About Wil

Wil Woan formed his own consultancy in January 2015 after spending 12 years working for the Big Lottery Fund.

Wil has worked as an assessor, an outreach officer, a policy lead and a manager of UK wide programmes during his time there and gained first hand experience of understanding what funders want.

Whilst working as an assessor, Wil was responsible for collaborating with key stakeholders across the North West. He was involved in the development of a multimillion bids to the PE and Sport sector (NOPES). An initiative led by the New Opportunities Fund; during this time he was tasked with business planning, sustainability planning, and key delivery models of both revenue and capital grants. Writing reports for a UK committee where the largest project was an £8m facility.

Wil is an experienced public speaker

Wil has experience of speaking at major Conferences, in Parliament for the APPG for heart valve disease, as well as providing the patient voice at Cardiac Networks, MTG, ABHI and World Heart Federation.

Encouraging & supportive

As an outreach officer, he was encouraging, supporting, and ensuring good quality bids were received across the North West

Wil has valuable skills and in depth understanding in ‘what makes a good application’ including tactics on evidencing need, consultation, presenting outcomes, beneficiary involvement and managing business sustainability. He also responsible for regional intelligence which was gathered to support decision making. In order to do this, Wil was required to work with various local, regional, and national strategies and policies.

Best practice & value

Wil also worked on secondment to the Government to work on the £250m Myplace programme.

This included designing best practice and best value for investments into voluntary and community sector. Originally a six month post, this was extended to one year and where he was involved in the respected Aiming High strategy.

Hands-on Involvement

Wil works across the UK supporting small and large voluntary sector organisations

Wil’s policy role back at the Big Lottery Fund led him to hands-on involvement with programme design and development. He created his consultancy in 2015 and is always keen to support groups beyond the writing of the bid, he often supports groups with consultation strategies, data collection and reporting, evaluation plans and social media content.

Heart Valve Voice

In 2016 Wil became CEO of Heart Valve Voice.

Wil was also the Chair of Global Heart Hub’s Valve Council for four years, supporting international organisations in developing their strategies and launching the first global Heart Valve Disease Awareness Week campaign, which is now supporting by over 20 organisations around the world.