Charities master's programme strengthens global status with NACC accreditation

Cass Business School and the Cass Centre for Charity Effectiveness (CCE) are proud to announce that the Charities master's programme has been accredited by the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council (NACC) – the only programme to have achieved such accreditation outside North America.

The Cass CCE programme is also one of the first 10 NACC accredited programmes in the world.

With its headquarters at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, the NACC is the first group entirely dedicated to the promotion and networking of centers that provide research and education in philanthropy and the non-profit sector.

The NACC Accreditation Process fosters third sector academic programs world-wide, including non-profit and NGO studies and management, social entrepreneurship, social-purpose organizations leadership, and philanthropy studies and management, all with curriculum which places the civil sector at the centre of the curricular perspective.

Professor of Voluntary Sector Management and Director of the Cass CCE, Professor Paul Palmer welcomed the accreditation and thanked everyone involved in attaining it.

“This is about us as a programme having global recognition – appropriate for a centre in a global business school – and also being the first outside the USA,” Professor Palmer said.

“Our students and alumni can feel part of the global non-profit community and can feel assured that their programme of study has not just the Cass accreditations of quality but also specialist reassurance to the relevance and quality of their course of study.”

Three Phases of accreditation

The NACC accreditation process was completed in three phases, each one exacting and precise.

Phase 1 comprised a written application and input of initial programmatic data into the web-based application by the academic program director.

Phase 2 comprised detailed data input along with supporting documentation organized and submitted by Cass CCE, followed by a consultative discussion between Cass Program Director, Dr Peter Grant and the NACC accreditation staff.

Phase 3 comprised mapping of the academic program curriculum to the NACC curricular guidelines spreadsheets by the program director.

Once the data collection process was completed, all materials were reviewed by two External Review Board members, working independently to confirm that the data submitted by the academic program aligned with the NACC Curricular Guidelines.

In July 2019 Cass also hosts the NACC Conference, the first time the event will have been held outside North America.