How to find multi-academy trust contacts

In a single-school trust, the headteacher and business manager still decide. In a trust of five or more schools, expect a central team: a Chief Executive Officer, a Chief Finance Officer or Trust Business Director, and increasingly a Director of IT / Estates / Operations with a trust-wide budget.

Selling a trust-wide contract to an individual school head wastes both of your time. Selling a single-school pilot to a CFO usually does too. Match the offer to the level.

Academy trusts have statutory publication duties, so the information exists even when the site is poor. Look for: the trust's Governance or Who we are page, the Trustees and members register, the annual Trustees' Report and Financial Statements (a PDF, usually filed by the January following the August year end), and the Vacancies page.

The financial statements are the richest source by far: they name the executive team, set out the trust's income, and often describe planned capital projects a year before they go to tender.

Get Information about Schools records each academy's trust, its join date and any transfers between trusts. A school that moved trust in the last year is worth a call — new ownership almost always means new suppliers under review.

Trust central teams usually sit on a separate domain from the schools. Common patterns are firstname.surname@trust.org.uk and initial.surname@trust.org.uk, with info@, enquiries@ or finance@ as the general mailbox. Do not assume the school's pattern carries over to the trust, or the reverse.

Trust procurement clusters around the financial year end in August and budget setting in the spring term. Approaching a CFO in the last fortnight of July is close to pointless; approaching one in late January, as the next year's budget is being built, is not.