Just wanted to commend you for a very effective and useful training session yesterday. I have been to many fundraising training sessions from other consultants and the IoF and I felt yours was the best. It had a very good balance to help charities develop their fundraising skills.
Alex and the KEDA team were really helpful in shaping our funding approach and informing our decision-making. Informed, flexible and supportive, they worked hard to help us to produce high-quality applications, keeping us on track and up-to-date throughout the process.
I found the review of our trust fundraising programme, that was completed by Alex, to be invaluable. It helped us to shape our focus and strengthen the team for the future.
The KEDA Consulting team gave us an efficient service which met and exceeded my expectations. They gave us the headspace and objective view which we needed to drive forward our fundraising approach and realise greater success.
Keda provided short-term, interim fundraising support for Cecily's Fund whilst we recruited a new member of staff. Given the fact that this was for a short period to prevent a gap in fundraising, Keda provided seamless support and also secured a large grant for us. They understood the brief and kept in touch throughout.
We benefited from a helpful report on fund raising options. I found KEDA reliable, clear and knowledgeable.
KEDA helped us to formulate our fundraising strategy and carefully consider areas of focus as we diversify our income base.
Fundraising beyond grant applications is a new area for me as the new Director with WERS. To have an experienced objective view of the charity and the sector in which we work which led to tangible recommendations was really useful.
An excellent provider with superb knowledge in the Trusts & Foundations arena. A supplier I take pride in working with to deliver the best possible results for our charity.
Keda Consulting provided far exceeded our expectations with their prospect researching. The leads they sent were tailored to our organisation and projects excellently.
Working with Alex was a real pleasure, he quickly understood what we do and what sets us apart and was able to incorporate this well into bids. The work was delivered on time, to budget and with great customer service.
Great service from Keda, good communication and well planned to ensure the application was completed within a short timeframe. Very pleased with the end result.
We have been working with KEDA for a year - the quality of work is always high standard and we now have a focused grants fundraising plan. As a relatively small charity with tight budgets KEDA give us peace of mind that every penny invested into fundraising is being worked as hard as possible!
The support I recieved from Keda to review my funding application was fantastic, it was thorough and prompt. It gave me real confidence in the bid I submitted.
A very good and clear articulation of our projects targeted well to potential funders.
Alex makes fundraising so much easier to do! I've worked with Alex on a number of applications and am always impressed with the quality of work produced in such short timescales. Alex is organised, straight forward and respectful of other peoples workloads - this means when he asks you for some of your time you know it will be used fruitfully. I really enjoyed working with Alex and would recommend him without hesitation.
Having been recommended KEDA Consulting by a colleague, I contacted Alex to request support with various funding applications for our Charity. He provided up and beyond what was expected, and I would confidently recommend him to all within my network. Thanks Alex for great work from everyone at Chilli Studios.
When I took up my post as Director of Fundraising at Contact a Family, KEDA had been supporting our fundraising for 5 months. I was very impressed by the amount that had been achieved in that time and the quality of the work. Not only had KEDA been focused on delivering income, they had made significant progress in developing much needed systems and processes. In my many years as a Fundraising Director I have rarely seen such positive impact from external fundraising support. I commend them to you highly.
The Inge Wakehurst Trust is a registered charity established for the benefit of those affected by autism and Asperger syndrome. I am chairman of the Trustees. Alex Blake has been providing the administration services for the Trust on behalf of The National Autistic Society for a few years. He has provided these services, which include secretarial and financial matters, with skill and efficiency. I am very impressed by his ability to coordinate the various functions required, such as organising and recording meetings, corresponding on behalf of the Trust, dealing with the accounts and the Charity Commission etc. He is also knowledgeable in the field of autism and makes a useful contribution to our Trustee meetings. I can thoroughly recommend him to anyone who uses the services of KEDA Consulting.
Alex provided excellent support to the Senior Leadership Team at Get Connected facilitating a series of sessions to set our organisational outcomes. He has also provided support articulating our case for support as youth helpline. He is personable, professional and has great knowledge of the trust and statutory sector.
KEDA provided our group with impartial advice, guidance and direction and facilitated a process which led to organisations working together to very positive effect. Without KEDA's involvement this would not have been achieved. Your involvement was invaluable.
Alex recently worked with CAF on an assignment working with an up and coming youth mentoring charity. He successfully co-facilitated an Away Day with the charity, presenting market and competitor analysis and facilitating group discussion around future strategy, as well as undertaking follow up prospect research. The quality of Alex's work on this was excellent in helping to ground discussion in the realities of the external environment and in keeping participants focused. I'm happy to recommend Alex's services to others.
I commissioned KEDA Consulting because I know Alex has the ability to clearly articulate what can seem like complex impact reporting frameworks and evaluation methodologies, using plain English and real life examples. Alex has an engaging style that is well suited to working with service staff who are not familiar with the terminology used by funders and fundraisers.
Alex's fundraising experience is very useful in the strategic context.
As Chairman of the the Board of Trustees for the Toby Henderson Trust I would like endorse the work of Alex Blake from Keda Consulting. Alex is responsive, straight talking and clearly good at his job. I was relatively new to being a trustee when Alex first started and I was skeptical. However, everyone in the trust knew we had to be more proactive with our fund raising so we made a commitment to Alex for a year. He gave us a sensible plan of action that was financially doable and worked closely with our Project Director to identify the best possible sources of support before starting to research and make applications. A year later Alex has brought in twelve times the amount we invested in his services and we still have 17 outstanding applications that we have not yet heard back from. The largest contributor he found last year is funding the rent for our building for three years, I think that speaks for its self.
It is rare to work with a consultancy who offer both expertise to add value to your thinking and planning, and flexibility to respond to our need, ad hoc and planned. Thank you.
Fresh Element are a food and events company based in the North East with a number of operations and events teams delivering award winning restaurants, cafes and events. Fresh Element have a clear commercial success as well as balancing sustainable food and social needs. The company is undertaking a period of growth and expansion, backed by its shareholders, and required support to make a commercial case for investment. The project undertaken was to seek and obtain grant funding to meet commercial funding needs of kitchen fixtures and fittings. The grant required was £20,000 and the total project cost was £50,000. There were a number of specific elements which meant the scope of the funding search would be limited, however, a local business fund was seeking applications which met our criteria. Keith Nicholson led on the project management of the bid and supported us through the journey of understanding the full bid process, building a positive relationship with the funder, ensuring a strategic match to our business aims, ensuring eligibility and working through the bid writing process to ensure the bid met the highest standards ahead of sign off and submission. As a result, the bid was part of the winning competitive bid process and the funding was awarded. Fresh Element were able to meet their commercial investment threshold for the project and as a consequence, two full time jobs and £50,000 worth of investment was made in Northumberland. As a further impact of the local delivery of the project, a number of further tenders were able to be submitted and further growth has been enabled by this project.
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If you are not securing the amount of grant income you think you should be, it is probably not due to a lack of capacity. It might be for a number of more complex reasons, such as organisational issues which require better collaboration with colleagues in other teams such as services, finance, policy and so on; or performance issues, such as ineffective practices within the trust fundraising programme. Or you may have a temporary reduction in capacity due to a trust fundraiser leaving or being on maternity or sick leave.
We have found that charities with small fundraising teams are often failing to maximise grant funding opportunities for one of three reasons:
We find that small charities usually have a history of raising most of their income from either grant funding or community fundraising.
If you lead a small, grant funded charity, you will probably be skilled in bid writing by necessity. You might be a great bid writer. However, we know that this is only one aspect of your role, alongside overseeing your services, managing the team and often everything else from accounting to fixing the printer! If you are stretched thinly, you will be missing out on funding opportunities that could help to grow your charity.
If you lead a small charity that relies on other forms of fundraising, you and your team may have very little experience of identifying and securing grant funding. You might not know where to start in terms of identifying the right funders to apply to, writing a compelling case for support or how to even make time for this amongst everything else.