Subject: Self -funding development

I feel I have a range of skills and experience in the not for profit sector and would really like to develop this more to take my career to the next stage and potentially work as an interim / consultant.  However, I feel that I need to take some further training to formalise my knowledge and as such would love to attend some training events, which I also think would be a great opportunities to meet with others working in the sector.  However, I'm finding that the vast majority of courses I look into assume that your organisation is paying and charge on this basis.  Given that I'm trying to expand my skills so that I can move on, I will need to self fund these and while I realise it's an investment, the cost really seems prohibitive.  I just wondered how others have taken control of their own development and whether you've found lower cost training options that have been valuable.

I'd also be really interested to know what skills and training people have done that have given them the best "leg up", into the higher levels of charity management.  I'm already a chartered accountant so I don't feel further finance training would be the key for me.