Aye, we’ve all been there, hovering over a draft email, fearful of firing it off into other folks’ inboxes. But as the saying goes, feel the fear and do it anyway.

Pitching for work can be a stressful, time consuming and lonely business for specialist consultants like us. How do we strike that elusive balance to become pitch perfect?

It often feels like charities need to engage in a finely tuned balancing act – being able to demonstrate a compelling enough need for funding whilst presenting a sufficiently reassuring picture to convince funders to commit their money. Is this a contradiction?

It isn’t always easy to find and commission a consultant, someone who’s the right fit for your organisation, so here’s an insider’s guide from CforG member Emma Insley

“I have never felt anywhere but in the right place when at an MDN or Consultants for Good event, surrounded by interesting, thoughtful and challenging colleagues.”

“Consultants for Good provides living proof that that those of us who work on a self-employed basis may be mavericks, but we are hungry for new knowledge and take pleasure in self-development”

“The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply,” Stephen Covey.

I’m one of those annoying people who love life in lockdown. No more walking into organisations that don’t get it. My Shack at the bottom of the garden is a multiverse, interacting with hundreds of people. Webinars, workshops, book readings, yoga, Zumba, cocktail parties, everything is possible online!

Look, I’m all about words, not numbers. But recent dire warnings about the 10% slump in the UK’s economy have been sending my thoughts into unchartered fiscal waters.

Coronavirus has overshadowed the environment and climate crisis for the last twelve months. But unlike the virus, which we now have a fix for, our enormous environmental problems still need to be tackled, and with urgency.

It seems like the whole world has woken up to the power storytelling. But we shouldn’t ignore storytelling as a fad. Stories have captured our attention since cave drawings.

It is twenty-one years since I played a small part in the celebrations surrounding the opening of what was then called the Welsh Assembly.  I project-managed the event at Cardiff Castle when Wales’s youth welcomed a new era of government.

As the Covid crisis unfolded, I have listened, shared, supported and watched as a range of small, community-based Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) charities across the UK faced illness and crisis within their own ranks.

September – autumn breezes begin to blow in and the leaves start to redden. For many of us, this is a time to refresh our thinking, tackle the To Do list and to start planning for the winter months.