Posts Categorized: Uncategorized

In recent days, both the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph have been on their high horses about charities paying their chief executives more than a £100,000 a year. One Mail columnist worked himself up into a fervour, putting the boot into the “hideous hypocrisy” of the charity fat cats. But I can’t help noticing… Read more »

It might partly be the time of year, but everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon of the Daily Telegraph’s survey of the salaries of chief executives of the big aid charities. First William Shawcross, chair of the Charity Commission, chose to throw fuel on the fire with his remarks about risk to reputation; this brought an… Read more »

Last week’s report into impact measurement by Third Sector Research Centre made interesting reading. The Third Sector Research Centre study concludes that there are growing concerns that funders and commissioners are shaping and dominating approaches to impact measurement in the third sector and expresses concern about a lack of comparability between sectors and “selective presentation” of results by organisations.

Do we need a Fundraising Defence Council to defend the sector’s “right to ask”, as Mark Astarita, the chair of the Institute of Fundraising, proposed at the IoF convention a few weeks ago? We certainly would if some Guardian commentators got their way. One was quoted last year by Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke as saying… Read more »

Our analysis in Third Sector earlier this year indicated that ATM giving is struggling to get off the ground, not least because people fail to understand that the contribution is coming from them and not the bank. How naïve can you get? But leaving that aside in the hope that people will wise up, I… Read more »

It’s been well documented in this blog that I can be a sucker for a good cause, especially ones of the four-legged variety. But this week I was tempted to sign up to another direct debit for a cause I’m not particularly moved by, because of an enticing new proposition I hadn’t come across before. 

My grandmother, who is in her mid-80s, has for the last 20 years volunteered with the Sue Ryder hospice near her home. Once a month the hospice holds a sale of goods donated by the public in its expansive grounds. People queue for nearly an hour before the doors open to get in. It’s so… Read more »

So what’s the difference, really, between eating cows and eating horses? And what about dogs and cats? And the more you think about it, the more likely it is you might want to eat less meat or even stop eating meat altogether.

In the past fortnight, I have written two stories about charities that have come a cropper over unpaid business rates to local authorities. The stories go like this: charity leases premises in ‘hard-to-let’ area for peppercorn rent on flexible terms and then claims the mandatory 80 per cent discount on business rates from the local… Read more »

I ran the Bupa 10k in London on Monday. It was the second time I have taken part in the race but the first time I actually did any prior preparation. Having struggled to run the whole route last year, I set myself the goal of running the whole course and have, over the past… Read more »