To Clarence House, home of the HRH the Prince of Wales, for a reception to mark the centenary of Macmillan Cancer Support: there were probably more than 150 people there, ranging from the tough former bankers who now inhabit charity boardrooms to the charity’s staff and major donors. All were slightly a-quiver at the prospect… Read more »
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Giving charity donations as Christmas gifts can be harder than you realise
As Christmas approaches, charities across the UK are embarking on festive fundraising campaigns – often their biggest campaigns of the year. As they do, they may wish to bear in mind a story I heard recently. A friend’s grandmother has taken the laudable decision that, instead of buying Christmas presents for her nearest and dearest… Read more »
Lessons for charities when it comes to philanthropy
There was a refreshing, and in some ways quite surprising, degree of honestly among the philanthropists taking part in a panel discussion to launch the Family Foundations Giving Trends 2011 report this week. Perhaps the most notable presence on the panel was Trevor Pears, a co-founder of the Pears Foundation, which has been playing a… Read more »
Scope’s bond issue is just the start
This week, disability charity Scope announced a £20m bond issue, which is the first significant bond issue by an operational charity. It’s unlikely to be the last. Geoff Burnand, co-founder of Investing for Good, a social investment organisation which worked with Scope to develop the bond, has already said he expects to see several other bond issues in short order,… Read more »
Sir Terry Pratchett hasn’t lost his edge, and his charitable impulse gets stronger
It’s not evident when you meet Terry Pratchett that he’s suffering from Alzheimers: he’s mentally sharp and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with his memory. He’s also just completed one book and is writing two more. But he says he can feel it advancing, making him a little worse month by month. And one of the… Read more »
It’s impossible for schools to have more than tokenistic regard for the poor
It’s a well-known fact that cats always land on their feet, and toast always lands butter-side down. With the obvious result that if you tie a slice of toast to the back of a cat, you create an anti-gravity machine. It’s a bit like the situation that trustees of independent schools find themselves in, following the recent confirmation, via the… Read more »
It’s clear to me that bursaries don’t help people in poverty very much
Friday’s charity tribunal decision on fee-charging schools and public benefit was claimed as a victory by both sides, although it strikes me as a loss for trustees for such schools. One thing which struck me as a victory for everyone was a decided shift away from the idea that schools had to give bursaries to create a public benefit…. Read more »
The sector has a duty to be more open about the problems with charity bag collections
Two things in particular struck me when I was doing research for this week’s feature on charity clothing collection theft and fraud. Firstly, the good news. There does seem to be a genuine attempt by many organisations and bodies to try to tackle the problem in a meaningful way. From the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau to the Trading Standards… Read more »
Impact measurement is the sector subject du jour
Analysing and measuring impact is a hot button for charities at the moment. Everyone seems to wants to know more about it. One piece of evidence for this was the high attendance at a Third Sector conference on the subject yesterday. So many people wanted to come that the event was twice moved to a bigger venue and… Read more »
Experts slam tax relief proposals
There are a lot of consultations taking place at the moment into charity tax reliefs: inheritance tax relief, VAT relief on shared services, relief on gifts of pre-eminent works of art. There seems to be a common thread among all of them. In all cases, sector experts think the proposals are rubbish. Inheritance tax relief… Read more »