Nov 29, 2019, 2:26 PM
Reflections on Conference Season
November saw Action Planning set up its stand at both the NVCO Trustees Conference and the ACEVO Conference. We look forward to both conferences each year; they provide a great opportunity to catch up with existing clients and meet some new ones.
This year was no different and many interesting conversations ensued. Both conferences had their own flavour and a host of thought-provoking speakers.
The Action Planning conference team included several of our Consultants, so quite a few impromptu quick-fire consultancy sessions took place. At the ACEVO conference we specifically offered surgery sessions, which were well subscribed by the delegates and used the breadth of experience of the Action Planning consultants on our stand.
Hot topics for discussion this year were fundraising, strategy and governance reviews. However, there were some very specific questions asked and our experience within the faith sector was very much in demand.
Some of the key questions perplexing visitors to the stand included how to deal with changing funding streams (particularly those who were reliant on statutory funding), how to build flexible organisations to meet the changing needs of the sector, and just how do you measure how good your governance is?
We handed out a good number of our bright yellow “The answer is yes” cards. With over 150 consultants and three decades’ experience in the non-profit sector, we are pretty unique as a full-service consultancy and are able to respond to virtually any consultancy need asked of us.
We featured a demonstration of our new collaboration with digital governance review tool Digi-boardTM. Showing just how straightforward it can be to survey an organisation, it demonstrated how the insights can be used to help board capability evolve.
Using digital tools to make it easy for trustees to complete surveys and enable insights to be generated, coupled with the experience of specialist governance consultants, was seen as a winning combination.
Sign-ups for our newsletter were high, driven by a sneak preview of a game-changing promotion we’ve got planned for next year (our 30th anniversary), which we’ll be launching officially very soon. Watch this space!