Posts Categorized: Uncategorized

Depaul UK’s iHobo app sets a new standard

Charity iPhone apps have until now been like buses: you wait ages, then two come at once. Last week saw the launches of “iHobo” from homelessness charity Depaul UK, and Marie Curie Cancer Care’s “Blooming Great Tea Party”. iHobo, as you may have read, is an “interactive video embedded experiential” application, where iPhone users take… Read more »

Will the new Government stick with the ‘big society’?

At the weekend,  some Tory MPs were complaining anonymously that the big society idea had not gone down well on the doorstep and might even have played a part in denying the Conservatives an overall majority. Today on Radio 4, Tim Montgomerie, who runs the influential Conservative Home blog,  said that the idea had never… Read more »

What the sacked chugger told me

Last week I interviewed the face-to-face fundraiser who was dismissed by development charity EveryChild after he left a folder containing donors’ direct debit details on a street in Norwich city centre.  The incident sparked an investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office, which enforces the Data Protection Act.  But when we met, he had a bigger… Read more »

The Community Allowance scheme could lift many out of poverty. Stalling makes no sense

Several months ago Micheal Pyner, chair of the Development Trusts Association, took to the stage at the national conference of his organisation to launch a bitter polemic against the benefits system in the UK. The system in this country, he said, was not a stepping-stone out of poverty, but a trap which keeps people in…. Read more »

Charities should respect scheduling restrictions on their television ads

The full report explaining the decision by the ASA this week not to uphold five complaints from television viewers about an advert by Care International shines some light on behind-the-scenes to-ing and fro-ing that goes on over scheduling restrictions applied to charity advertising. The watchdog’s report explains how advertising clearance company Clearcast initially approved the… Read more »

Cameron pushed his big society, but his charity audience was not convinced

Yesterday I watched David Cameron give a speech about his big society agenda at a meeting hosted by think tank the Centre for Social Justice. 
 
 Previous announcements by the Conservatives about the idea have been relatively well-received by much of the national press, so I was interested to see how an audience that consisted… Read more »

Is David Cameron about to shelve the ‘big society’?

Headless chickens come to mind as we watch Labour and Conservatives running around in search of the best way to neutralise the Clegg effect. It’s brought the election alive in a slightly disturbing way – might we actually end up with something daring, like scrapping Trident or joining the Euro? Of special interest to the… Read more »

What happened to the big splash on the Compact?

2010 was supposed to be the year of the big push for the Compact.  “Next year is an important time to make a big splash,” said Richard Corden, chief executive of the Commission for the Compact, when the cross-sector fair play agreement was refreshed in December. At the time, the Compact was still reeling from… Read more »

Let the charity tribunal deal with disgruntled volunteers

Hardly a week seems to go by at Third Sector  without us being contacted by some disgruntled volunteer or trustee. The story always runs along similar lines: the volunteers feel they have been badly treated by their charities but have been unable to find any redress other than going to the media. Invariably they have… Read more »

The Charity Commission’s guidance on political campaigning is proving a weak deterrent

The pre-election warning to charities by the Charity Commission chief executive Andrew Hind, telling them “not to engage in any party political activity or leave the charity open to the perception that they might be”, looks like one of those police clampdowns on cyclists riding on pavements: more request than threat. It was always going… Read more »