Meet our speakers

Alan Lawrie
Associate Trainer, Directory Social Change (DSC)

Alan is an independent consultant specialising in strategy, business planning and organisational development. He has worked with public and voluntary sector organisations throughout the UK.

His main work interests are in helping organisations adapt to demanding times, cope with change and build strong and durable organisations. He has had published five books on different aspects of managing and developing voluntary organisations.

Joanna Bloxham
Training Consultant

Joanna is an experienced trainer/facilitator, with a background in airline marketing communications and a proven track record in learning and development. Her specialist areas include: Presentation Skills/ Sales/ Impact/ Leadership/ Motivational Speaking & Training/ Teamworking/ Customer Service.

Joanna understands the needs of her audience and delivers with energy and enthusiasm, to promote participation and encourage a lively learning and development environment. Joanna’s special skills include her self-awareness and self-management coupled with her ability to build relationships. She is an excellent communicator, a bright and perceptive operator and has a sense of humour that carries her through all potentially difficult situations.

David Burnby
Associate Trainer, DSC

David has over twenty years experience working in the voluntary sector. Following three years as a CVS Chief Officer, he worked for the national leadership development organisation Common Purpose. From 2002 to the expiry of the scheme in 2011, David was accredited by the Department of Communities and Local Government as a Local Improvement Advisor, offering specialist support and advice on community engagement, performance management and partnership development.

David has a particular interest in Outcome Based Accountability and having trained with its originator Mark Friedman, offers training and consultancy in the use of the framework. He is also an associate consultant for the government’s Improvement and Development Agency (LGID), Renaisi Consulting (London) and Agencia Consulting (Hessle). For over 10 years, David has worked across England and Wales with a broad range of local authorities, Local Strategic Partnerships, NHS bodies and voluntary and community organisations.

Estelle Neuman
Associate Trainer, DSC

Estelle is a business advisor and provider of advice, consultancy, training and research to charities, social enterprises, other organisations and individuals. She is a member of the Institute of Fundraising MInstF(Dip)and a SFEDI accredited Business Advisor.

She currently works as fundraiser for a national charity and brings a wide range of experience and expertise to issues concerning fundraisers including; winning resources, diversifying income and succeeding in an increasingly competitive environment.

Gideon Burrows
Founder, ngo.media

Gideon worked as campaigns co-ordinator for Campaign Against Arms Trade before becoming a journalist writing on social justice, charities and public affairs. He was a staff journalist on Community Care magazine, then worked on various sector titles including Third Sector, Guardian Society, Social Enterprise and Municipal Journal. Gideon founded ngo.media in 1998 to provide editorial and copywriting services, and training on copywriting, marketing and media, for charities. ngo.media quickly became the charity sector’s leading editorial agency offering a range of training to charities in the communication field.

Gideon is the author of two books on the arms trade, publisher of the website ethicalcareers.org, two editions of The Ethical Careers Guide, the business book, Your Ethical Business, and is currently writing a book on charity marketing on a budget.

Gill Jolly
Associate Trainer, DSC

Gill, a psychology graduate, has been involved in professional fundraising for over 25 years as a fundraiser, manager and trainer of fundraisers and support teams and has worked at a senior level with some of the top income-generation charities. Having many years’ hands-on experience as a successful fundraiser and manager Gill also undertakes interim-management roles and many of these have involved management of fundraising teams, re-structuring and recruiting new staff.

Through her consultancy work she is involved in strategic planning, recruitment, grant negotiation/management, legacy work, donor development, implementation of fundraising strategies, and capital appeals as well as other areas relating to fundraising and getting organisations fit for funding. Gill works as a facilitator at, for example, away days and is a regular speaker at conferences on fundraising and related topics as well as freelance trainer with many organisations including the DSC, Institute of Fundraising and the OU Business School to name a few.

Heather Brierley
Senior Training Consultant & Perfomance Coach, DSC

She specialises in management, leadership, communication and interpersonal skills training and facilitation. Prior to DSC, Heather managed projects within four different departments at Cancer Research UK. Alongside managing these projects, she developed and delivered various training programmes.

She was involved throughout the recruitment and selection of people onto the graduate scheme. Previously, she was the National Vice President of AIESEC UK, where she was part of the National Team running the UK branch of AIESEC International, a non-for-profit organisation present in over 100 countries.

John Hannen
Policy & Partners Manager, GMCVO

GMCVO supports local voluntary action by local people by providing specialist support, knowledge, voice, infrastructure and innovation, working in partnership with other support organisations and with the public and private sectors. John has supported voluntary organisations to engage in the planning and delivery of public services for over 15 years in a variety of roles and has led projects related to housing, transport, rural issues and health before developing GMCVO’s current work designed to support organisations seeking to reduce offending.

John has also led on GMCVOs work to support public sector commissioning which has included the development of groundbreaking quality framework and consortium structures. Some of this work is detailed in the recent “Building Social Marketplaces” report published on www.gmcvo.org.uk

Lynne Kent
Volunteering Champion, Volunteering Greater Manchester project, GMCVO

Lynne is currently working on the Volunteering Greater Manchester (VGM) project, which is in turn hosted by the Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation. She has worked in the voluntary sector for over 25 years, and prior to her current role was Director of Volunteering Bradford for many years.

Her experience includes managing volunteering projects, delivering training for volunteer co-ordinators from all sectors, working with voluntary, faith and public sector organisations to develop volunteering programmes,( including specific pieces of work for PCTs, museums and the police), and of facilitating cross sector partnerships to promote the development of district wide volunteering strategies. She represents volunteering infrastructure on regional and national bodies and in a personal capacity has carried out a variety of different volunteering roles.

Matt Haworth
Co-founder, Reason Digital

Matt Haworth is co-founder of digital communications agency Reason Digital. An award winning social enterprise that uses the power of digital media to help charities do more for less, and better engage their service users. His experience spans websites, newsletters, mobile apps and social media projects for clients including the BBC, The Fundraising Standards Board, The British Red Cross, The Meningitis Trust and dozens of other national and regional charities.
Matt is a regular speaker at national charity conferences, and has trained hundreds of charities in using digital media to generate real results.

Mike Wild
Pen Picture

Mike has been Director of Manchester Alliance for Community Care since 2005. MACC is a campaigning and development agency based in the voluntary sector and works with local organisations on the planning, design and review of services and commissioning processes.

Mike has been working in the voluntary sector since 1996 including several years on advocacy service for older people and this background shapes his approach: building relationships with people across a diverse sector, promoting the voice of residents, service users and carers and being able to listen, develop and respond to the issues they raise so that he can feed views into decision-makers.

Noam Kostucki
Seeducation

Maverick by nature, Noam enjoyed the success of his executive coaching and corporate training company in Poland before deciding to take on a new challenge: can he help charities to make money? Since joining the Directory of Social Change as a fundraising trainer and consultant, Noam co-founded Seeducation, a social enterprise that helps people and organisations make money from doing good.

Roger Craven
Vir2

Roger has worked in the online payment and mobile content industries for 20 years after qualifying as a member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers. In 2006 he lobbied Parliament to get HMRC to clarify their VAT rules in relation to charitable donations by text. He then joined the campaign with Charities Aid Foundation, the Institute of Fundraising and NFP Synergy to introduce 70 series short codes and then to reduce the network charges.

He started working with charities in 2003 when he advised CTT on how to develop an SMS giving service. In 2005 he founded Vir2, to run the service. Roger has been involved in over a thousand charity campaigns. He is passionate about the use of mobile technology to improve the efficiency of charity fundraising. He believes that the key to developing the market is making text donation affordable to the widest number of charities.

Steve Harding
Associate Trainer, DSC

Steve has over 16 year’s experience of working within the public and voluntary sectors developing and delivering an array of initiatives from grass root engagement programmes to strategic infrastructure initiatives. Organisationally he specialises in organisational development and has cultivated and lead high performing teams in the organisations he has represented. His success and ability to grow and drive services forward has been very much based on a continuous improvement approach.

Steve has a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) awarded by Liverpool University and is currently completing a PhD on Values and Organisational Performance in the Voluntary Sector. In 2010 he presented a paper on Values in the Voluntary Sector at the European Business Ethnics Conference in Trento, Italy, which was warmly received by the international academic community.