Achievements

Our assignments and achievements over the past 10 years include the following:

Funding successes

  • £700,000 from Big Lottery Fund – four different grants to develop empowerment services for disabled people.

  • Assisted in securing £400,000 of investment from Impetus Trust to enable organisational growth and development to take place.

  • £223,000 from Every Child Matters – Children, Young People and Families grant programme to develop a self-advocacy resource for young disabled people.

  • £138,000 from Home Office Active Communities Unit to develop a rural volunteering project.

  • £96,500 from Henry Smith Charity to fund an innovative user-led skills development programme for people with learning difficulties.

  • £86,000 from Comic Relief to run the UK’s first ever Parliament for disabled people.

  • £79,000 from Children in Need to develop a project supporting disadvantaged young people.

  • £67,000 from Volunteering England – two different grants to set up innovative volunteering projects for disadvantaged groups.

  • £57,000 from ESF to develop an advice and information service for young people.

  • £42,000 from Lankelly Chase Foundation to set up an innovative user-led alternative to traditional day services for people with learning difficulties.

  • £40,000 from British Institute of Learning Disability to run an advocacy service for people with learning difficulties.

  • £16,000 from Baring Foundation to fund the salary costs of an Operations Director.

  • £13,000 from Barclays Bank to fund a range of learning programmes for disabled adults.

  • £10,000 from Baring Foundation to develop user-involvement on board of trustees.

  • £10,000 from Nationwide Foundation to produce an accessible publication for people with learning difficulties who have been bereaved.

Awards achieved

Helped organisations to obtain the following awards:

  • National training Award

  • Third Sector Award

  • Community Care Award

  • Charity Finance Award

  • Queen’s Award

  • Guardian Charity of the Year Award

Other successes

  • Co-development of a range of innovative user-involvement models which have now been replicated nationally.

  • Generation, implementation and achievement of over 20 ambitious but achievable organisational and service business plans.

  • Successful organisation of the Eastern Region’s largest ever arts festivals for disabled people – each attracting 500 people and a whole host of national acclaimed disability artists.

  • Numerous successful staffing restructures within growing, changing organisations.

  • Introduction from scratch of robust performance management systems and an outcomes' framework (based on the Charities Evaluation Services model) improving both impact and ability to measure it for organisations.

  • Introduction of financial management and budgeting systems leading to improved organisational financial management and reporting.

  • Introduction of management approaches which have fostered highly skilled teams.

  • Strengthened governance for organisations with particular attention being paid to user-involvement.

  • Helped develop sustainable earned income streams, e.g. from sales of consultancy, training services, publications & directly contracted services.

  • Set-up from scratch robust HR systems and policies providing an excellent platform for growth.