I work as an Impact Adviser in the Impact Accelerator at Charities Aid Foundation. We offer bespoke, strategic support to private clients, corporates, trusts and foundations, government, and charities and social purpose organisations.
For funders, we provide research and analysis, programme and strategy development, tools for measuring and increasing impact, and hands-on internal and external engagement. We work closely with our colleagues across CAF, including the grantmaking and social investment teams.
For charities and social purpose organisations, we provide strategic consultancy to build capacity, resilience and effectiveness. This means supporting with strategy design, income diversification and fundraising, governance support, and measuring, increasing and communicating impact.
I’m an experienced social sector consultant and researcher with an interest in the use of data and evidence by nonprofit organisations. Previous consultancy projects include:
- Designing a large-scale data transformation programme for the Trussell Trust and supporting with its implementation, including redesigning data collection frameworks, developing a data glossary and internal data literacy training programme.
- Delivering data culture, data storytelling and data strategy workshops and training for the Scottish Goverment’s Data Maturity Programme, Association of Charitable Foundations, and individual clients such as the JABBS Foundation. I also refreshed the curriculum for 360Giving’s Data Champions programme.
- Delivering a range of process and impact evaluations with charities, trusts and foundations, and public health teams. Clients have included Comic Relief, Jessie May Children’s Hospice, Central Bedfordshire Council, East Sussex County Council, Breathe Arts Health Research, Carers UK, and the Greater London Authority (GLA).
Other active areas of interest include the UK and US nonprofit sectors, philanthropic practice and theory, UK health and social care policy, open data processes and products, spatial data and GIS, digital poverty, the social construction of data and critical data studies.
My Google Scholar page has a record of my academic work. Please do get in touch!
Other stuff I was involved in / have done:
My PhD thesis: Spatial data use in the UK nonprofit sector: a sociotechnical exploration
Written a chapter on ‘Spatial approaches to the voluntary sector‘ in the first voluntary sector methods textbook, Researching Voluntary Action (2022)
Reviewed Geoff Mulgan’s (2019) book Social Innovation: How Societies find the Power to Change for Voluntary Sector Review
jamesjbowles.com 