Jo’s development coaching

Discover the power of combining your organisation’s strengths with proven practice to achieve your goals

Practical development coaching for tangible success

Best practice in leadership, development and fundraising is all very good in theory. In reality, you need to fathom how to apply this to your organisation, and your team, so that you can achieve the best results.

Success looks different to every organisation. My development focussed executive coaching takes into consideration what matters most to you and to your organisation.

Read more about how senior leaders, and their marketing and development teams, can benefit from executive coaching.

I use my expertise in development to help you apply the most relevant principles of best practice in a way that works for you and your team. Together, we will:

  • work to your strengths
  • find ways to engage the people that matter
  • personalise your strategy to inspire everyone you work with
  • take positive steps towards your organisation’s goals.
“The best [professional development] investment you can make is in yourself, and with that will come improvements in your output, and ultimately better results at work. In one hour of coaching, I learned more about sharpening my approach to fundraising than I did in eight months completing my fundraising certificate. Being able to have a coach who has experience within the development sector is a real bonus.”
Joe Ridge
Deputy Development Director, 
St George’s College, Weybridge
Book a confidential one-to-one conversation now:
email jo

How can my development coaching help your organisation?

Optimising income generation for growth and sustainability

My development coaching helps organisations develop their:

  • engagement, fundraising and partnerships strategy
  • compelling vision and case for support
  • recruitment of the best people
  • major donor cultivation and stewardship.

I help you put the right development strategies in place so that you can engage the right people and fast-track opportunities to move closer to your goals.

Recruiting development professionals and enhancing performance

Do you need to recruit a specialist in fundraising or enhance the output of your existing development team?

I help you to:

  • recruit the best people, with the skills and values, to deliver your strategy
  • enhance employee engagement, performance, resilience and retention.

Income generation and fundraising

Leaders cannot be expected to be experts in everything, and the intricacies and complexities of income generation and fundraising can feel daunting. I help break down the jargon and simplify the process so that you feel in control and confident to lead from the front.

I help you find answers to the questions I hear over and over:

Leadership

  • how can I develop a compelling vision and case for support?
  • how do I cultivate major donors?
  • how can I manage my development team without it eating into my time?

Recruitment

  • how do I recruit a development professional?
  • what makes a successful development professional?
  • how do I know who will be the best candidate?

Performance

  • how do I know whether my development team is doing a good job?
  • how should I measure success?
  • what is realistic to expect with the resources we have?

I help you by providing:

  • a one-to-one expert sounding board
  • practical guidance, and hands-on operational resource

My development coaching gets right to the heart of the opportunity and helps you draw on your strengths, identifying the best steps to move your development programme forwards.

"Jo has helped by giving us [marketing and admissions] structure to our partnership and fundraising ideas and has helped us to prioritise and focus on what is important. Working with Jo has helped us to crystallise what it is that we are planning to do and give structure to the way we go about doing it.”

Nick Armitage, Head, Rupert House School

Leadership

How I helped a Headteacher turn round her development office
read case study

Recruitment: finding the best candidate for your development team

How I helped a Head find, recruit and retain a brilliant Development Director
read case study
“When it comes to getting fundraising right, one size does not fit all. Jo provided personalised support and guidance and took me on my unique development journey.”
Jaideep Barot
Headmaster, Bristol Grammar School

Performance: getting the best from your external relations and development team

Leaders are often unsure of the best way to measure performance and manage their external relations and development teams. How do they know that they are doing a good job?

I help leaders establish meaningful measures so that they know they are getting the best from their external relations and development team.

Leaders don’t often have time to manage the minutiae needed to ensure their external relations and development teams are performing at their best.

I help leaders by providing hands-on one-to-one and team performance coaching so that the teams responsible for external engagement and income generation can:

  • join up their strategic thinking
  • align their goals
  • deliver a cohesive plan
  • sharpen their focus
  • improve their impact and deliver what is required.
“As someone relatively new to development, Jo suggested some useful ways of approaching prospects, giving practical tips on how to conduct conversations and explore ideas with prospects based on her own significant experience. I have identified key people to speak to and tried some methods for effective one-to-one engagement, plus we have significantly increased the number of conversations we have been having.”
Jim McDougall
Depute Rector, Alumni and Development, Hutchesons’ Grammar School

My performance coaching programmes not only free up leaders to focus on running their businesses, but also support development teams to:

  • stay on track and stick to the priorities
  • magnify impact from collective effort
  • optimise ROI.
How I helped a Director of Fundraising make a step change in her strategy
read case study
“I have found it very helpful to have an impartial person to help me see the way forward. Development is difficult and expectations are high, therefore coaching and development support is vital to achieve long term goals."
Nikki Brown
Development Director, Ipswich School

Leaders: recruitment

I provide personalised support and practical guidance to help leaders appoint the right development professional, taking into consideration:

  • what makes a good development professional and what to look for
  • where to advertise and how to structure the interview process
  • how retain and get the best from new development professionals.
How I helped a Head find, recruit and retain a brilliant Development Director
read case study
“It’s extremely helpful to have a safe space to explore issues with someone who has great experience and expertise and who can help you tease out the answers to your own questions. Just being able to articulate issues to someone who is outside of an organisation, has no skin in the game and passes no judgement, can be revelatory. I would highly recommend it."
Alix De Mauny
Development Director, The Yehudi Menuhin school

Leadership: how my recruitment coaching works

My recruitment coaching is designed to respond directly and practically to your immediate recruitment challenges and objectives.

New appointments are most likely to fail in the first 12 – 18 months and so I provide one-to-one executive coaching support beyond the recruitment campaign to empower the successful candidate to:

  • adjust to the new role and culture
  • overcome the inevitable early setbacks
  • have the confidence to ‘hit the ground running’ and embrace the income generation priorities head-on.

I work with you in an executive coaching capacity for an agreed period of time. Depending on what you want to achieve, we may work together on an ad hoc hourly basis or meet regularly, for example once a quarter.

How much this costs depends on the nature and duration of your project. The first step is for us to talk so that I can understand what you need to achieve. I will then provide you with a range of solutions for you to consider what is best for you.

How I helped a Head take his first steps into fundraising
read case study
“Jo brings an authenticity and understanding rooted in experience – she helped us seize opportunities and take the right steps so that our new development programme got off to a solid start.”
Jaideep Barot
Headmaster, Bristol Grammar School
Book a confidential one-to-one conversation now:
email jo
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