Team
Our in-house team of pragmatic, idealistic and creative people
Alan Clayton
CEO
Alan has a twenty-five-year career in purpose driven growth behind him and is still speeding up. He trained as a scientist but has always worked in the creative field, so he can combine precise analytics with emotional energy to create ideas which lead to great change. He is a serial entrepreneur and has worked in more than thirty countries. Clients range from global giants such as UN agencies right through to small, local start-ups, and from business leaders to freelancers and even amateur racing drivers.
nyasha njela
Director, Southern Africa
Originally from Zimbabwe, Nyasha currently resides in South Africa with her family. She started her career as a personal banker and, using her skills in customer relationship management, transitioned to non-profit fundraising when she joined Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Southern Africa.
From the moment that she started her fundraising career, she has not looked back and strongly believes in the power of communities coming together for a bigger social purpose. In her previous position as Head of Fundraising at The Feenix Trust (Feenix), she implemented Great Fundraising and achieved over 600% growth on income in four years.
Nyasha is skilled in developing teams to set up fundraising strategies that include a diversified income portfolio through donor development, - acquisition, retention, relationship building, and donor loyalty. Nyasha believes in building organisational fundraising culture that encourages cross departmental collaboration to meet donor needs, which ultimately leads to serving beneficiaries and achieving its social mission.
Kerry Vandersypen
Client Services Director
Kerry was the very first person to implement ‘Great Fundraising’ while she was at WSPA (The World Society for the Protection of Animals – since renamed as World Animal Protection.) She achieved income increases of hundreds of percent.
Complementing strategic and insight with a very hands on role in framing and creating communications, Kerry is expert at turning ambition into action.
Kerry’s clients always comment on the focus, energy and determination she brings to their teams, with an uncompromising ‘JDI’ approach.
Fiona McPhee
Managing Director, Australia & New Zealand
Fiona joined Revolutionise after a 20 year career in fundraising agencies and data consulting businesses. She has helped drive growth across a plethora of organisations across all sectors.
An evidence based approach allows Fiona to both inspire and reassure on the leadership and strategies required to unlock growth potential within organisations. She also provides the insight to donor behaviour that frames great fundraising communications.
Fiona provides hands-on training, research, consulting, planning, coaching and co-creation projects across all sectors and sizes of organisation.
Kyla Shawyer
Managing Director, North America
Kyla has been leading transformational change in the global nonprofit sector for the past 15 years. In her previous role serving as CEO of the Resource Alliance she brought together a vibrant community of the world’s leading nonprofit organizations, with changemakers from across the social good ecosystem, to share and learn from each other in new and inspiring ways.
Kyla served for 7 years as COO/SVP Global Fundraising & Marketing and later as COO at Operation Smile. She led the global DR fundraising expansion from the US into Canada, Sweden, Italy and Japan, and supported development in country fundraising offices in Latin American, Asia and Europe, creating the organization’s first globally-integrated fundraising, marketing and communications strategy. Through ‘whole organization fundraising’ Kyla quadrupled net revenue and increased the size of the database by 1000% over a period of 5 years.
Her extensive knowledge and work within the social impact sector enables Kyla to drive purpose-driven, transformational culture change projects that unify and ignite positive change for clients.
Tina Hudgins
COO, North America
Tina has more than 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. Her particular expertise lies in helping organizations to drive massive growth. In her previous role as the Senior Director of Fundraising at International Justice Mission (IJM), she grew the supporter sustainer programme by more than 250% in four years. At the same time, she increased mid-value and mass giving programmes by more than 200%.
Tina is skilled in diverse development methods and techniques – be it direct marketing, mid-value and major giving, capital campaigns, events, social media, or digital – and supports teams in a range of ways to drive their fundraising growth. Tina is passionate about creating high-quality individual giving and sustainer programmes, and developing supporter experiences. By seeking to create those ‘WOW’ moments, Tina is committed to helping clients to achieve these moments too.
Maree Daniels
Client Services Director, Australia & New Zealand
Maree has 20 years' experience in fundraising, communications and community engagement. She successfully implemented ‘Great Fundraising’ at her last charity post, leading a spectacular re-launch in Australia.
Her expertise is in connecting fundraising, communications, marketing and brand and bridging the conflicts that can paralyse fundraising.
Prior to joining Revolutionise, Maree drove growth as a consultant at organisations such as PetRescue and Plastic Free July.
Colin Skehan
Director, Europe
Based in Dublin, Colin is well known in Irish fundraising, winning fundraiser of the year in 2018. Most recently he’s helped drive great fundraising at Ireland’s best-known INGO, Trócaire. With Colin’s help, Trócaire has achieved many milestones. Seven-fold growth in direct marketing income and four-fold growth in annual donor recruitment are two highlights. The team also won Ireland’s ‘fundraising team of the year’ award (twice) since he joined.
Colin has a deep desire to understand the creative and psychological forces that move us to action. A seasoned fundraising leader, copywriter, trainer and coach with some of the highest-performing teams in his market, he’s driven to help teams grow financially, professionally and personally.
He’s excited to bring his experience of purpose-driven strategies, and what it takes to execute them, to help Revolutionise’s clients in any way he can.
Howard Lake
Consultant
Howard Lake is a digital fundraising entrepreneur, and has been since the mid-90s when he was pretty much the first of the breed. He publishes UK Fundraising (fundraising.co.uk), the news and community site for fundraisers, having worked as a fundraiser at Oxfam, Afghanaid and Amnesty International UK.
He wrote the world's first book on digital fundraising, co-founded learning and recruitment service Utopy, created the Fundraising Camp event series and chairs the CIOF Fundraising Awards judging panel.
Howard provides inspiration, education and design services across the whole portfolio and of course has a particular role in advising on the role of digital in driving growth.
Malene Fregil
Seminar Designer
Malene has had a career in non-profit development following an education in ethnography and cultural development for the University of Copenhagen.
There is academic theory and research behind everything we do and when it comes to teaching and seminar design, this is provided by Malene. She sees connections, patterns and solutions in complex situations.
Her expertise is in designing engaging and effective learning experiences that lead to real-world results.
Connor Seaton
Business Development Manager
Connor is Business Development Manager at Revolutionise with the sole purpose of accelerating business growth through ticketed events. A recent graduate in Business Management, Connor brings a new energy to the team with a great understanding of what it means to be a successful business in the 2020s and a flair for developing long-lasting relationships with clients.
Dave Sturdy
Product Development Director
Dave has been with Revolutionise for several years after a long and illustrious agency career, always specialising in charity and non-profit fundraising. His portfolio of communications has raised many hundreds of millions and won multiple awards. An unusual talent is Dave’s ability to ‘co-create’ – a USP of Revolutionise. This means having the wit and patience to work with client teams, from within and without the fundraising department, to create communications with them and reassure and inspire themselves as they go. Dave is hands-on in developing creative concepts, normally as part of a seminar, and oversees our creative output globally.
John Murdoch
IT Manager
John has over 25 years of experience in the IT sector and data management.
He has developed and implemented the IT systems used across Revolutionise world-wide.
His role at Revolutionise is part time, and in the rest of his time he has a specialism in providing IT support services to small and medium sized charities.
Emma Osborne-Gannon
Group Marketing Director
Emma has over 20 years experience in Marketing and Branding.
Passionate about purpose-led organisations, she thrives working with like-minded people and loves putting ideas into action to make a positive and impactful change.
Bringing her energy to the team, Emma leads on the global brand and event marketing around the world to ensure Revolutionise connects and supports more great fundraising organisations and people who want to accelerate with purpose.