What Our Clients Say

Working with Eastside People was a pleasure. Bernice looked after us throughout the process, providing great advice and support and went out of her way to ensure that the candidates were well looked after. The whole recruitment process was well run, delivered on time and ended in the recruitment of two top quality candidates.

Thank you for helping us to measure our social impact better and produce financials that make sense.

This is definitely a service that we will use going forward. It is very useful to work with a specialist with our charity space. The understanding of our requirements and the importance of candidate-job fit is amplified when we know that our recruitment partner already knows our environment, but more importantly focuses on our specific needs as a client. I highly recommend EP.

Thank you for a great Board Away Day. I'm very happy with what we achieved and the whole experience of the day, as are Board members - several of whom said it was the best Away Day so far.

We really enjoyed working with Kevin, he understood our requirements and completed the project very quickly and professionally, thank you!

I have found EP efficient, effective (and good value) on a number of occasions and will happily recommend them.

Avenues engaged Eastside People to assist with our work to develop Board thinking around a key strategic priority. The support we received and the consultant's understanding of our objectives meant that we were able to achieve a positive outcome. The benefit of having independent expertise from outside the organisation was a significant contributory factor in shifting how the Board thought and approached the topic.

Great support from Eastside People and importantly listened to what was needed and responded quickly and in language we could understand.

It was a great pleasure to work with Ann, our key priority was to work on our financial sustainability. We know what we need to do. Thank you for all your support and connecting us with other persons.

We were more than satisified with the service from Eastside People and particularly to have some a strong interim candidate who was a real asset to the charity. We were delighted to have Jenny as Interim HR Director for Future Men and we benefitted from her expertise and professionalism.

I enjoyed work with EP and would definitely work with them again.

Bernice was a fantastic support when we were recruiting our new Head of Fundraising. She took the time to really understand the role and how it would fit in with the organisation and as result we were presented with an excellent selection of quality candidates. Bernice was supportive throughout the whole recruitment process and I would highly recommend her services to other organisations.

We found EP to be a very professional organisation who listened carefully to our brief, matched us with exactly the right consultant and enabled us to move our project forward to a point where we were able to implement the new system that we needed.

Kevin was a great support sharing his knowledge and expertise in an easy to understand way. Thank you.

Kevin Davey and Rosie Chadwick helped us develop a diagnostic health check that differentiates grantees according to resilience, designed and refined within agreed timelines. The support they and Eastside People provided was invaluable in developing our approach.

We engaged Eastside People to appraise the different options available for strategic collaboration. Their knowledge, practical support and skilful facilitation of our strategy day helped us make significant progress towards optimising resources, reducing costs, focusing on core specialisms and speaking with a more unified voice

We found Eastside People to be responsive and willing to listen to our requirements and expectations of the output from their work. We ended up with a very useful and thorough Business Plan that not only helped us gain interest from potential funders, but is also a document that we continue to use to implement the project.

We were thrilled with Bernice's work and advice. She was as excited as us to use the Be Applied 'blind' hiring platform to help debias our Board member recruitment and she just totally understood both our organisation and our needs, as well as being a fantastic source of advice on best practice as we went through the process, including the interviews.

Eastside People supported us with new trustee integration and the facilitation they provided was a very good start to this important process for us. It enabled our board to have fully informed discussions and make better decisions on important organisational priorities we were considering at the time.

We had an urgent need for a skilled and competent manager. Eastside People found somebody for us really quickly who met our requirements and they stayed with us 7 months. Speedy and expert help.

I have been really impressed with the service EP have offered us re: temp recruitment.  Alice did a great job as interim fundraising director and was a real asset to our organisation in the time she was with us - thankyou! 

I cannot speak highly enough of the work Bernice and Paul have undertaken for Teamwork. They have fantastic complementary skills sets. Their work is very thorough and they can think laterally about candidates and have a profound understanding of the organisation and the applicants. They also have a talent for guiding organisations through decisions which they may make infrequently, enabling organisations to act in a decisive way. EP also represent excellent value for money 

We want to be the best we can be and lead the way on key aspects within our sector, such as GDPR compliance. The Wave Team is positive about the required changes we have identified for compliance and by utilising the professional GDPR services of Eastside People, I have no doubt that we will successfully reach our objectives. I would have no hesitation in recommending Eastside People GDPR consultant Mike Griffin, he is clearly very knowledgeable and experienced within the field of GDPR and has eased our journey towards compliance.

Very Impressed. It was all we hoped for and more.

Highly professional and responsive with a really good grasp of who we are as an organisation and who we were hoping to recruit to our Board. Kept in touch throughout the campaign and helped to streamline the interview process for us. An excellent service which we will use again and would highly recommend to others. Thank you for helping us to recruit 2 excellent new trustees. 

I think you did loads and it was brilliant. As a result of this process I now have a compelling strategy that was co-created with our stakeholders and is helping to unite and inspire staff, supporters and the amazing DofE network behind a clear vision and set of goals.What I really liked about your approach it is that it wasn't one size fit all. I really liked the idea you could pull together a project team that was bespoke to our requirements. Nobody else was offering that. Your model allowed you to have a lot of flexibility about the different expertise you brought to the project and meant the in-house team benefitted from working with experts in a really wide range of disciplines which was brilliant for their learning. I would thoroughly recommend this approach to others. As an added bonus, my leadership team has had hands-on practical experience of how to develop and deliver a strategy development process from the start to the end which has really enriched them and added value to the charity. They were supported by EP to learn and develop through the process and received bespoke coaching in a really wide variety of areas from impact measurement to change management to research methods and developing organisational values and behaviours which is just incredible.

Bernice was amazing in her support and professional advice to us to recruit new board members; she was insightful and made the whole process simple and clear. 

From the initial consultation through to the confirmation of support, the process was made incredibly smooth by Eastside People. The professional approach enabled CCL to successfully apply for an Access Reach Grant, which in turn provided the charity with the services of Eastside People consultant Mike Taylor. Mike proved to be extremely knowledgeable regarding our sector which greatly assisted in formulating the bid to CAF Venturesome. Despite the constraints brought about by the uncertainty surrounding the easing of lockdown and the associated impact of COVID-19, Mike produced a thorough short-to-medium-term strategic business plan for the charity, covering the multiple strands of our business and ensuring that relative sensitivities were applied throughout. This huge, and ultimately successful, piece of work was formulated and presented in a relatively short time-frame. Chanctonbury Community Leisure would like to pass on our thanks to Mike Taylor and Eastside People for their professional and expert assistance as well as their continued enthusiasm and support to see the aims of the Charity harnessed and achieved.

We approached Eastside People and I was impressed with the way they executed their plans and within the agreed budget to deliver excellent candidates from which we were able to appoint a high calibre individual.

Bernice and Paul quickly showed a real understanding of the environment and candidate we were looking for when recruiting for an Independent Chair of a new Governance committee. Their engagement with stakeholders was exceptional and ensured that the candidates they presented were of the highest calibre. Eastside People took what we thought was going to be a challenging role to recruit and made it successful. Also from Paul Buckley, Chair: I was very impressed with the professionalism, responsiveness and focus of Eastside People generally and specifically the consultant leading the search. They had a very deep understanding view of the brief, were very responsive in dealing with questions about the process and the informal and formal interviews were friendly while being searching and thorough.

Eastside People and their consultant Paul Venning helped Gambling with Lives to find and appoint a Head of External Affairs to our senior management team. They made sure they thoroughly understood our challenges, our strategic direction and the nuances of this role, and then produced a high-quality shortlist of candidates which allowed us to appoint an exceptional candidate who is the perfect fit for the charity and the role. I would thoroughly recommend Eastside People's recruitment service to any organisation wishing to hire great candidates with the right skills and relevant experience.

Excellent service, very much tailored to our needs and not the usual one-size-fits-all approach. I would highly recommend Eastside People? recruitment service to others and in fact have already done so

Eastside People has supported Victim Support with a number of projects. For example, their consultant Rosie Chadwick provided support with some complex technical elements as part of a successful tender. Rosie made a vital contribution and we found her to be flexible, generous with her time and a brilliant support

Eastside People recruitment consultant Marlijn Wijkhuizen was critical to helping us finding two new fundraising and HR trustees for our board, with a real dedication to work we do combatting poverty and homelessness, and did so at a time of growth and change for our organisation. I would thoroughly recommend this service. Eastside People and their consultant Paul Venning helped us to appoint two staff to our senior management team. Paul took the time to thoroughly understand our organisation, and also got to know each candidate well. EP's consultant Julia Perry then carried out psychometric testing for shortlisted candidates for two senior roles. Having these detailed reports challenged the panel?s gut instincts about candidates, which made the process more inclusive, and gave us a deep understanding of each person. I would thoroughly recommend this service to any organisation wishing to gain deeper insight into individuals or groups of people.

EP provide an extra team when we need it giving us new ideas, skills, knowledge, and fresh thinking - particularly in development and growth areas. This gives the team confidence and reassurance in their own ideas and support to help us move from theory to practice. EP collaborates as a business partner and are careful to make sure that we own the solutions and recommendations.

As a chief executive with limited experience of mergers, I very much valued working with Eastside Primetimers. They allowed SRUK to tap into a range of expertise, gave us independent and unbiased assessments of the situation and brought to the table their extensive knowledge and insights from supporting previous mergers

Action for Sick Children came to Venturesome at a crossroads, needing to change their business model and requiring an investment to do. Using the Reach Fund we were able to put the charity in touch with Eastside Primetimers to develop a robust plan for the future. Eastside Primetimers were able to respond quickly to the project and deploy consultants with appropriate skills to work closely with the charity. This resulted in a clear plan for the future without which we would not have been able to invest.

Eastside People helped us with an application to Homeless Link for social finance, which will be transformational for us and the young people we support. The support and expertise that Eastside People and their consultant Catherine Grayson have provided has been absolutely superb. I hope there will be further opportunities for us to work together.

I would like to thank Eastside Primetimers and their consultant Carolyn Hay, who has written an excellent evaluation report for the AWRC. It is an excellent document and I look forward to circulating to Reaching Communities and quoting it for funding applications that I write going forward.

Eastside Primetimers' consultant Linda Holland really helped us with our business continuity planning during the COVID-19 lockdown. She helped us to review what we had in place, and identify not only improvements we needed to make, but also how we needed to do it. I?m very grateful for the support ? there are 17 people in my team and she facilitated the session really well. Thank you again, it has been incredibly helpful.

Juliette provided an astonishingly good service for us. Her level of competence, strategic thinking and dedication to our work was unparalleled. I would highly recommend her and EP's offer to other social change organisations.

I thank Eastside Primetimers for the opportunity to work with their consultant Jim Brooks under the COVID-19 business continuity programme. We had productive meetings that I thoroughly enjoyed, and the support provided has left us in a great position regarding our budget forecast for the year. The options it opened up for us have brought us more into line with the staffing position of other charities, we are in the process of recruiting a bookkeeper and I have a better grasp of our financial position. A very timely intervention

Thank you again for the work you have done with the board and the support you have given me personally over the past 2 years, which has been of immense help. Your incisive viewpoint, sensitivity and awareness of the issues combined with a calm and efficient delivery style have definitely contributed to the development of Cardigan Centre and I will miss your input. I and the board would be more than happy to recommend your services and skills to other people.

With Eastside Primetimers, we went from identifying the need for an interim Finance Director to finding a good candidate in a space of two weeks. Very high level of customer focus and getting it right for us.

EP?s help in recruiting new trustees for The River and Rowing Museum was invaluable; testing (and improving) the trustee specification, identifying strong candidates and managing the process efficiently.  I recommend them!

We approached EP to support the Association in developing a five-year strategy. EP has a practical approach and we benefited from the ongoing support we received after our initial away day to write our strategic and operational plans. EP?s business model is such that they get to know their clients and then identify consultants that best suit the specific needs and culture of individual organisations. I would not hesitate to recommend them

After Bowel Cancer & Research and the Bowel Disease Research Foundation merged, we were looking for a new CEO with empathy for both organisations, but also the drive to make the merger successful. The insights we received from Eastside Primetimers consultant Julia Perry about our candidates were very useful. We thank her for going above and beyond, particularly taking the time to talk through the candidate profiles with our various stakeholders Following the merger of Bowel & Cancer Research and the Bowel Disease Research Foundation we needed to appoint a Chief Executive to the new organisation. There was a great deal of complexity within our organisations with which Eastside Primetimers were always helpful and patient. They came up with an excellent list of potential candidates from which we eventually appointed one. We are tremendously grateful to them.

We recruited Eastside Primetimers interim Martin Hunt at a difficult time for our organisation - Martin proved to be right appointment and significantly exceeded the requirements of the challenge that we were facing. He grasped the priorities of his brief and engaged well with our stakeholders and beneficiaries, working to ensure that services and good governance were maintained, and made clear recommendations for the future of the organisation. We recommend him to any organisation grappling with challenging circumstances, as he is capable of providing strong leadership and has a broad set of skills and experience

We worked with Eastside Primetimers on a difficult merger and were delighted with the process they used and with the final report.  They worked to a tight timetable that we imposed and met every deadline.  They fulfilled the brief we set and engaged with all of the people/organisations we recommended.  I would use them again and would definitely recommend them to other charities.

The work Kevin Davey and Eastside Primetimers have undertaken over the past year has been of immense value. The financial model he authored directly informed the programme and design of our proposal for Wards Corner and helped us explore the viability of different potential schemes. Kevin's expertise has also proven invaluable in influencing the direction of our wider development strategy, something that has elevated our existing efforts and opened many new, exciting opportunities for the future.

I thank Eastside Primetimers for the opportunity to work with their consultant Jim Brooks under the COVID-19 business continuity programme. We had productive meetings that I thoroughly enjoyed, and the support provided has left us in a great position regarding our budget forecast for the year. The options it opened up for us have brought us more into line with the staffing position of other charities, we are in the process of recruiting a bookkeeper and I have a better grasp of our financial position. A very timely intervention

With our EP HR advisor Roy Grant, we have worked to ensure that every person in the organisation understands their role in delivering the three-year strategy. All work plans and organisational strategies are now directly aligned to this strategy, enabling staff to be able to track and evidence their progress towards this.

I want to say a big thank you to Eastside Primetimers consultant Lisa Lucas. She was really good at keeping us on track focused and organised. She also was really flexible and supportive with our needs.  Her approach was fantastic coupled with her patience and knowledge.  She was a really calming and clarifying force through times of change.

We are very grateful for the support provided by the Eastside Primetimers team. It is impossible to overstate how much the support has meant to us and how integral to our success it has been.  Being able to call upon such a supportive, knowledgeable, inspirational and patient group of people has been invaluable as our trust seeks to begin engaging with the public health agenda.

The support that Eastside Primetimers provided first of all helped us to take time out to think about where we stood as an organisation and how we could move forward. It then led to us developing strategies and processes in a range of areas that will better position us to deliver new services and help us express our social value in our local community in Redbridge, in line with our values.

Eastside Primetimers consultant Dave Garratt was really helpful, knowledgeable and supportive. He managed to pull off a very comprehensive report in a short timescale for us.

One of the best decisions we made was to commission an evaluation of our work. We hoped this would confirm our obvious successes and highlight areas needing improvement. We worked with Rosie Chadwick from Eastside Primetimers and the report which resulted has been an invaluable tool for us to use. We are able to use verified figures of achievement and production, hear third party opinions from our partnerships and real-time comment from our Volunteers. All of this really helps a small organisation like ours to progress with confidence

We are very grateful for the support provided by the Eastside Primetimers team during the process of putting together of our 5-year strategic plan. They were able to put together a diverse team enabling us to benefit from their wide knowledge and skill base.

Following a period of successful growth, MSF were faced with the challenge of replacing a highly experienced, long-standing CEO who relocated away from Malvern for family reasons. We asked Eastside Primetimers to take on a difficult recruitment brief to find a first class leader with strong strategic, operational and financial management experience, experience of working with children and families and/or people with disabilities, and a proven track record in fundraising. Not only did their specialist consultant Paul Venning find a great and varied shortlist, he also worked closely with two of our Trustees every step of the way, including accompanying them at shortlist candidates interviews in Malvern and onboarding the successful Chief Executive candidate.

I can say that Eastside Primetimers consultant Adam Stebbings has provided tremendous support  and I would like to express my thanks to Eastside Primetimers for your part in facilitating his placement with us. Adam's assistance has been indispensable, and we are very grateful for it

We are a homelessness charity in East London and we recently brought in Eastside People's consultant Mike Griffin to support us to update our data protection policies and procedures so they are in line with the new regulation (GDPR). We have greatly appreciated Mike's knowledge and expertise on the subject, but also his ability to articulate recommendations in a clear, concise way. He takes the time to understand the organisation and provides very practical and pragmatic advice. I wouldn?t hesitate to recommend Eastside Primetimers to any other organisation looking for data protection consultancy.

Working with Eastside Primetimers was very productive for us. They were professional, efficient and the process has resulted in four new board members and a plan to transform our governance, bringing extra capacity to develop the organisation and sustain benefit for our beneficiaries into the future.

We set out to find a partner that provided both the infrastructure we needed to grow and synergy in terms of values and ambition. Without the support of Eastside Primetimers we would never have approached Community Integrated Care, who ended up being the perfect partner. Eastside Primetimers? initial research into potential partners was invaluable, and they have been professional, supportive and helped us to stay focused on our goals. This partnership will allow us to replicate the work we already do in our Blackheath centre all across the UK, dramatically increasing the number of beneficiaries we reach

I had never been interviewed by a recruiter before, and Janet Tapsell made a potentially nervous situation enjoyable and conversational, yet rightly challenging. She offered me genuine feedback on my abilities, presentational skills, attributes and areas of weakness. Sincere thanks and gratitude for her management, professionalism and the supportive culture she and Eastside Primetimers created.

We really enjoyed working with Eastside Primetimers as we developed our three-year strategy. They quickly demonstrated they understood our needs and identified great consultants to work with us, who led us through the process and offered challenge when we needed it. Richard Litchfield and Jo Gratrick were highly knowledgeable and greatly skilled, and their input helped us achieve our goal of a strategy that is meaningful to our trustees, members and staff. I would have no hesitation recommending working with Eastside Primetimers and have engaged them again on another piece of work

Eastside Primetimers are known as the merger experts in the world of not-for - profits with very good reason! From the very beginning, Eastside Primetimers have shown themselves to be hugely knowledgeable and supportive; engaging Deborah Jenkins as Project Lead was an absolute master stroke. Without Deborah's input I am 100% confident that we would not have achieved the merger; her knowledge, experience and skills ensured that the end goal of merger remained at the forefront. Thank you so much to Deborah and Eastside Primetimers for helping us to achieve our ambition of the creation of Nurtrio, who now have the support of an outstanding parent company, Navigo CIC. Jo Barnes, Chief Executive, Nurtrio

Our new chair of the finance committee is proving a great find and I would like to thank Wijkhuizen and the team at Eastside Primetimers for finding the candidates and guiding us through the process. It is unlikely that we would have found such highly qualified and committed individual who is passionate about what we do - it was definitely worth every penny and has given me a very different perspective on recruiting trustees.

We worked with the Eastside Primetimers team to try and find a new home for 3SC. Their team worked hard to understand our hopes and ambitions and to identify potential best fit organisations. They were extremely pro-active in driving the process and keeping us updated as a Board. While we finished up finding a different solution without Eastside Primetimers involvement we would almost certainly have spent much time down rabbit holes, chasing unsuitable partners. Thank you.

We were impressed with the way in which Eastside Primetimers worked closely with us, taking the time to understand our organisation and ensuring that the research they carried out into potential mergers aligned with our charity?s core vision and values. They facilitated initial discussions with the highest levels of professionalism and efficiency, enabling us to build a strong relationship with Life Opportunities Trust, and ultimately achieve a successful merger.Karen Sheridan, Chief Operating Officer, (Independent Living), Community Integrated Care

I simply must send you our new Strategic Direction to 2030 published last month! The result of the work Eastside People did with us! You can find it here https://www.waterwise.org.uk/2022/08/24/influential-campaigning-organisation-waterwise/ We're proud of it! Definitely flexing our independence a lot more already. We launched it with a series of v short videos about aspects of it from the team and Tania - you can find them on the Waterwise LinkedIn page.