Posts Categorized: Uncategorized

At the National Council for Voluntary Organisations’ annual conference yesterday, its chief executive Sir Stuart Etherington called for greater transparency about the Work Programme. “It is appalling that voluntary sector organisations are being gagged,” he said, referring to the clauses in some Work Programme contracts that say organisations will “not do anything which may attract… Read more »

Last month, I wrote about my intention to start volunteering and my disappointment at the lack of variety in the roles available. After a prolonged search, I finally found two positions that I thought I could do, and so I contacted the charities. Four weeks passed, with no response.

Last week, my colleague Sophie Hudson wrote a blog about whether giving is rational. I’d like to add my own opinion, which is: sometimes yes, sometimes no. I can see why economists struggle with this question, because economics is about looking after number one. It defines rational, more or less, as “behaving in a way… Read more »

I went to a provocatively-titled Pro Bono Economics lecture this week which asked: “Why do some people give their money away and how can we stop them acting so irrationally?” During the main part of the lecture the former director of the London School of Economics, Sir Howard Davies, gave the audience an informative and… Read more »

Yesterday Michael Lloyd, a retired railwayman from Stroud set off to the High Court to challenge a decision by NHS Gloucestershire to outsource community care to a social enterprise. The basic gist of his argument, and that of Stroud Against the Cuts, the organisation which backed him, seemed to be that the NHS is the… Read more »

It was with some trepidation my new husband David approached me recently to tell me he’d decided to cycle to Barcelona…in nine days. But it was OK – he was doing it for charity. I know him well enough to know that the last bit was not his main motivation. It was the actual crazy,… Read more »

I heard a variety of tales while researching an article about charity volunteers being put on welfare-to-work schemes. Most were related in blunt terms by exasperated-sounding charity employees, and all had worrying implications. It seems that in some cases, charity volunteers who are claiming benefits have been told to stop volunteering in order to complete… Read more »

I have never presumed that the job I write about every day is an easy one to do. But I don’t think that until this year, as I struggle to raise sponsorship for running the London Marathon 2012, I fully appreciated just how hard it must be. I have sat at many fundraising conferences over… Read more »

Last week, this site featured research by Rowena Lewis into the “reinforced glass ceiling” in the voluntary sector, which suggests women are still under-represented at chief executive level – only 46 per cent, out of a workforce of 68 per cent women. Lewis proposes two main reasons why women are under-represented: the motherhood penalty, and… Read more »