On Friday, I read a short piece by Laurence Demarco, founder of Senscot, the network for social entrepreneurs in Scotland. Demarco – a popular figure in Scottish social enterprise who should probably be better known south of the border – is worried that the government seems determined to widen the definition of social enterprise to… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Uncategorized
The clothes collection scammers have a new tactic
They have strange, fragmented names, such as Hope For Ever or Light And Love. They often claim to be raising cash for orphans in Eastern Europe. The bags and leaflets have weird fluorescent lettering and cheap print that rubs off on your fingers. And there’s always a charity number that can be duly checked and… Read more »
This carrot and stick approach to jobseeker volunteering is confusing for everyone
One of the more surprising details to emerge from the story by Third Sector about Calder UK, the firm that has agreed to pay volunteer centres for using their services as part of its welfare-to-work programme, was its method of finding volunteer placements for jobseekers. The Department for Work and Pensions had made it compulsory… Read more »
Not so looney: Lambeth Council’s bid to become a co-operative could be taken up elsewhere
Last night I went to Lambeth town hall in London for the first of a series of public meetings by the council to discuss its plans to become a co-operative. In practice, the plan means the council will launch a series of pilot projects in which local residents run public services, and will look favourably… Read more »
Should think tanks be charities at all?
There are some senior figures in the Conservative Party who are not very keen on campaigning charities. Oliver Letwin, now Minister of State at the Cabinet Office with the role of providing policy advice to the Prime Minister, was more vocal than most about this before the election. There is a certain irony, then, surrounding… Read more »
Hands up if you understand Gift Aid… most charity employees don’t
One of the main reasons that the voluntary sector only claims a third of the Gift Aid available is because few people understand it well enough. This is not widely discussed, but in my experience it is true. When it comes to how tax relief actually works, the charity sector is an ocean of uncertainty,… Read more »
David Cameron may support local action but what about local government?
I woke this morning to hear charities leading the news. It did not turn out to be quite as interesting as it first seemed. Previews of David Cameron’s comments about the big society contained mainly re-heated announcements, such as setting up a big society bank. But there was some interesting new information, such as the… Read more »
The ideology behind changes to National Lottery funding is sound but the logic isn’t
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport confirmed yesterday what the sector has been expecting for a while: the Big Lottery Fund’s share of National Lottery good cause money will be cut from 50 per cent to 40 per cent and arts, sports and heritage groups will increase their share to 60 per cent. The… Read more »
Charity websites are self-centred and confusing
In the past seven days, I have written two stories reporting that charity websites have been criticised as inaccessible and frustrating to use. The first was on a report by the agency Bluefrog claimed more than half of the UK’s 100 largest charities used hard-to-read design styles on the legacy giving sections of their sites…. Read more »
Quick, savage cuts may be good for the economy but they will damage the voluntary sector
A few weeks ago, Nick Hurd, the new minister for civil society, toured Paddington Development Trust, a charity that provides community services. Afterwards he declared himself well satisfied. The trust, he said, was an “emblem of the big society in action”. Barely a fortnight later Hurd’s colleagues in the Communities and Local Government department stepped… Read more »