Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, said: “Whether you think you can or you can’t – you are right.”

We are building on last year’s successful event to make 2008 even bigger and better. This year the day is both more practical and more creative.

Here is the programme of the day:

YOUR STORY

We start the day with a session led by Playback Theatre to explore YOUR STORY. This will give you a chance to take a big step back and to remind yourself of what you are about. How did your organisation/group start and why? What is it there to do? What changes does it make to people's lives? Begin exploring your "unique selling point" and your "60 second elevator pitch", and how to tell potential funders, commissioners and "customers" what you offer.

WHAT NEXT?

With your story at the forefront of your minds, there will be a short signposting session to help you decide what to do next. Do you need more marketing skills or are you further down the road and would like to find out more about local commissioning strategies? This session will help you map out how to get the most out of GROW.

Increase your fundraising successes and improve your long-term sustainability by visiting these workshops and surgeries during the afternoon:

AFTERNOON WORKSHOPS	NCVO (The National Council for Voluntary Organisations) Sustainable Funding Project - focusing on strengthening your organisation, enabling you to enhance your service delivery and look at ways of diversifying your income.
	Change Game: “Trading Places” This session will give you a chance to flex your planning, strategising and contracting muscles. Two of our partners will bring along a real life problem/project. Put yourself into their shoes, devising a realistic solution/implementation working within a realistic budgets and frameworks. Explore how to juggle resources and priorities. Test your skills of responding to the priorities of the council and PCT by devising a project which could be pitched to them for commissioning.
	Find out what your organisation can offer local commissioners, and what they will want from you: Hear first hand from four Commissioners from the London Borough of Barnet and the PCT (Primary Care Trust) and get a chance to quiz them about strategies, priorities, timetables and projects. Facilitated by Ian Beever.
	Learn how to boost your self-confidence and communicate more effectively, with Michael Mallows, management trainer, consultant and psychotherapist and founder of Social Effectiveness Training
	Improve your PR & Marketing with the help of: * Robert Foster, consultant, published author and co-founder of Red Ochre, a social enterprise management consultancy working in areas of strategy, organisational development, marketing, training, mentoring, and general business support.
MARKETPLACE: FUNDER FAIR & SURGERIES	In our marketplace, learn first-hand about the criteria and guidelines for the following major funders: • Big Lottery Fund (BIG) including Awards for All • Capital 95.8's Help a London Child (HALC) • City Parochial Fund • Trust for London • Futurebuilders England • Northwest London Community Foundation CLICK here to find out more about them
	Visit the following surgeries for individual advice, to get answers to burning questions and find out how to get more information and support on these important issues: Barry Rawlings – Safeguarding Children Michael Dennehey – Finances Sandra Fullerton and Andrew Brown – Governance and start-ups and the following stalls: BVSC for training and membership, Barnet Volunteer Centre Middlesex University, Barnet College, Common Purpose, Unity Trust Bank, PCT, Richmond Fellowship and the Barnet Police/Council Safer Communities team

Networking and information exchange throughout the day.

CLICK here for an overview of the day’s programme

CLICK here for speaker biographies