consultancy.coop LLP is a co-operative, whose full members, Alex Bird, Martin Price, Pat Conaty and Mark Hooper own and control the business. With experience over many years operating as consultants and at all levels in this highly specialist sector, we bring a strongly focussed, business oriented approach, coupled with understanding of, and empathy with, the values and passion of this sector.
Alex Bird started his working life as a nuclear power engineer, and his experience since then is wide-ranging, covering nationalised industry, the public sector, the third sector and the co-op movement.
He is an experienced and committed worker co-operator having founded three worker co-ops and earned his living through them for almost 30 years.
He was Chair of Cardiff YMCA Housing Association for 17 years, which runs the largest homeless hostel in Wales, and sat on the Membesr Panel of Glas Cymru for 7 years, the not-for-profit organisation that supplies Welsh Water.
He was the founder and Secretariat of the Welsh Assembly’s Cross Party Group on Co‑operatives from 2009 to 2015 when he passed the Secretariat to Wales Co-operative Centre (Cwmpas). During this time he organised 19 meetings including 2, which brought together the equivalent Groups in the UK’s three devolved Parliaments.
Alex is currently Chair of Banc Cambria, a mutual/cooperative bank for Wales currently in development, and of union-coops:uk which is campaigning to develop fully unionised worker co-ops.
Dr Martin Price is an experienced consultant, who has had a number of senior management roles in the voluntary sector in Wales.
Presently, Dr Price is Chair of The Institute of Fundraising Cymru and a UK Trustee of the Institute. He is Vice Chair of the BBC Wales Charity Advisory Forum, which advises on BBC Children in Need applications and allocates charity broadcasts in Wales.
He is a Board Member of the Development Trusts Association Wales and of Social Firms Wales. He is also a Member of the Institute of Business Consultants and the Operational Research Society.
For three years, he was a Trustee of a Cardiff-based charity – ABCD, which helps children and young people from ethnic minorities who have disabilities and was Chair of Governors of a voluntary-aided secondary school in Barry for eight years from 1998.
He ran the South Wales operation of The Prince’s Youth Business Trust, helping some 400 disadvantaged young people into self-employment over a period of three years and worked with Business in the Community in Wales, setting up Employee Volunteering schemes, forging links between companies and the voluntary sector. He also set up the Fundraising Operation for Mencap in Wales in their Fiftieth Anniversary year.
We are able to offer a wide range of services to social enterprises, co-operatives, charities and government:-
- Strategic & Business Planning – helping you through the process.
- Feasibility Studies – looking at new possibilities for expansion/development.
- Research and Policy development
- Governance, Corporate Social Responsibility, Principles & Ethics
- Marketing – helping you develop appropriate Marketing Strategies
- Research and Evaluation for projects in the Third Sector
- Funding Strategies
- Grant Applications – from talking to funders to final application.
- Refinancing & Restructuring – looking at options and implications.
- Process Review & Improvement – looking at the organisation’s structure.
- Mentoring for Social Economy professionals.
- Training in a range of Social Enterprise and Business related skills.
