These are some of the things that advocacy organisations have said about what it’s like to work with Advocacy Funding.
“We don’t have money to throw around. We have to be careful not to waste it and bid writers can feel like a luxury. I had an impression that consultancy wasn’t good value for money as the last one I hired didn’t do enough careful preparation and was winging it a bit. A lot of consultants say they can do something but turn out to not be any better than what we can do in house.
I was told that Joe was ‘at the right end of the spectrum’ for Grapevine – not at the cold hard-nosed consultant end. My referral said Joe had the right values for working with an organisation like Grapevine and that he would ‘get us’. My concerns were still that his offer would be a bit bland, not personal enough, not get under the skin of Grapevine enough and be too off the peg.
But my concerns proved unfounded and my hopes were exceeded. Joe delivered what he promised and raised my expectations. He did a lot in a short space of time. His delivery was bespoke and it felt like he was actually putting stuff onto our pegs.
While he was doing the work he was very reachable and and was in touch regularly. I got the impression that he had listened carefully. It didn’t feel like it was out of my hands in a way that meant I didn’t have any influence.
Joe’s good at making sense of what he hears and turning it into an end-product that people want. Joe can pull it off. And in the time. We didn’t just buy time with him, it was more than that.”
Clare Wightman, CEO at Grapevine Coventry & Warks
“Joe has worked really well with colleagues across the organisation bringing real expertise to our fundraising work in some key specialist areas.
He has a strong ethical foundation to his work, as well as a sound and shrewd business focus. He’s challenging and engaging, and has helped us think and learn as a team. He has worked exceptionally hard for us, and has been well organised in his approach. Last, but by no means least, he has been good fun to work with and has rapidly come to feel like one of the team.”
Paul Morrish, Deputy Chief Executive at VoiceAbility
“My experience of working with Joe has been very positive. He combines a broad strategic overview with acute attention to detail – a combination that is critical to fundraising success. He has strong values, is an impassioned authority in his specialist field of work and communicates exceptionally well both is writing and face-to-face.
I would have no hesitation in recommending Joe for a wide array of assignments in the voluntary and community sector”
James Baddeley, former Deputy Chief Executive at Speaking Up
“We were up to our ears in other tenders and needed to deliver a really good quality submission without having the experience, expertise or capacity to do it. Two colleagues from another organisation said they had worked with Joe and found him extremely good. They recommended talking to him for advice on the tender and to see if he could do any direct work on it.
I expected to get an expert in writing advocacy tenders and someone with some expertise and experience around children’s services. This was exactly what I got.
Joe picked up on what we were about very quickly and delivered an impressive tender. There wasn’t time to do lots of toing and froing with the tender questions so I was trusting Joe to get it right first time. This made it a harder piece of work but I was really pleased with the end product. It made life much easier for us.
I liked the style of Joe’s bid writing – it was modern and economical without falling into the realm of overly serious or ponderous. Though we didn’t match the tender’s quality with our interview we scored higher than the competition on a number of question areas. For our first venture into new advocacy territory it gave me lots of encouragement for the future.”
Avis Mulhearn, CEO at Advocacy Experience
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