THIRD SECTOR AND PUBLIC SECTOR
- editorial skills and portfolio -
Text in the third sector and public sector has to strike a careful balance. Whatever you call your target audience – customers, beneficiaries, users, stakeholders, members – your messaging must engage and motivate, but at the same time accountability and accuracy are crucial. From prospectuses to annual reports and from how-to books to white papers, I can help you to hone your text into an effective and precise document that is consistent with your vision and mission.
Specialist areas include all aspects of charity governance and fundraising, peace processes, and healthcare.
If your’re looking for services for businesses, click here.
Skills and experience
- Over 12 years’ experience editing materials both by charities (e.g. magazines and promotional copy directed at beneficiaries) and for charities (governance, fundraising, legal, financial, management and more)
- Wide experience of adapting to and enhancing each client’s individual voice, message and brand, including harmonising writing by multiple authors
- Both print and digital workflows (familiar with HTML, XML and CSS)
- Adept with various style guides (e.g. APA, Chicago, Guardian, Hart’s Rules and MLA), and can quickly adapt to clients’ house styles or develop a bespoke style guide from scratch
- Familiar with variants of English including British and American
- Considerable experience with highly illustrated and technical books and reports
- Dexterity with referencing: can convert between systems, research missing information and implement stylistic consistency
- Practised at working with authors across disciplines, cultures, languages and language abilities
- Extensive experience coordinating with suppliers (freelance and non) around the world: I can suggest suppliers or work with your existing network (for project management)
Services
Copyediting
Proofreading
Developmental editing
Line editing
Editorial project management
What my clients and colleagues say
Thank you for the extremely detailed work you do on our reports. You not only make the text grammatically correct but you also improve the quality of the report with your thorough comments and questions for the authors. Also the check of the endnotes is very thorough and improves our work. We highly appreciate the commitment you reflect by sending queries during the editing process so that you can apply decisions to the entire text, and your effort to accommodate our challenging deadlines.
- Margarida Ferro, Flemish Peace Institute
Hazel is an exceptional editor. She has an incredible eye for detail and makes suggestions for cuts and amendments to the texts which vastly improve the flow and strength of the prose. Her queries were always thoughtful and considered and have been extremely useful for the authors. This was a complicated project with lots of different elements, but Hazel handled everything in a calm and professional way which made the whole process smooth and stress-free. It's been a pleasure to work with someone as skilled as Hazel. Thank you.
- Emily Pedder, The Academic Edit
Thanks so much for your help over the years – I’ve always been able to send the magazine to the printers with 100% certainty that there will be no typos, howlers or spelling mistakes included thanks to your thorough work on each issue!
- Dom Hall, Content Manager, National Osteoporosis Society
I’d appreciate it if you could pass on my thanks to Hazel for her work on this – it’s been of a consistently high quality and she’s been incredibly helpful throughout the entire process.
- researcher/writer for a charity’s report
You made our work read a million times better so for that I am extremely grateful.
- charity client
Thank you so much for your careful and thorough work on this. Wonderful job.
- charity client
I’ve checked through the proofs and you’ve made everything incredibly clear.
- charity client
Publication types
Portfolio
Subject areas
I work across most areas of charity and public sector writing, but following are some areas in which I have particular experience and expertise:
- Communications with beneficiaries/customers/members/users
- Demographics
- Fundraising
- Governance and trusteeship
- Innovation and ideas
- Learning and education (check out my education services if your organisation produces educational materials)
- Management
- Museums (art, history, curating, fashion)
- Politics
- Religion and faith
- Volunteering
Clients and publishers
Following are some of the clients I have worked with on text either by charities and public sector organisations or about the sector. (Some of my work in this area is confidential, so this is a select list.)
- Behavioural Insights Team
- Commonwealth Exchange
- Directory of Social Change
- Quakers in Britain
- Royal Osteoporosis Society
- University of Gloucestershire
What I’m most proud of
Managing Without Profit, Mike Hudson, 4th edition (Directory of Social Change, 2017)
- Cornerstone text of the charity sector
- Update of previous edition with new text integrated
- Almost 500 pages
- Extensive referencing
- Numerous figures, tables and other features
Other example publications
- Sector Insight: UK Armed Forces Charities (Directory of Social Change and FiMT, 2020)
- Complete Volunteer Management Handbook, Rob Jackson et al. (Directory of Social Change, 2019)
- Osteoporosis News (members’ magazine, National Osteoporosis Society, regular proofreader for eight years)
- Openings to the Infinite Ocean: A Friendly Offering of Hope (2020 Swarthmore Lecture), Tom Shakespeare (Quakers in Britain, 2020)
- Confidential reports by government think tanks and other public sector organisations
