Our conference keynotes and short, tailored presentations are a popular way for funders, membership organisations and others to support their sectors’ sustainability.

Clients find these to be extremely cost effective and impactful, inspiring audiences to learn more and take further action. For us, they’re an efficient and enjoyable way to share our core messages and resources with large numbers of people. From 20-minute keynotes to 90-minute facilitated discussions, it’s amazing the transformations that can be achieved with the right input.

Staff and board away days are the most common way that people use our toolkits and resources. It’s easy to run your own sessions – the toolkit shows you how. But when you want independent, informed facilitation, we might be able to help.

We typically work with clients to identify a small number of toolkit indicators to work on, perhaps using self-assessment results, which we can help you to gather from your teams in advance. Our tailored inhouse events then focus on the key issues, uniting teams in a shared vision for the future, with agreed actions and clear next steps in place.

Note: We have learned that we have the biggest impact and make the best use of our capacity with national bodies (or large regional ones), membership organisations and medium to large charities. If you are a small or locally-focused organisation, we encourage you to make full use of our free resources.

Our workshops are tried and tested but always adapting in response to emerging learning from our consultancy practice. Each of the following can be delivered in half-day or full-day formats, in person or online, and as standalone sessions or as part of a coherent, comprehensive programme.

Managing Capacity: Measuring, managing and making more of it.

Understanding sustainability: the principles and practices of nonprofit sustainability.

• Involvement: Understanding how involvement supports sustainability; different involvement methods and approaches; helpful tools for doing it authentically.
• Income generation: Ethical, efficient and effective approaches to income generation strategy. It’s not a fundraising ‘how-to’, it’s a more holistic, analytical and strategic view of where your money comes from.
• Impact measurement: A suite of impact measurement workshops and tools, from understanding outcomes to creative approaches and theory of change.
• Innovation and improvement: Rooted in the theory and practice of creative management, knowledge management and design thinking. Where new ideas come from, how you get more of them, and how to get development and delivery in balance.

Understanding sustainable leadership: the paradoxes, principles and practices.

• Succession planning: Developing a succession planning strategy, contingency plans and capacity.
• Lateral leadership: Adapt to the new world of distributed leadership and identify ways to delegate, empower and involve people at every level. Develop autonomy, accountability, ownership and buy-in.
• Sustaining energy, focus and self-care: exploring self-care as a radical act. Prioritising self-care as an essential, not a luxury.
• Leadership as an equalities issue: removing barriers and proactively prioritising diversity and inclusion to enable everyone to access leadership opportunities.

System leadership: Managing capacity within a system and leading across organisational boundaries

Tailored leadership consultancy is where we can make a really transformative impact on organisations. It can take many forms, but the most common are:

Support to CEOs and management teams: 1:1 consultancy or small team support, taking what one of our clients described as a ‘gentle laser’ to the issues that won’t go away – or the ambitions that won’t come true without focused attention.

Leadership development programmes: typically delivered over 3-6 facilitated half-day sessions, using Lasting Leadership principles. Help senior teams and/or emerging leaders lift their heads from the operational weeds and focus on their key sustainability, leadership or development goals.

Lateral leadership programmes (Learning and Improvement Groups): more than just working groups, our model of empowered, self-directed teams increases ownership, drives innovation and improves relationships. Very powerful, often magical, usually hard to explain – here’s our attempt!

In addition to our bespoke thematic programmes responding to issues identified by funders and membership organisations, we also run programmes to develop responses and produce resources for sustaining organisations, leaders and their impact.

This might sound like the ‘Rolls Royce’ option, but it is actually a practical and affordable way to embed sustainability in funding or policy programmes.

Examples:

• Shared Care Scotland: We led a year-long Think Tank to explore sustainability for carers’ organisations, producing the ‘Short Breaks for the Long Term’ guide.
• Scottish Government Survivor Innovation and Support Fund: taking a similar approach to produce a guide to help sustain organisations who support survivors of childhood abuse.
• Scotland’s International Development Alliance: a refreshed Effectiveness Toolkit with useful tips, resources and guidance in five core areas: Purpose, Governance, Impact, Sustainability and Development.
• CCPS: programmes on systems change and system leadership, with Big Ideas for sustaining social care, Commissioning for Outcomes and more.

“The Advance Retreat was a much needed opportunity for me step away from the heavy onslaught of day to day pressures, slow down and focus my attention on  where I had got to in my leadership journey and where I wanted to go next. The complete tranquillity of the venue and the lack of any formal agenda provided the time, space and permission for me to explore, research and think. Every leader should go on an Advance Retreat at least once a year.” (Previous participant)

Leaders are so busy working in their organisations, they never get the time to work on them.

Advance Retreats™ let you value your time – and yourself – in the calm splendour of welcoming surroundings.

They make it easy for you to protect time for the things that really matter, not sacrificing precious development time for the sake of everyday tasks and mundane demands.

Our special Advance Retreats are simple.

We book a spacious, relaxing venue.

You book out your diary to create time and space for all the thinking, writing and planning you never get done. Then join us and a very small number of other nonprofit colleagues for a day with:

• Lovely surroundings
• Structured work environment
• Peace and quiet to work undisturbed
• Talking and sharing when desired
• Silence when needed
• Small group numbers (4-8 people)
• Committed, protected diary time
• No agenda – it’s your day
• Freedom to come and go as you please

‘I found the day very useful. I don’t usually get the necessary time to read and think so I was looking forward to having that space. I think getting away from the office was vital and having Jen and Graeme there kept us focused on the day being about strategy and not operational matters. I genuinely feel that I achieved more in that one day than I would otherwise do in an entire week!’ (Participant feedback)

People tell us they achieve things in these days that they wouldn’t otherwise.

‘I was a little apprehensive going into the day with no set structure but it was a great space to think about my own leadership style, how I want my team to work together, and to get away from the office and distractions. It definitely made me more aware that I need to make space to think, rather than trying to do it at my desk in a shared office.’ (Participant feedback)

In our pilots, people organised a conference, wrote papers, planned, filled in applications or analysed information. They got things done.

What would you like to get done?

Advance. Retreat.

Contact us for details and dates.