Vanessa Swann
Organisational Strategy & Development Consultant / Executive Mentor
I am an experienced former CEO of a major arts / social enterprise charity, Cockpit Arts, and have a proven track record of successfully starting up, growing and expanding Arts, Charities & Social Enterprise organisations, including turnaround and enterprise development. I have been consulting for several years specialising in Organisational Development and Change Management including governance, strategic business planning, income generation, stakeholder engagement and communications. I am a qualified Social Enterprise adviser with coaching, mentoring and facilitator experience; an experienced Trustee in the visual arts and music sector and a Consultant Grant Assessor. As well as undertaking organisational briefs, I provide personal mentoring and coaching to CEOs and managers.
Examples of recent assignments for clients including Arts Council Wales, Nesta innovation foundation, CAF Global Alliance, SE Assist Brighton, School for Social Entrepreneurs and The Fore:
- Change management for a community arts organisation involving a new communication and political influencing strategy
- Strategic support involving an organisational restructure and repositioning of a regional arts centre with business planning ad HR advice
- 360-degree organisational review of a local authority-owned performing arts centre to achieve cost savings and improve operational effectiveness.
- Strategic support to align services offered by a regional crafts centre with local authority tourism strategies.
- Facilitation for a national social sector organisation helping managers working remotely to decide on new ways of working together to better support organisational goals.
- Research and brokering of introductions between UK and Russian organisations involved in social change and civil society development.
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Strategic planning
Business planning
Social enterprise development
Fundraising and earned income/sustainable funding
Change management
Charity management and governance
Leadership development
Stakeholder engagement
Partnership working
Negotiation
Property development
Premises management
Steve Wyler
Steve is an independent consultant in the field of social change and innovation.
He works with third sector and public sector organisations, and specialises in:
- Research, analysis, and policy formation
- Collaboration, alliance building, mergers
- Strategic reviews and business planning
- Making a case to funders and policy makers
- Impact studies
- Leadership mentoring
Recent clients include:
- Access Foundation
- Carnegie UK Trust
- Esmee Fairbairn Foundation
- Essex Council
- Forum for the Future
- Greenhouse Sports
- Ealing Council
- Hackney Council
- Homeless Link
- Local Trust
- One Westminster
- Paddington Development Trust
- The Peel Institute
- Power to Change
- Shoreditch Trust
- The School for Social Entrepreneurs
- Social Enterprise UK
- Young Westminster Foundation
Steve is co-convenor of the Better Way initiative, and a writer. Recent publications include:
- Community responses in times of crisis, 2020
- In Our Hands: A history of community business, 2017
Over the last twenty years Steve has played a leading role in the fields of localism, community ownership, community enterprise, social enterprise, and social investment.
In 2017-18 he was a panel member of the Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society
As CEO of Locality, he grew the country’s largest network of community enterprises, delivering national programmes on community organising, neighbourhood planning, community asset ownership, and neighbourhood budgets.
Over the previous fifteen years Steve worked for voluntary agencies and independent grant-makers. For example in the 1990s, working with homeless agencies, he ran Homeless Network, co-ordinated the Rough Sleepers Initiative in London, and set up Off the Streets and into Work.
Steve has been a member of various Government advisory groups on localism, social enterprise, and the third sector (Cabinet Office, Department for Communities and Local Government, Ministry of Justice). Steve helped to establish Social Enterprise UK and the Adventure Capital Fund (parent body of the Social Investment Business). He was awarded an OBE in the 2011 New Year Honours List.
Contact details:
- Email: stevewyler56@gmail.com
- Phone: 07958 350637
Marcus Ward
Marcus is a highly experienced and accredited management consultant and former charity CEO, with well-developed strategic, income-generating, financial and operational management skills. He is a creative and innovative thinker who originally studied law, and worked as a Director in the commercial sector, prior to spending the last 20+ years working for and with charities and social enterprises as CEO and then consultant.
Marcus is a partner in Peach Consultancy, which has undertaken work in almost every discrete area of the voluntary sector, and conservatively raised over £50 million for civil society organisations. Peach Consultancy works with many funders, and is probably the most widely accredited voluntary sector consultanty in the UK.
We specialise in:
- capacity building, organisational development and governance audits
- strategic reviews and business planning
- income generation, fund-raising and social enterprise development
- options appraisals and feasibility studies
- tendering applications and commissioning
- partnership development and collaborative working
- social research, monitoring and evaluation
Previous larger national clients include:
- The Alzheimer’s Society
- Down’s Syndrome Association
- Age UK England
- Electoral Reform Society
- Comic Relief, Lloyds Bank Foundation, Young Foundation
- Breast Cancer Care
- MIND UK
- ACEVO (4-year ‘FCR national training’ programme and ‘Costing Personalised Budgets’ programme)
- NAVCA (‘Stronger Fitter Consortiums’ and the ‘Tendering Support’ programmes)
- British Deaf Association
- Spinal Injuries Association
- Music in Detention
- Bail for Immigration Detainees
Previous SME clients include:
- 170 Community Project, Bonnington Centre and Chalkhill Community Facility
- CVSs and volunteer bureaux in Croydon, Cumbria, Wakefield, Lambeth, Cornwall, Lewisham, Oxford, Sutton, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Harrow and Hounslow
- Disability Croydon and Choice in Hackney
- Eaves Housing for Women and Agenda for Change
- Age UKs in Enfield, Croydon, Redbridge, Haringey
- MIND Cumbria and MIND Dartford
- CAB Epson and Ewell
- Headway Basingstoke
We are, or have previously been approved/recommended consultants for:
- ACEVO
- NAVCA
- Community Development Foundation
- Adventure Capital Fund
- Lloyds Bank Foundation
- Rape Crisis (England & Wales)
- MIND UK
- Age UK
- Evelyn Oldfield Unit
- Several local infrastructure organisations and CVSs
In addition to direct work with many civil society organisations, Marcus has also undertaken a wide range of organisational development and capacity building projects for representative and umbrella groups, and public sector agencies including Local Authorities, and Health Agencies.
Julia Kaufmann
- Strategic planning
- Governance
- Organisation reviews
- Monitoring and evaluation
- Grant-making