Our Consultancy areas

Real Ideas Nature and Neighbourhoods work with clients to create sustainable and innovative organisations and services that resolve social challenges, regenerate nature, and bring about more balanced economic development.

Making buildings work

We work with clients to develop buildings that:

Can function as vibrant community assets
Support arts and culture in interesting and innovative ways.
Restore and maintain heritage value for wider benefit.
Have a regenerative environmental impact.

Typically, this includes:

Responsible and considered community, stakeholder, customer, engagement.
Impact management and development, helping you get clear on the impact you are seeking and then devising ways to track and amplify it
Effective and engaged business planning, from feasibility studies to full business plan production.
Practical operating models, covering staffing, systems, and processes.
Sharp financial modelling, including product and service development, budget projections, profit and loss analyses.
Capital funding and investment strategies
Ownership and governance models and practice.

Creating places that work for everyone

We help councils, house builders, development consortia, and community organisations, create high streets and towns that work for people, business, and the environment.

Our approaches include:

Strategic development planning.
Community engagement and consultation.
Social, environmental, economic impact development and management.
Social infrastructure, high street planning.
Stakeholder relationship management and partnership development.
Community capacity building.
Community governance and ownership models.
Social enterprise, heritage, cultural, and environmental sector development.
Capital funding and investment strategies.

Our work in this area is grounded in practice, integrity and credibility – based on the fact that we do all of this ourselves too, ‘for real’, in and around our own communities and buildings.

Impact development and management

Helping organisations get clear on and understand the difference or impact that they make, so they can then make more and better. We help you develop and then use the right tools for the right job – managing your impact so that you can understand, track and amplify your social, environmental, and economic value.

Our methods include:

Impact development workshops.
Impact data collection and analysis.
Impact Framework, Theory of Change, and indicator development.
Evaluation and learning processes and delivery.

Social enterprise/ community business development

Tailored support for social enterprises, and community rooted business, from start-up to scale up.

This includes:

Community, customer, multi-stakeholder engagement.
Impact development and management.
Governance and legal structure advice.
Business and operations modelling.
Business plan production.
Funding and investment strategies.

Evaluation and analysis of projects and services