About

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I set up Rockit Funding in 2014 in response to the growing problem that not-for-profits with great solutions to social issues increasingly struggle to generate income to make their ideas happen. I head up all Rockit Funding client projects, occasionally bringing in trusted associates to provide specialist advice.

Since launching in April 2014, I’ve helped clients to secure funding worth more than £200m from funders including:

  • Government departments and agencies, including the Department for Education, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Cabinet Office, The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, HMRC, and NHS Digital
  • National Lottery Community Fund grants
  • Local Authority tenders
  • Innovate UK
  • Clinical Commissioning Groups
  • A wide range of Trusts and Foundations.

I’ve also delivered:

  • Funding audits, helping organisations to identify potential funders for their projects
  • ‘Critical friend’ reviews, editing bids and tenders to make them more likely to be successful
  • Strategy sessions, supporting senior staff to improve their business development strategies
  • Training sessions on writing winning bids
  • Mentoring and coaching to business development professionals and senior staff.

In previous roles, experience includes:

  • Leading on development of organisational strategy
  • Setting up a trading income stream for a social enterprise
  • Securing funding from corporates
  • Leading several successful £multimillion bids across the statutory sector and Trusts & Foundations
  • Designing and assessing application processes and grants programmes
  • Advising Government and other stakeholders on policy around social and digital inclusion.

I’ve spent my career tackling social injustice in various ways:

  • As a former Director of Business Development and Innovation at Good Things Foundation, helping to spin it out of a public body to become a social enterprise and staff-owned mutual which has now helped more than 3m people to use the internet
  • As a founder member and Trustee of the Helena Kennedy Foundation, a small but brilliant charity which has helped over 2000 students from disadvantaged backgrounds to progress to higher education
  • As a former Trustee of Digital Unite Trust, a digital inclusion charity
  • As a Trustee of the Lorna Young Foundation, which helps smallholders in developing countries to take control of their own businesses
  • As a Trustee of the Kiyan Prince Foundation, which works with young people facing challenging circumstances to prevent knife crime and youth violence and promote positive life choices.

This has given me a broad view and experience of the not-for-profit sector.

I’m also passionate about using digital technology for good and have spent most of the last two decades collaborating with others and putting people in the lead to design and deliver innovative social inclusion projects. In 2008 I was lead author of the Government’s Digital Inclusion Action Plan.

I’m part of a diverse and vibrant professional network and a large part of my role is helping to connect clients with each other to improve what they do.

In past lives I’ve worked in adult education and e-learning, and been a political researcher, a library assistant and a busker.