About Me

Poor health saw me retire from the corporate world in 2008 and become a full-time Mum and self-employed entrepreneur, setting up Let’s Save in 2012. This business helped the not-for-profit sector to ensure strong relationships with their suppliers, saving them money and improving their services on outgoings, overheads and other business essentials.

COVID-19 happened in March 2020, stalling the business, but not stopping my desire to help within the sector – when I asked my clients what they needed – MONEY! was the most popular answer.  I took the time to top up my tendering and grant-writing skills, getting to grips with fundraising and offering a broad shoulder for my customers to lean on. I was able to put together business support and strategy consultancy for them as well as retained and ad-hoc bid writing services.

I have noticed a recurring theme over the years, that Community Interest Companies come to me and have not been legally established or structured correctly, have not got what they should have in place to be compliant and are not fundable. I am now on a mission to help those wanting to set up a CIC in a compliant, legal and fundable way. I offer 121 and group training to go from CIC set up to being in a position to apply for grants and other sources of
income generation and then to scale when ready. These courses run quarterly online for several weeks, giving attendees the assurance that what they are setting up will be fundable, compliant and legal.

There are not enough Bid Writers who genuinely work with charities and social enterprises to understand their needs and apply for appropriate funding.  Funders have less and less money to give away, and the competition is growing year on year as more applications for grants are made than ever before.  I run a course called Get Funded every 6 months for ten
weeks online, which brings in funding experts to provide an in-depth understanding of how to develop a diverse funding strategy for charities and nonprofits.

This course can and has trained an admin resource within an organisation to become an accomplished Fundraiser, with all the variety of skills required to be able to write funding applications, apply for tenders and contracts, create crowdfunding campaigns, develop corporate sponsorship and donation schemes, organise community fundraising events and set up legacy donations and much more.  Diverse income streams are encouraged to ensure
that a nonprofit doesn’t become reliant on an “all eggs in one basket” approach to fundraising.

I am generous with my knowledge – knowledge I have been developing for many decades, and knows in this day and age, AI can probably do the same job as me!  I provide the personal touch, enjoy working with people, and still get goosebumps when a charity or CIC CEO/Director tells me about the work they do.  I share my vast network of connections happily. I also know the passion required to keep working in this sector and is determined to take the strain away from hard working non-profits, so that they can continue to do the amazing work, whilst I ensure the boring stuff is correct in the background!

I work with a range of different organisations, all have turned over less than £2million a year and the majority are based in Yorkshire or Derbyshire where I have the local knowledge to ensure my clients are creating the best possible results for communities. From Domestic Abuse to education and care, heritage to arts, sports and exercise to training for young neurodiverse adults, I roll my sleeves up to learn what each organisation is trying to achieve,
the outputs they will make and of course the impact they will measure from their delivery.

I work with a network of trusted referral business partners, those with specialist knowledge in their field, who I recommend to my clients for support on their business journeys. These specialisms include accountancy, marketing strategy, insurances, legal services, HR and systems consultancy. These referral partners also have previous experience of working with nonprofits and understand their needs and working procedures.

If you want safe advice and guidance, to save time, frustration of going down rabbit holes on the internet and duplicate/conflicting data – speak to me, if I doesn’t have the answer, I will find it out, or will know someone who does!