Helen Ball
What do you know?
I am an experienced Social Impact Practitioner and Project Manager specialising in the social enterprise, social housing and regeneration and community engagement sectors.
My skills have been developed across 40 years in the private and public sector, and more recently in 20 years proven track record of planning, leading and measuring and evaluating a wide range of projects and programmes in local social and economic development. I have a BSc Social Policy and Criminology, and MSc (with merit) Social Enterprise Management. I am qualified teacher in adult education, action learning facilitator, and mentor.
I enjoy running a women’s community cycling club which I co-founded in 2017, I am the vice-chair of my local park Friends Group operating a fledgling social enterprise community café hub and heritage centre. I am a wife, daughter and grandmother to four small children. And in my spare time, I am improving my photography, film and editing skills.
Why do you do what you do?
I am passionate about evidence-based social change, and love sharing my ‘social know how’ with public, private, third sector, community and grassroots organisations.
Working with organisations that make a difference and helping them to develop and grow. My mission is to debunk many of the myths about social impact measurement, making it accessible, practical and relevant to everyone in your business.
I also use co-production to bring service providers and service users together, encouraging participation and sparking innovation. Working with me is flexible and fun!
I also believe the power of reflective practice and sharing impact knowledge across sectors and systems, facilitating this for Do-Well clients through my extensive experience of end-to-end event management, from concept and program design, speaker and supplier liaison, social media campaigns, marketing and engagement, delegate booking, on the day event management, through to post event feedback and reporting.
How can you be useful?
I bring a down to earth and practical approach to measuring impact for everyone in your business - from Board, CEOs, SLTs, managers, front line staff, service users and volunteers.
I support and guide organisations to develop and embed their own bespoke approaches and tools for effective social impact measurement based on tried and trusted methodologies that can be replicated and used time and time again in your impact practice cycle.
With an extensive background in a broad range of successful service/project and social impact delivery, I also bring insight and experience from both operational delivery whilst also understanding funders' and investors perspectives.
What album has most inspired you?
Too many to pick from but an enduring track that is close to heart is 'What A Wonderful World’ by Louis Armstrong, which my late Dad sang to me as a child and which never fails to bring a tear to my eye when I hear it now. For me it’s contemplative, timeless and speaks on so many levels…. but in particular about friendship, the passage of time and bringing together people of different backgrounds.
