Consultancy - Peter Williams

Recent Client List

• Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation
• Institute for Fundraising
• 4Children
• National Children's Bureau
• Capacitybuilders

Governance and Leadership in the Third Sector
I have carried out a range of work to support and develop the Boards and senior executives within a number of charities and social enterprises:

• Trustee skills audits
• Board performance reviews
• Reviews of governing documents and their impact on membership and accountability
• Facilitation of conflicts within the governance and leadership of organisations
• Strategic planning
• Board away-days

Nearly all the work has an interpersonal dimension as well as a technical one - in other words the issues express themselves through personal differences in and around the Board. These need sensitive handling as well as finding the right solution.

I frequently work in the governance field as an associate of Linda Laurance.

Quality Improvement and Quality Assurance
'Quality' as an issue for organisations and services has gone through a number of phases. I remain of the opinion that the main focus should be about moving forward and making improvements rather than trying to assess performance against fixed standards.

I have written a number of quality assurance schemes to meet different needs and specifications, including Aiming High (1994), Aiming Higher (2006) and Celebrating Quality (2004) in the field of children's services. I contributed to the development of PQASSO 1st edition based on Aiming High, and was part of the Charities Evaluation Services (CES) team that drafted PQASSO 2nd Edition.

I delivered PQASSO training for 20 CVSs in four regions, as part of the NACVS/CES capacity building programme as well as training a range of voluntary organisations in its use.

Publications on quality have included Making Sense of Quality for National Children's Bureau in 1994. In 2007, I lead the team that drafted Quality Improvement Principles for the children and young people sector under a contract with the National Children's Bureau. Sales of the resulting publication have reached over 2000.

I have advised a number of public agencies and charities on how to market and operationalise their quality assurance schemes, including Sheffield City Council and the National Day Nurseries Association.

In the related field of evaluation, I was for many years an evaluation associate with CES on a number of important pieces of work, but have also carried out a range of evaluations in my own right, for example of infrastructure development and a range of funded projects.

Building the Capacity of Third Sector organisations
In 2007/2008, I acted as Strategy and Policy Coordinator for Capacitybuilders setting up the evaluation of the whole ChangeUp initiative, and shaping the review of national support services and of infrastructure consortia.

I have also carried out a review of Herts County Compact, and a number of other pieces of work in that County to enable infrastructure organisations to work together more effectively.