Posts By: David Ainsworth

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 »

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 »

Increasingly, we’re hearing that charities are going to have to face up to a “new normal”. In other words, a world in which they have to do more with less. The average charity worker hears from every side that you face year upon year of terrible, lean, depressing times. The world, we hear, will never… Read more »

This week, Third Sector has published an analysis of ATM giving, a system recently created by Link to allow donors to give money to charity at cash machines.

If you’re expecting to increase the income of  the charity sector through fundraising, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Fundraising is becoming a more crowded environment  these days. More and more people are doing it. Last week, a survey showed that university fundraising was growing like billy-o: in ten years, universities have doubled… Read more »

The Charities Aid Foundation proposed, in the wake of yesterday’s Budget, that the suggested Gift Aid reform could raise more than £700m for the sector. They’ve produced some detailed calculations to support this thesis. But I’m not sure they’re right.

Every year, when the Chancellor stands up to speak, you get a sense of a set of dice settling in the cup. Is this going be a good Budget for the voluntary sector? Because despite all the predictions and expectations, it’s pretty much down to a dice roll whether a Budget turns out well.

In the last week, from two very different sources, we’ve had proposals that the charity sector should keep itself to a minimum level of administration costs. The first came from the philanthropist Gina Miller, who’s said the sector should keep its admin spending to below 25 per cent. The second, a bit more worryingly, came… Read more »

Once upon a time there was a great idea for helping the unemployed into work. It was called the Community Allowance, and various well-intentioned people spent years trying to make it happen.

Last week, Chris Grayling told a meeting of the House of Commons justice committee that he wanted contracts in his department’s new payment-by-results probation scheme to be small enough for voluntary sector organisations towin them.