Leading Manchester charity CEO pushes to revolutionise the third sector funding model

After choosing being close to home over a series of places at the UK’s most prestigious universities, Michelle Hill started her career in the third sector when working for Nacro, the crime reduction charity. In her first role she was delivering a project in East Manchester for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award to a group of young people at risk of offending, in her gap year.

Her passion for funding organisations began when she wrote a funding bid for the youth project she was leading as part of her final assessment for her English literature and language A-level. . At this point she fell in love with the work and took on a project coordinator role at Nacro, aged 18, working her way up from a local, to area, to regional, to national role and eventually leading the creation of a five year strategy for the organisation in 2010.

Michelle then joined Relate Greater Manchester South. She began in December 2013 as CEO designate, took over as CEO in February 2014 and led the organisation’s disaffiliation out of Relate in April 2017, founding TLC: Talk, Listen, Change.

Michelle led the way for TLC: Talk, Listen Change, creating a new range of services and outcome focussed programmes, becoming known for her passion and belief that a strong culture and happy workplace is where people do their best work.

In no small part driven by her own family experiences as a child, Michelle speaks often publicly about the importance of relationships, regularly iterating that TLC is a relationships charity not a domestic abuse charity. Her vision is for the role of the charity to be part of the solution not just there to pick up the pieces in the families, schools and communities it supports.

Her brave and entrepreneurial leadership is out of the ordinary and not a traditional charity approach.

Michelle said; “The charity sector is transformational for the people it serves, but the work can be difficult to fund and sustain. I wanted to flip the traditional model and build something that will allow us to have much more control over our income and the way in which we fundraise. We need to take inspiration from the business world, treating charities much more like businesses themselves.”

Initially the Manchester headquartered organisation operated under a pay what you can afford model for those accessing its counselling services but the COVID 19 pandemic saw the need for services skyrocket while payments decreased. So the charity, which exists through a result of donations and public funding, recognised that it must find a new way to keep itself going.

Michelle and her team explored a number of options from ceasing to offer counselling to operating a 100% volunteer led service. Neither of which felt like the right way to offer the ethical, sustainable and high quality service it had become known for.

Michelle drew from her experience as a non-exec board member for MSV Housing, a housing association, suggesting the creation of a commercial subsidiary for TLC: Talk, Listen, Change, offering a paid counselling service for individuals and corporate organisations.

This led TLC: Talk, Listen, Change to launch its first specialist subsidiary, ‘Now You’re Talking Therapy’, a profit for purpose organisation to support the charity’s wider work.

Michelle said; “At TLC: Talk, Listen, Change we recognise that the current funding models do not help everyone that needs support. Government funding is available for people in crisis but doesn’t support those that might be going through grief or the breakdown of a relationship and we really wanted to be able to provide an accessible service that could help individuals through such hard times.”

Now You’re Talking is a profit-for-purpose organisation, meaning the profit generated is donated back into TLC: Talk, Listen, Change to help the charity continue its work of championing community wellbeing through services that offer support for domestic abuse, mental health, family mediation and separation.

The paid-for counselling service is available for individuals and businesses, offering counselling and psychotherapy for both individuals and couples. The service will expand its offering later this year to offer sex therapy and counselling for children and young people.

The new venture offers customers choice, flexibility, and assurance that the support they receive is of the highest quality, delivered by a trustworthy charitable group with more than 40 years of experience in the sector. It is entirely profit-for-purpose, with all surplus income donated back to TLC: Talk, Listen, Change, ensuring that customer-funded and free counselling are housed in separate organisations that can be operated efficiently.

Michelle is constantly working to enable the charity sector to do more for the people it supports. She lobbies for greater transparency within the commissioning process with local authorities and aims to see the relationship sector officially recognised as it is pivotal in the support and development of society as a whole to promote safe, happy and healthy relationships for all.