Bright Bids, founded by Helen Strachan in 2021, is a business development and fundraising consultancy that:
Supports private sector organisations to submit compelling bids for contract opportunities through services including writing, reviewing and facilitation of solution development
Enables not-for-profits to gain grants from statutory sources and trust and foundations through strategic advice, research and application development
Works with all types of organisations to create resources that improve both operational delivery and income generation, including Theories of Change, new models for products and services and monitoring and evaluation frameworks.
About Bright Bids
About Helen
Helen set up Bright Bids to pursue not only her love of all things bidding but also her commitment to helping organisations that empower individuals and their communities to thrive. Her work builds on the joy she finds in writing, developed through gaining an English literature degree, and on her experience across both large-scale government-funded contracts and smaller-scale charitable services. For private sector and larger charity clients, this usually involves being part of their development of compelling solutions and services and the narrative that sells these to procurement teams. For small charities, this includes enabling organisations to grasp how they and the services they deliver (or could deliver) meet the needs of individuals, communities and funders and how to use this knowledge to get grants.
Helen has eighteen years of bid and wider business development experience. Eight of these were spent winning government contracts for innovative employability charity Tomorrow’s People, contributing to its mission to enable those most disadvantaged in the labour market to gain sustainable employment. Since becoming a freelancer, she has supported a wide range of organisations, including corporates, public sector, SMEs and charities, to win bids across a variety of sectors, including employment, health, justice, youth work and policy. Concurrent to bid consultancy, she has provided guidance and practical support around income generation and service development to around 35 small to medium charities.