ventures > supporting other organisations to be entrepreneurial

Since 2000, and launching my own ventures in the commercial world, I have blended the roles of strategy adviser, change management consultant, and coach, with organisations in the charitable sector who are seeking to become more entrepreneurial. This experience of strategy and change management consultancy has involved working at Board level, and with senior management teams, extended senior management teams and project managers. It has also involved creating project based teams for specific change management goals. In the last few years, I have also worked with a number of individuals to coach and develop their entrepreneurial confidence, abilities and aptitudes.

4Children - Between April 2003 to end of April 2004 I acted as Interim Director of Development to Kids Clubs Network, now 4Children, charged with strategy development, leadership and rebuilding the team, and creating the infrastructure and medium to long term framework to realise the development strategy. This involved refocusing senior management competencies and bandwidth in the organisation and resulted in a number of strategy papers being approved at Board level, and implemented as well as turnarounds on a number of under-performing projects. It included the establishment of a more service oriented customer focussed approach within Development, as well as the setting up of a social enterprise team to focus on supporting social entrepreneurs seeking to develop children's services, as well as developing a more dynamic web interface. This strategy consultancy and interim change management was provided through Genderquake Limited;

Our Partnership.org.uk - This project was the result of a partnership between the Cabinet Office, CMPS, NCVO and VSNTO. Genderquake Limited was involved in its foundation, development and delivery between Autumn 2001 through to Summer 2004 when it was successfully housed and' owned' by NCVO, completing an effective transfer from the Cabinet Office as the lead partner in 2001 to NCVO as the partnet to take it forward. Throughout this period, I was involved as an adviser to the partnership Board, and was responsible for strategy development, bid generation for follow on funding, delivery and deployment of the first generation website, content and e-learning module. Genderquake also provided incubation and interim anagement services and was involved with the Cabinet Office and NCVO with recruiting the OurPartnership day to day team to take it forward;

Between July 2003 and March 2003, Helen was recruited as Director of Information and Policy and as part of the Strategic Management Group of DrugScope, www.drugscope.org.uk, which reported to the Board. Her specific brief was to develop the entrepreneurial aptitudes of the team, and its strategic approach in the direction of a socially entrepreneurial organisation. At this point, the charity was heavily dependent on a core grant from the Department of Health and needed to diversify its funding base. During her period there, she took to Board and secured Board approval for a number of strategy reports within her management remit which included: Publishing Strategy; Information and Library Services Strategy; Membership Strategy. These strategies were in the process of being implemented by the senior management team she managed when left. At the request of the Chief Executive, she also led on behalf of the Strategic Management Group a corporate rebuilding exercise and a series of internal away days. These followed two periods of organisational restructurings following the merger of two drugs charities which led to the founding of DrugScope a few years earlier.