Consultancy
What do we offer?
The Take Note Consultancy draws on findings, tools and techniques developed through our Innovation Lab, coupled with our team-wide experience as social change leaders. Our support helps charities to maximise their impact and potential by clarifying their purpose, developing strategic plans, enhancing organisational development, building out their partnerships and helping design new programmes and initiatives.
Who delivers it?
This part of our work is led by Marianna Hay, Founding Director of the award-winning charity, Orchestras for All and Take Note Co-Founder and Co-Director.
Every consultant in the Take Note team has held, or holds, senior leadership positions within small-medium sized charitable organisations. Each of us truly understands, therefore, the pressures leaders and their teams are under and our approach is highly collaborative, personalised and accessible.
Testimonials
We’ve worked in a variety of ways with a wide range of organisations, from small to large, working across the arts and wider social change sector.
Here’s a sample!
Walking alongside Footwork since their inception as a charity supporting their CEO and wider team with programme design and development, theory of change creation, strategic planning and governance.
“As an ambitious young start-up, there’s a lot to think about. Working with the Take Note team has helped us distill our purpose, how we measure success and focus the work we do. This support cannot be underrated and continues to allow a small team to have big impact for people and places.”
— Naomi Rubbra, Chief Executive, Footwork
Supporting North Edinburgh Arts with the redevelopment of their Theory of Change and five year strategic plan.
“NEA worked with Take Note when developing our current strategy and business plan. Her understanding of the context within which we work, and ability to draw out and distill our thinking was useful and reassuring. Marianna was able to get to the core of what we do, and why we do it, before guiding us through a framework that is succinct, clear and pins down aims to actions. This has been a wholly positive and enabling experience.”
— Kate Wimpress, Director, North Edinburgh Arts
Working with the Senior Leadership Team at Good Chance to design and develop a new organisational structure and supporting role descriptions during a period of change and transition for the organisation.
"Marianna’s support has been invaluable for Good Chance during a key period of transition and team structure review, including the recruitment of a pivotal role, a new Deputy Artistic Director. She provided an essential external perspective that was coupled with an instinctive and informed understanding of the nuances of Good Chance’s needs and context, which enabled her to offer us expert guidance and insights throughout the process. She facilitated key conversations between our Senior Leadership Team to clarify what the organisational needs were, then informed and advised on new job descriptions and the wider team structure to ensure we were making ourselves as sustainable and well-resourced as possible to achieve our ambitious goals. We now have the new structure in place and it’s been transformative!"
— Naomi Popli, Executive Director, Good Chance
Working with Impact Scotland, the charity responsible for creating, building and running the Dunard Centre, Edinburgh’s first new concert hall in over 100 years, to develop and design the first stages of their creative learning and engagement strategy.
“Marianna worked as a consultant for IMPACT Scotland in the early days of devising our community engagement programme. She brings with her that unusual and highly sought-after blend of strategic know-how and practical, hands-on delivery, as well as a gift for forming strong and immediate connections with others. As well as immersing herself in our (sometimes complex!) project and organisation with speed and ease, she was quickly able to understand our challenges and suggest solutions, using the Theory of Change model to help us identify long-term goals and ambitions. It is also a sign of trust and confidence that I had absolutely no hesitation in her acting as a representative for IMPACT across a wide range of stakeholder organisations.”
— Jo Buckley, Chief Executive, IMPACT Scotland
Designing, developing and facilitating the inaugural conference for the Art of Belonging consortium of over 25 cultural and refugee support organisations across Nottinghamshire.
“Take Note helped to facilitate our milestone Art of Belonging conference at a critical time in our journey. They took the time to understand our experience and our needs. Their work with us and our partners helped us to define achievable and realistic goals for our partnership work, as well as think strategically about achieving these. The conference was a huge success and we are still reaping the benefits of Emily’s facilitation of the day"
— Adam Baker, Director, Refugee Roots Nottingham