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Amanda Lacey, CEO of Nepacs reflects on the impact winning the Weston Charity Awards and Pilotlight 360 has had on the charity’s strategy going forwards.

In 2016 SELFA Children's Charity were recipients of a Weston Charity Award, which not only supported the organisation with a core grant of £6,500 from the Garfield Weston Foundation, but also began a period of transformation through the Pilotlight 360 programme.

Eagle’s Nest Project is a charity set up to work with young people aged 11-18 that are struggling to engage in mainstream education, often as a result of early childhood trauma. It offers alternative education solutions that build confidence and to equip them for more positive engagement in education and society moving forwards.

"The charity has grown from strength to strength through this programme and we've been successful of other large grants during this time of the Pilotlighters support."

"The Weston Charity Awards has helped us to rewrite our strategic plan. We've now got a new vision and mission and a very clear idea of what our journey is going to be over the next five years. It's provided a lot of clarity to everybody on the team."

"It can feel quite tumultuous to start with because you're taking everything apart, but actually, there is that lightbulb moment where it all seems to coalesce and start to make sense. So yeah. Keep the faith. It's worth it."

"The support from the Pilotlighters has given Active Fusion a clearer direction and has helped the charity secure funding from Doncaster Local Authority, Sport England, Awards for All and Children in Need."

"Taking part in the Pilotlight 360 was extremely useful and we were very fortunate to have Pilotlighters supporting us who were committed to helping us develop as an organisation."

"I've been very impressed by the calibre of the Pilotlighters. We now have a firm foundation from which to take the charity forward."

"The support over the last year has been invaluable. The sessions have helped me identify some key operational improvements and commit to implementing those changes. Improvements I’m confident will make a huge difference to our performance and ultimately benefit our beneficiaries."

"Pilotlight 360 exceeded my expectations and has been an invaluable process for me. I’ve been blessed with a great team of Pilotlighters. I’m not sure if I’d still be CEO without the Pilotlight 360."

"Pilotlight has helped myself and the chair realise we're on the same page. We've worked hard to constantly implement change off the back of meetings, which has made the process incredibly useful!"

"Overall, Pilotlight has helped us transform our corporate offer, our social impact reporting, and our human resources processes and management. These were key things we needed to address, but we just didn’t have the knowhow to work them out on our own. The work we’ve done will benefit our organisation and those we serve for many years to come."

"The team of Pilotlighters helped us to reflect on why we wanted to launch a new social enterprise and very importantly how this fitted in with the charity’s aims and vision (which they also helped us to fine tune)."

"We’ve moved from only thinking about the short to medium term, to looking at the long-term and the bigger picture."

"We’ve come out the other side a stronger, more effective charity."

"The help and advice we've been given has been incredible, and has certainly helped us gain a more professional and structured way of thinking about the charity."

"Pilotlight was the perfect platform and catalyst to ignite our flames and get us energised and excited about the future again."

"The Pilotlighters really helped to shape the strategic planning process and gave us very valuable critical comment and feedback. Now more than a year after completing the programme we are very clearly reaping the benefits."

"Working with the Pilotlighters has given the Zest team confidence to think more commercially. We’re in a very different place now.”

“I thought we’d just get tools to work through, instead we got a complete audit of how we operate. The process has been bigger than we thought it would be.”

“Working with Pilotlight has made a real difference to the governance of Malvern Special Families. We have been challenged to review the way we were working and now we are thinking more strategically and the board is working together more professionally and effectively."

"This time last year we weren't winning funding bids, and I couldn't work out why. Now I know why. We can go into a meeting and say who we are and where we're going. And now we're winning bids, and being approached to apply for bids. I don’t think in my whole career I’ve had a year like this – it’s been a transformational process for me.”

"Pilotlight gave me the confidence to go for things –to stretch that little bit further."

"We’ve found that we are already looking at things with a different mentality – we can see the bigger picture."