Bringing clarity to a passion-driven non-profit.
NMCWatch is an example of a client who approached me to fix a symptom, rather than the cause, of a problem.
They initially wanted video content help. But as soon as we met, our conversation turned to the bigger issues of increasing awareness of their existence, as well as the effectiveness of their campaigning.
As with many small organisations started by one person, their passionate work needed developing into a professionally-minded organisation. In NMCWatch’s case, one of their goals is to make changes to how UK healthcare professionals are regulated. For them to be taken seriously requires the regulator (the Nursing and Midwifery Council) to understand the depth of experience and expertise NMCWatch can offer this process.
What I did
I simplified things.
- First I introduced Slack for all internal communications and Google Drive for storing files. This removed the problem of “things getting lost” across multiple platforms.
- Complete rebrand including a new website. NMCWatch has developed a unique thought-leadership role and never been short of content and ideas for how to get their expertise and experience into the public domain. So giving this effort a professional facelift, doing a UX deep-dive and applying some SEO rules to their large library immediately increased organic site traffic and enquiries.
- Next, was how to deal with this increased demand. A semi-automated on-boarding process solved the over-work and gave the admins more time to use their experience to help new joiners, rather than just asking people to fill in the correct form.
Throughout this process I have been working with the Founder (and main face of NMCWatch), Directors, admin staff and volunteers, to develop their understanding and confidence in presenting the organisation’s work to external audiences.
Practically this involved developing the mindset of people, giving them clear guidance (e.g. post templates and scheduling tools for social media), and assets such as presentation templates to maintain consistency of messaging and visual presence. For a group of people who had never thought about the importance of ‘brand’, let alone implemented this kind of strategy, it was crucial to keep things simple, jargon-free, and make it completely relevant to their everyday needs.
Helping to channel NMCWatch’s expertise and experience and creating a confident backdrop to the work, has brought a new kind of professional recognition and a seat at the table of potentially critical change to how UK nurses and midwives are regulated more fairly.
James has been phenomenal.
He brings logic and clarity and has helped us get to somewhere we didn’t even know we needed to get to!! He is extremely calm, and observes professionally whilst building a plan to present to you in a way you understand. He is also willing to be flexible and change direction if our needs changed, whilst still bringing his expertise to keep us realistic and our aims achievable. He knows what works and what doesn’t and has a great vision and has mentored me personally to help me work out where I want the organisation to go. It’s constant learning and it’s reassurring to have someone like James by our side.
Cathryn Watters
Founder and CEO
NMCWatch Registrant Care
What it helped changed
Helping to channel NMCWatch’s expertise and experience and nurturing a renewed confidence to their work, has brought professional recognition and a seat at the table of potentially critical change to how UK nurses and midwives are regulated more fairly.
In 2025 the regulator started signposting people to NMCWatch for their specific expertise. NMCWatch are now being invited to bring their experience to the official process of changing regulation to be more empathetic and less confrontational. All this work has increased NMCWatch’s membership to now well over 800 nurses, midwives and allied healthcare professionals.
Ongoing work
A new subscription service for NMCWatch.
The big challenge here is to shift expectations in an audience used to getting stuff for free. As with many small and increasingly critical organisations, in order to survive they need funding. Traditional models don’t work when funders operate with quite rigid criteria. NMCWatch fills a niche that none of these ever quite cover.
Introducing uniqueness
The work in recent months has been to emphasise the uniqueness of NMCWatch. Communicating that their work is not replicated anywhere else helps their audience understand and convert to being paid subscribers.
It’s the age-old dilemma of going from free to paid-for services that many, many organisations have. Starting something in a wave of passionate energy which then needs structure, staff and funding involves understanding what you do, how to communicate this to your audience, and being transparent about costs.
Viva la revoluçion!
nmcwatch.org.uk
My expertise
Brand design, website design (UX deep-dive, SEO, copywriting & editing, illustrations, WordPress build), podcast production, video and photography.
Personal and Group mentoring, organisational strategy, internal training materials, committee chairing.