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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.

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 sucession 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.

Attracting the next generation of leaders and supporting leadership equality and diversity: Exploring self-care as a radical act; developing openness and inclusion to enable everyone to access leadership opportunities.

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 sysems change and system leadership, with Big Ideas for sustaining social care, Commissioning for Outcomes and more.