CFG Consulting brings expert, sector-specific support directly to your charity. We’re here to help you plan confidently and act decisively. Our first consulting offer, the to provide an in-depth review providing a baseline diagnostic of current performance against the Finance Journey, insights and recommendations and feedback to enable the organisation to move though their Finance Journey.
Could a Finance Journey Review help you?
It could be for you if any of these sound familiar:
- You've heard of The Finance Journey and want to understand where your organisation sits and what 'good' looks like at your level.
- Your finance team is good, but you suspect it could be great – and you want to know where to invest in capability, systems or structure.
- You're facing a moment of change such as a merger, restructure, new strategy or the end of a major funding stream, and you need finance to be on the front foot, not catching up.
- Your trustees are asking harder questions about financial sustainability and resilience, and you need strong answers.
- You want help that comes from people who have done the job in charities, not a generic consultancy applying corporate frameworks to your context.
- You're a CEO, CFO, Director of Finance or Head of Finance navigating a complex financial question and you'd value a second opinion from a charity sector expert.
CFG’s consultancy directory offers you access to bespoke, paid-for expert support delivered by people who have led finance, governance and risk in the charity sector. You can choose to commission CFG or work directly with the expert of your choice, depending on your needs.
Our consulting offer is launching with Finance Journey Review. Further consulting areas will follow and will include financial governance and board effectiveness, and risk management. We're starting where we have the deepest expertise and the most demand to build from there.
Introducing Finance Journey Review
The Finance Journey is CFG's framework for thinking about financial leadership at every level of a charity, from day-to-day processing through to strategic decision-making at board level authored by experienced finance professional and former CEO, Simon Hopkins. The Finance Journey Review takes that framework and puts it straight to work inside your organisation.
Together with one of our Finance Journey experts, you’ll discover where your organisation is and how much further it can go in terms of its financial sustainability, expertise and resilience. It will look at financial teams maturity, design and function in the context of your own individual requirements and operating environment.
Finance Journey Review is a structured engagement with a senior charity finance expert who works with you to understand your organisation’s situation, identify what would make the biggest difference and how finance can sit at the heart of that, and either deliver that work with you or help you put a plan in place to do it yourselves.
What does Finance Journey Consulting cover?
Engagements are shaped around what you need, but they typically address one or more of the following:
- Financial leadership and strategy. How well does your financial thinking align with your charity's strategic direction? Where could finance add more value as a decision-making partner to the board and senior team?
- Finance team structure, capability and culture. Do you have the right finance function for the charity you are today – and the one you want to be in three to five years' time? Where are the skills gaps, capacity pressures or succession risks?
- Putting finance at the heart of board decision-making. Are your trustees getting the information they need, in the form they need it, to govern well? Does your reporting tell the story or hide it?
- Diagnostic and review work. An independent expert eye over your finance function, your financial controls, your reporting cycle, or a specific area of concern – with practical recommendations you can act on.
- Transformation support. Where finance needs to step up to support a wider change in your organisation (a new strategy, a merger, a significant restructure), Finance Journey Consulting can guide that work alongside you.
Who is it for?
Our Finance Journey consultants are senior practitioners with years of experience in leading finance teams in the charitable sector.
Finance Journey Consulting has been designed for any organisation and we typically work with those with annual incomes from £1 million upwards. However, it is also for those organisations where there is enough complexity to add real value, and enough capacity to act on what comes out of it.
We recognise that some smaller charities face exactly the same questions but on tighter budgets. If you are a small charity with a specific, well-defined challenge, please get in touch – we may be able to scope a focused, lighter-touch engagement, or point you to the support that's right for you.
Engagements are most often commissioned by Chief Executives, Chief Operating Officers, Directors of Finance, CFOs, Chairs and Treasurers. We've also worked successfully with senior leadership teams and audit and risk committees collectively.
What does an engagement look like?
Every engagement is bespoke, but most follow a similar shape:
- An exploratory conversation. A no-obligation video or phone call to understand what you're trying to achieve, what would success look like, and whether CFG Consulting is the right solution for you. If it's not, we'll tell you and where possible point you in the right direction.
- A clear scope and proposal. We agree the question we're answering, the work that is involved, who's is doing it, the timescales and the cost.
- The work itself. This can range from a short, focused review through to a sustained engagement over several months. Most engagements involve a mix of conversations with your team, document review, and structured analysis – all leading to clear findings and recommendations.
- Outputs you can act on. A written report, a board paper, a roadmap, a redesigned process. We provide whatever serves the question you came to us with. We aim to leave a legacy of knowledge inside your organisation.
- Follow-up where useful. We're happy to come back in to check progress, support implementation or extend the work.
Ready to talk?
The next step is an exploratory conversation. Tell us where you are, what you're trying to achieve, and we'll be honest with you about whether CFG Consulting is the right answer – and if so, what it might look like.
Complete our form: [link tbc]
Email us: consulting@cfg.org.uk
Or call: [number tbc]
Frequently asked questions
Engagements are led by senior charity sector experts who are former CFOs, Directors of Finance, Chief Executives and trustees with decades of experience inside charities of all sizes. They are supported by the wider CFG team. We don't sub-contract to generic consultancies and we don't apply off-the-shelf corporate frameworks to your charity. Every lead consultant has lived the role they're advising you on.
Three things set CFG Consulting (Finance Journey) apart. First, the depth of sector expertise. Our consultants have run finance functions and led charities, not just advised them. Second, the connection to CFG's wider work. We bring the sector intelligence of a membership body of more than 1,400 charities, the networks of our Special Interest Groups, and the policy and technical knowledge we use every day. Third, we're a charity ourselves. Income from consulting is reinvested into the support we provide to the wider sector.
No. CFG Consulting (Finance Journey) is available to members and non-members. CFG members benefit from preferential rates, reflecting their ongoing investment in the work CFG does for the sector. If you're not yet a member, we'd be glad to talk about how membership might serve you alongside consulting.
It depends entirely on the question. A focused diagnostic review might be completed in a few days of consultant time over two to four weeks. A more substantial piece of transformation support might run over several months. We agree the shape and timeline together at the start, and we don't pad engagements out.
Most engagements are charged on a daily rate, with the total cost agreed in the proposal at the start of the work so you know what you're committing to. Rates vary by the size of your organisation and your CFG membership status. See the guide rates below. We don't charge VAT on most consulting work, as it qualifies as educational.
By filling out our enquiry form or emailing us (see below), we can assess your needs and signpost you quickly.
It might be that a ten-minute phone call with one of our expert partners is all you need. If you're a CFG member, you already have access to our expert helplines which cover finance, tax and VAT, HR, legal, IT and pensions – at no additional cost.
Or you might want to think through and talk about a tricky dilemma with a peer. CFG members can find this support in our new community forums platform – Connect.
Every consulting engagement is covered by a clear confidentiality agreement. Findings, reports and any sensitive information remain entirely yours. We never share or refer to individual client work without explicit permission, and any insights we use in our wider sector work are fully anonymised.
Yes. Finance Journey Consulting is the first product in our consulting offer, but we are actively developing further consulting areas including governance and board effectiveness and risk management review and development. If your current need sits in one of those areas, please get in touch – we can probably help you now, or let you know when the relevant offer is ready.
Consulting is a significant commitment of time and money, and it isn't always the answer. If a free helpline call, a training course, a peer learning group, a publication or a different form of support would serve you better, we'll tell you that. See the section below on the wider ways CFG can help.