Monthly Archives: January 2013

Could sex for the disabled be a charitable activity?

Sex as a charitable activity? That’s an easy one, surely? The answer must be no. Yet in the past couple of weeks, there have been two stories about organisations that have backed the idea that sector bodies could provide or support the provision of sex to disabled people.

A night at Lord’s with the IoF Partners in Fundraising Awards

A new set of awards by the Institute of Fundraising, the Partners in Fundraising Awards, got off to a good start last night in the hospitality suite at Lord’s cricket ground – not least because of a card sharper who entertained people in the cloakroom queue with some amazing sleight of hand. We never found… Read more »

Dry and delightful? Or just dry and dreary?

Until now I’ve never sought sponsorship for doing stuff for charity – unlike my colleague David Ainsworth, for example, who’s run two marathons for the Motor Neurone Disease Association. That changed this month, however, when I signed up for Cancer Research UK’s Dryathlon for January and gave up “the demon drink”, as my mother, with… Read more »

Heinz or Branston baked beans? My volunteering hinges on the right choice…

Today I’m feeling strangely nervous. A handful of avid readers may remember that almost exactly a year to the day I pledged in a blog to fulfill a long-held desire to start volunteering. Twelve months later, that dream is finally becoming a reality.

I don’t have time for the Big Society

Earlier this week, Sir Stephen Bubb, head of the chief executives body Acevo, delivered another blow to the government’s big society In a letter to David Cameron, the Prime Minister, Bubb pointed out that the concept was “effectively dead” because the government had struggled to communicate it properly or implement it consistently. Bubb’s letter largely… Read more »

Could less popular causes score by comparing themselves with better-funded cousins?

The other day I read something fascinating in a book called Thinking Fast and Slow, the bestseller by a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist called Daniel Kahneman – probably the single most interesting book I’ve ever read about how people think. Here’s what his research has found. If you ask people on the street whether they’ll donate… Read more »