About Us

About Kirkmillan

Kirkmillan Consulting was established in 2015, and had its origins in providing coaching and mentoring services to the charity and not for profit sectors. This created an opportunity for the founding Director, Beverley Francis, to offer her considerable skills and experience to the sector, drawing on her strengths in strategic development and organisational development in particular.

Kirkmillan actively supports organisations in a range of ways, with an approach that is tailored to your unique circumstances and provides the right things at the right time to enable you, and your organisation to achieve the change or improvement that it needs. In 2018, Kirkmillan added interim management support to the range of services provided. Beverley Francis is delighted to be a mentor for the ACOSVO mentoring network, and also to have been appointed to the ACOSVO Interim Chief Executive Service.

Kirkmillan is currently working with a range of Boards and management teams in the third sector, helping them shape strategies that respond to the changing and complex environment that is typical for the sector. We are also actively supporting Chief Executives and their senior teams to examine and strengthen their performance.

Pro Bono Work

We have a commitment to continue to undertake pro bono work as part of our portfolio. Beverley Francis is part of the ACOSVO mentor network and remains committed to making a difference to small organisations in particular who would ordinarily be unable to access costly consultants and expertise.

Beverley's Key Skills and Achievements

Beverley has developed sharp political acuity, drawn from a degree in politics and extensive experience working with Ministers in both the UK and Scottish Governments. As a Director of a housing association and a trustee, she has developed significant capacity to support Boards to strengthen governance and accountability. At Rural Stirling Housing Association, she turned around a poorly performing organisation into one that has gained a positive reputation. As an ACOSVO mentor, she has supported many Chief Executives in the third sector, and has facilitated staff, team and organisational development through one to one coaching and away days.

Beverley has extensive experience of leading organisational change and managing projects to improve performance, most notably, leading the New Opportunities Fund, as it undertook a merger to form the Big Lottery. Her experience of developing grant making regimes in government and at the New Opportunities Fund places her in a strong position to support the third sector and others to navigate the grants and trusts landscape, with a particular expertise in project evaluation.

With a range of policy portfolios including, housing, employability, substance misuse, and race equality, she has an aptitude for making the connections and creating the opportunity to have impact. This was particularly the case in her leadership of the Scottish response to the UK welfare reform agenda where she brought together a range of statutory and third sector players to create a coalition to mitigate the impact in Scotland. She led work with the drug and alcohol sector in Scotland to reshape how it delivers services, against the backdrop of a new policy.