Why be a Member?

Whether directly of benefit to Members or indirectly benefiting the Sector as a whole, as the Confederation of Service Charities, Cobseo provides a single point of contact for interaction with a wide range of stakeholders, allowing Members to interact with all interested parties and – most importantly – to cooperate and collaborate with others to provide the best possible support to beneficiaries.

The Confederation exists to:

• Engage with local Government and Devolved Administrations, The Royal Household, Private Sector, Ministry of Defence, Office for Veterans Affairs, the National Health Services and others.
• Act as a Sector representative in committees, working groups and other meetings.
• Promote collaboration and cooperation across the Membership and wider Sector.
• Influence policy and present an informed and measured view from across the Membership.
• Enable the membership to build networks and share best practices.

Membership benefits

When an organisation joins Cobseo, they become part of an extensive network supporting the Armed Forces Community.

There are a range of benefits available to all Cobseo Members; please see below for more details:

• Be a part of an organisation striving for collaboration and cooperation across the Armed Forces Charity Sector.
• Access to the Cobseo Clusters to develop policies on areas of common concern within the Sector.
• Representation on key government groups and committees through the Cobseo Chair and Executive Committee
• Governance support – Members have access to Cobseo’s dedicated Governance team who provide a range of governance support and advice from Subject Matter Experts through a range of different methods including:
• A suite of Aide Memoires
• The Cobseo Self-Reporting Tool
• One-to-one support on a range of governance issues
• Governance training webinars
• Promotion of news and events through the Cobseo website and social media channels – All Members can share their news, events, and vacancies.
• Regular issues of the Weekly News newsletter with the latest stakeholder and Cobseo news
• Advertising job vacancies – All Members can share details of all vacancies through the Cobseo jobs board and in the fortnightly Jobs Bulletin
• Online training and webinars on a range of topics e.g. grant funding and governance.
• Communications support on a range of topics.
• Attend the Cobseo Annual General Meeting.
• The opportunity to contribute to key Government policy documents g. the Armed Forces Covenant and Veterans Annual Report and the Veterans’ Strategy Action Plan.
• The opportunity to stand for election to serve on the Cobseo Executive Committee (Full Members only)