Member Article

Philanthropic Organisation Expanded To Be Beacon of Light Helping Founding Entrepreneurs, SME’s and Charities

A philanthropic organisation, The Experience Bank, has expanded in a bid to raise further funds, which in turn can help more start-up companies, growing SME’s and charities with senior recruitment, board positioning and board effectiveness.

Originally set up by Peter Neal as The Experience Bank, the newly named and expanded Experience Bank Group now incorporates The Experience Bank social enterprise company (Philanthropic support), along with a commercial venture providing two, symbiotic services - EB Board Level Recruitment and EB High Performing Boards. With this combination of specialist expertise, the Experience Bank Group is uniquely positioned to help organisations ensure they have not only the right skills in the boardroom but also optimum board performance with higher value creation.

Peter has joined forces with Andrew Marsh and between the pair they have committed to gifting a percentage from the commercial ventures to boost helping even more organisations through the philanthropic social enterprise.

Peter, who has over 25 years experience in the SME and charity sector, said:

“There is a recognition by SMEs and charities, brought into sharp focus by the current difficulties and the challenge of planning a return to sustainable growth, that they should regularly review the skillsets of their senior team and the value being added by the board.

“With our experience we are well aligned and empathetic to those needs. We find the right executives and non-executives for organisations, using well-honed intuition, insight and imaginative candidate sourcing - we believe that brilliant boards build brilliant businesses and getting this right is key to success.”

For founding entrepreneurs and small charities, the social enterprise company, The Experience Bank, has a carefully curated network of inspiring, experienced people who can add value to many start-up businesses and small charities, and can match entrepreneurs to non-execs who support businesses to become investment-ready or to successfully achieve the next phase of commercialisation.

Andrew Marsh, who is focusing on EB High Performing Boards has over 25 years in board level positions and is an active non-exec himself. More recently, Andrew has undertaken several board effectiveness reviews for SMEs, scale-ups, charities and NfPs. As chair of Vistage and a number of boards, Andrew’s experience places him in an ideal position to shape effective boards. He said:

“We refocus organisations to improve their performance by evaluating their board practices. We use independent, objective, board evaluation audits and practical, pragmatic development and improvement programmes that are both unique and dynamic.

“A recent Harvard Business Review article, which quotes a study by Lodestone (2020 private company board compensation survey) states that 91% of those surveyed identified an increase in EBITDA (profits) and revenues after they introduced their new board structures.

“Both Peter and I work under the same ethics and our mission is to help people. Therefore, our values and mission align to enable North East businesses and charities to thrive and perform through not only the placement of talented individuals but through an independent, objective evaluation. The process also offers sensitive support, structures, processes and assistance in getting the dynamics right to achieve optimum results.

“Our promise to gift 5% of all revenue to The Experience Bank social enterprise will enable more start-ups, early stage businesses, charities and social enterprises access to top notch, non-executive talent too.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Anna Toms .