What is Tom4charities?

Tom4charities offers flexible, experienced freelance support to charities and other non-profit organisations, mostly in the Huddersfield area.

The aim is to bring a friendly, creative, principled, pragmatic and cost-effective approach to any project or partnership. This might be team or network building, interim management, project development, organisation strategy, co-production and consultation or evaluation work. See the Projects page for details of current and recent projects and organisations.

About me

I'm Tom Taylor, and I've been a volunteer and paid worker in charities and community projects for over 30 years, as a youth & community worker, VCSE network coordinator, trustee and trainer. For 14 years, I was CEO of a local children's mental health charity, growing it five-fold to become a £2m organisation.

Now, as a freelance worker, I support the charities, community groups and other non-profit organisations that help to make our society more sustainable, balanced, fair and kind.

I aim to help organisations to get 'fairly organised' and able to respond to people and situations, make plans and set up systems and connections that are sustainable, inclusive and help to make a real difference.

I call it 'fairly organised' because being fair, open and inclusive brings diverse talents and perspectives to bear on the challenges that we face, making the best of our resources and bringing out the best in people.

Fairly organised is also 'organised enough, but not too much'. It is good to be clear, accountable and effective without spending too much of our energy on the organisation itself. In the third sector, we are mostly blobs, not squares, after all! (See video: the parable of the blobs and the squares)

How we work together matters as much as what we do.

We each bring our identities and experience to our roles. I'm a Yorkshireman in my late-fifties; a carer, an Excel geek who loves the outdoors. I'm a community theatre performer, a Quaker, chair of trustees, a dad to teenagers, a Climate Commissioner and pizza chef.

Please get in touch if we might work together. My contact details are below. 

- Tom Taylor