I’ve been learning more about the youth justice system for a recent project and it’s hard not to come away with a deep sense of sadness. It feels like we are clinging to an antiquated set-up, and I struggle to see hope in a system that continues to put punishment at its heart…
Category: Contracts
Lessons in Co-Design
This summer delivered a fantastic opportunity to work alongside a fellow freelancer on a co-design project, working to develop national policy asks for the upcoming election. I jumped at the chance – to build on my policy experience, to go deeper into co-design and to work in a freelance partnership. What’s Co-design? Co-design…
How to Be a Great Client
So, there are clients and then there are clients. I braced myself for a range of clients when I started out – the brilliant ones and the hair-pulling ones, because that’s life, right? Some people are clear, logical, structured and great communicators, and some people….less so. I’ve been looking back over the last…
Lessons in Interim Roles
I’ve recently completed an interim role as a freelance – not something I’d anticipated when I started but I was lucky to secure it last summer when I started out. It’s been something completely different to all my other contracts, so what did I learn? Flexibility on Both Sides Freelancers are a great…
Lessons in Communities of Practice
This week I finished up a contract doing network development for a community of practice. It started off as 3 months and thanks to funding being confirmed, it was extended to six months. They’re an association I used to be part of in a previous role, so how was it being on the…
The Charity Ghost
A few weeks ago I was so excited to get my first referral – a charity I’ve worked with a few times had recommended me as a facilitator. It felt incredible to have someone value me/my work highly enough to recommend me. Plus it was to a new organisation, a charity I hadn’t…
Lessons in Policy
I’ve recently been doing a fair amount of policy work, with two charity contracts running concurrently focused on this. One has now come to a close after 5 months, and here’s what I’ve learnt: 1. What even is policy? It’s not the easiest work to explain to people. As soon as I’ve said…
What Work’s Out There
What is it that freelancers do? Most of the time I get asked the question, people presume I do fundraising because I work for charities. It’s interesting that a lot of people can’t conceptualise a charity as a whole organisation, with all the internal and external functions needed to run it effectively. To…
How to Say Goodbye
I’ve got a very new and uncomfortable conundrum – how to break up with a client. Given how much time I’ve spent worrying about whether there’d be enough work, there’s a huge irony to this. And I think the conundrum is two-fold – it’s a debate about whether I actually want to go…
Overcoming Scarcity Mindset
I wonder if everyone shares the same fear starting out – that the work suddenly dries up? That even if you’ve been successful for months, or even years, that at some point, some day, you face the abyss. With a mortgage payment looming, a nursery bill in your inbox and a red warning…