily. Within their tight governance structures, YGAM also have a Finance, Audit & Risk Committee who scrutinise all our donations and support the Senior Leadership Team to ensure that at no time is our independence compromised. The charity encourages all donations are sent via the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) which brings in an additional level of governance and scrutiny.

All the YGAM resources, training and education programmes have been externally scrutinised, challenged, evaluated and quality marked by a wide range of organisations including City & Guilds; National Council for Voluntary Organisations and Clearview Research. A critical part of all these evaluations is being able to demonstrate clear independence and show evidenced-based approaches.