Emma Willder

As a new charity, Emma has been brilliant in supporting us through the process of preparing our financial information to enable us to submit to the Charities Commission. Emma has taken the time to establish a valued interest and working knowledge about the charitable work we are aiming to deliver for a vulnerable group of young adults with special needs.

Emma is a proficient, efficient and resourceful finance professional with leadership and board level experience gained in the commercial and not-for-profit sectors. The finance dashboards and commentaries Emma produces help board members make informed decisions demonstrate technical and specialist knowledge whilst also being easy to understand for any trustee/board member who isn’t experienced in finance.

In 20 years operating at the most senior levels of the public and private sectors, I have never seen a more effective (or enjoyable!) session run to identify and prioritise risks than Emma did for my fellow trustees and I; she helped us to identify and focus on the key risks and as a consequence moved us on as a Board so much and so positively.

We were lucky enough to become clients of Beyond Profit at just the right time. Emma helped us navigate a period of change and uncertainty, and she has made significant improvements to both our finance and governance processes. She is highly knowledgeable and has a positive and solution-focused approach which is exactly what we need as a small charity with limited resources. She goes above and beyond for us, always ensuring that our financial position is clear and that we fully understand our statutory and governance obligations. Emma has a very polite and personable approach and can explain complex and technical information in a straightforward manner. I cannot recommend her highly enough.

You have really helped me add some real structure to Spoons

I have worked with Emma on setting up the accounts of our growing organisation and I have to say she has been fantastic.

Her wealth of experience, attention to detail, and flexibility to work around our deadlines has been absolutely great for us and I would highly recommend her services to any non profit organisation needing help.

Emma worked with EmployabilityUK to prepare the latest accounting records and reports. An excellent service delivered quickly and thoroughly.

Emma’s expertise has helped the charity to better prepare for funding applications and her can-do approach makes her a highly valued supplier.

Emma provided expertise on verifying our QuickBooks set up, providing advice on our Chart of Accounts and correcting some coding errors/journals. She also created our first R&P report producing a template we can use in future years.
She took time to understand our charity's financial history and objectives of this project. She was very approachable and we could arrange short zoom meetings very promptly. I've not got a finance background and she gave me confidence to ask any question and relayed details to me in a straightforward way without finance jargon. She also used a secure document sharing portal that made it really seamless for us to give her the background information she needed.
I really enjoyed working with her and would highly recommend.
Our charity's finances are now better categorised giving trustees more control and transparency, especially regarding Restricted Funds.

Emma was Deputy Principal and Finance director throughout the 5 years (2009-15) that I was Chair of Governors at the Co-operative College.

She is quite exceptional as a finance leader, being among those rare people who are not only very competent at the technical tasks of finance policy and management but who also never lose sight of the purposes of the organisation. She seeks to ensure that finance policy promotes achievement of the purposes of the organisation; and in doing so she is creative in finding ways to maximise the assets available. For example, in creating a new vehicle to incorporate a range of old bequests whose purposes had been overtaken by history (Dealing with the Charity Commission on such things is no small task); and in seeking considerably better-than-average investment possibilities within the co-operative movement for our reserves.

She is also a lively and energetic colleague whom it is a pleasure to work with.

Clearest set of accounts I have seen in my time at the Guild and just what I have always been looking to achieve. We can look forward to well informed decisions from the Board. Thank you.