About
Smart Prospects is all about what you need...
Smart Prospects is here to help you and your organisation to contribute with confidence - to manage yourself within your organisation's progress and to find clarity when the landscape is complex and the dynamics don't make much sense.
Smart Prospects offers coaching and training for individuals and consultancy for organisations
Working with Smart Prospects is a needs driven process - we work with you and your organisation for as long or as short a time as you require.
For the short term work, often the people with passion and skills running the organisation have come up against a hump backed bridge of some sort and need assistance in the short term to tackle a specific issue, before going onwards with the work that they love doing. In these instances I will use my skills and experience to help, transferring skills and training individuals as required, and aim to leave your organisation stronger and more resilient. Sometimes this might be as short as facilitating a half day strategy meeting - freeing you up to focus on the achieving the highest quality communication during the few hours you have with key people.
Medium term partnerships generally involves research and/or coaching or some longer term development work. Longer term work usually arises from a job advertising part-time work.
Development
can be defined as 'consisting of deliberate efforts aimed at progress' and development management
as 'the management of intervention aimed at progress, in a context of conflicts over goals and values'. Ultimately it is about gaining clarity for decision making in messy situations.
I set up Smart Prospects in 2001 after encouragement by friends following much voluntary work to lead the rescue of the village playgroup. This work included total modernisation of the organisation and its business model, and refurbishment and re-purposing of an old building which formed a dedicated space for the group.
Since then I have worked with a wide range of clients, from small local groups and small businesses to international co-operatives, building skills and experience to support volunteers and business owners in a wide range of settings.
I've raised £millions via bid writing; sat on the HMRC CASC Forum; been a Director of a grant making body; written and delivered hundreds of hours of training; facilitated numerous organisational development processes.
My longest standing client is a sport national governing body where I hold a club development role covering the UK.
My volunteering goes back to primary school days, and activism to secondary school where at the age of 11 I successfully campaigned to be allowed to do woodwork instead of home economics on the grounds of equality - the following year all pupils were doing all four practical subjects: woodwork; metalwork; cooking; and sewing.
More recently I have held voluntary roles with Plymouth Single Regeneration Partnership, Friends of Westonbirt Arboretum and the European Gliding Union.
Alison Randle MScOwner
I have a broad range of experience - a degree in applied biology followed by working in science research, both for the civil service and in academia, then financial services, in both sales and as an analyst. Now I mainly work in the voluntary & community sector. I'm also a potter with a passion for photography and art.
I
gained my MSc in Development Management in 2019, specialising in organisational development and systems thinking in practice - it is understanding the dynamics within and between organisations that is often the key to making harmonious progress.
For me, fulfilment is seeing others thrive