A commissioner is someone with a budget and the responsibility to provide services, who then “purchases” those services from another agency, rather than managing the services themselves. (See: ‘New Public Management’ for the theory or philosophy, and ‘commissioning’ for the practice.)

A funder here may be a donor, or someone who manages other funds, as a commissioner, to provide services (See also commissioning).

See policy and strategy; CEOs and Board members have a degree of autonomy, and a level of responsibility, that differs from frontline and middle manager staff.

NB: ‘Middle’, as used here, may prove too ambiguous a term, covering organisations with few or many levels in the management hierarchy. But here we mean to refer to those who do not have ultimate responsibility for the organisation as a whole, as a CEO or Board member will do.

Those who run a specific service, managing staff, and often dealing with service users (and/or other clients, such as students) face to face.

Those working in a frontline service, of any kind, without broader management or strategic responsibilities.

Usually consultancy is provided to a team or services as a whole, whereas mentoring is support for a particular individual in their role in the organisation; but here one term can stand for both offers.

Unlike a broker, an advocate concentrates primarily on the needs of the individual. In practice, many advocacy services and roles DO lead to the advocate have views on how services actually operate, and how they should change, and will be listened to; so the distinction may not be clear-cut..

Mentoring is a more specific and mutually agreed support relationship than befriending, which is more informal.

A supporter of any service or approach will be someone with no other more formal role.