As veterans in the UK, we are supported by 1,843 Armed Forces charities, alongside many smaller organisations. A helpful reference point for this landscape is the Veterans Directory: https://www.veteransdirectory.uk
At the beginning of this year, we saw the closure of the Veterans Gateway website, which was billed as a first point of contact for veterans in the UK. The information has now been added to the Office of Veterans Affairs. The Veterans Gateway was financed by Libel funding to the tune of ÂŁ2 million, and in its seven years of operation many veterans had never heard of it. The website ran between 2017 and 2024. My calculations say this means over ÂŁ285,000 a year was spent on it.
By comparison, the Veterans Directory is a system run by veterans and still operating after being created by Forces Online in 2014 for around ÂŁ7,500 a year or less.
We are now seeing similar issues with the housing initiatives set up by the government to tackle our homeless crisis—and we all know why that is. One challenge with government-led initiatives is that governments come and go, which can create uncertainty and an unstable long-term future.
In 1980 internet banking became available and over the next few years transactions have been speeded up. Logins are easy transactions take around 2 minutes. Computerisation has speeded up many industries, but not it seems our veterans support systems—where support can often be hard to find, and when you do find it there is so much red tape that it causes delays just to get ID’d, and charities needing to arrange money through various means including each other and regimental associations, etc.
At Forces Online we can chat to each other without delays, make decisions in minutes, and we have the tools to do the same with other support organisations. So what’s the problem—why the delays, why the lengthy ID checks, and why top-heavy staffing? and why do veterans need to keep telling their story over and over?
In the UK we have 5.7 million private organisations, yet only 10,000 or so have signed the Armed Forces Covenant?. That’s not exactly putting veterans first—veterans who have fought and died to keep this country safe, allowing us all to sleep in our beds at night. All local authorities in the UK have signed the armed forces covenant except for Northern Ireland, yet there still seem to be many interpretations in practice, lack of training, inconsistency where armed forces champions work for local authorities often with no power to challenge the local authorities they work for all of which continues to disadvantage veterans.
The United Kingdom has three different charity bodies and Companies House, for some charities and Community Interest Companies, all with different rules and quirks. This complexity can create confusion, duplication, and delay—particularly for veterans simply trying to access timely support.
So, if as a veteran you could have a say in how this all works—and how we could make it better—would you?
I started Forces Online purely back in 2013 purely by accident. I had ran into an old friend of mine online and we exchanged some information and images which I used a Facebook for because of the image memory sizes. I liked this interaction, then started my own tri-services Military banter group called ForcesUnited, soon to became Forces Online after a dispute with ForcesReUnied. This all followed a bereavement in 2008 and me subsequently moving from Hereford to Swindon to be with Sue. See my Video Here
In our view, a corporate is any organisation or small business that provides goods and services. This is a vast community. The key question is: how many actively support charities—especially Armed Forces veteran causes—given that veterans’ efforts over many years have helped the United Kingdom become a stable and peaceful platform for life, allowing businesses to flourish?
Corporate giving can be offset against taxation, while meaningfully putting something back in to armed forces veterans and their families.
We are not asking for large sums, and we recognise that donations are often made with expectations and obligations attached. However, even a modest contribution makes a real difference. If each organisation that joined our Corporate Membership contributed ÂŁ10 per month or ÂŁ100 per year, the combined impact would be significant.
A great deal of Armed Forces charity work focuses on work and gainful employment, and veterans bring clear advantages:
There are around 755,800 veterans working in the UK While this sector is largely settled, some veterans do experience challenges that can affect employment. At their optimum, veterans make excellent employees—yet occasionally some may leave employment or encounter difficulties linked to the issues they carry from their Armed Forces engagement.
Forces Online takes a proactive view: when employment breaks down, it often creates further problems later—most notably financial instability, and in the worst-case scenario, homelessness.
We recognise that veterans have a great deal to offer employers, and that employers do not always fully understand what some veteran employees may be experiencing. We acknowledge this is a sensitive area—particularly in today’s GDPR and politically cautious environment—but as veterans, we believe that those supporting veterans should be able to identify when things are not going right, especially when the veteran themselves may not admit it.
At Forces Online, we already operate four levels of referral:
(The latter three involve permission wherever possible.)
We believe there is a strong case for an additional referral level: the workplace. Given how much time we spend as employees, it makes sense that interaction between employers and veteran employees should be more common and better supported.
We’ve built this into Corporate Membership by extending our FastTrack approach.
Corporate Membership includes:
“FastTrack” does exactly what it says: Forces Online will prioritise FastTrack requests.
Employers can refer a veteran employee via email. From that point onward, the matter becomes fully confidential between the veteran and Forces Online/other support agencies, unless the veteran agrees that the corporate can see that they’ve accessed support (but not the details).
Forces Online will use its contacts to secure help, and may also deliver some direct services. The priority is simple: what does the veteran need to overcome the issues before they affect employment? We understand that’s in everyone’s interests.
We have additional services planned for Corporate Membership, which will include support and collaboration with other charities—many of which are far better resourced than we are, which we have supported many times during our existence.
Corporate members currently receive: