I think I have found the common thread that unites people who work in volunteering: they love a good debate, but they know it will never lead them to agree. The topic for discussion at Volunteering England’s AGM earlier this week was ‘Volunteering for profit: is it ever ok?’ John Ramsay, head of volunteering at… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Uncategorized
A New Year wish for the social investment bank
So this is Christmas. And with another year over and a new one not yet begun, the pre-Budget report tells of untold riches in dormant accounts to be used to fund a social investment wholesale bank and projects for young people. The latter will be routed through the Big Lottery Fund. I just hope –… Read more »
Angela Smith’s breach could kill the Compact
Sir Bert Massie, Commissioner for the Compact, described it as challenging; others might prefer the word tortuous. But the Compact on relations between Government and the Third Sector in England finally completed its slow metamorphosis from a 160-page document to a 22-page one this week. It was a low-key affair, predictably ignored by the national… Read more »
NGOs owe a debt to amateur bloggers
It’s been five years since the Indian Ocean tsunami. Not long, but an age in terms of online developments. A revolution has occurred between then and now in how NGOs get information to those affected by disasters, and how they report events to the rest of the world. But back in the final days of… Read more »
You think 2009 was bad?
So that was 2009. A year that began with a rather limp recession action plan and a damning National Audit Office report on the Government’s £446m attempts to strengthen the third sector, ended with the appointment of a new job-sharing, on-loan director-general of the Office of the Third Sector and the worst Compact breach in… Read more »
Do we need a charity sector commentariat?
Hooray, hurrah, huzzah! (Is huzzah a word?) I have been asked to blog. Officially. By a proper, bona fide news magazine. Third Sector no less – doughty organ of civil society and recorder of the slings and arrows that befall our collective sector from time to time. Yet brief flush of pride aside, aren’t there… Read more »
Sole trustee arrangements: a recipe for trouble
Public bodies that are sole trustees of charities have cropped up many times in Third Sector and on Thirdsector.co.uk in the past few months. Most recently, the Charity Commission and Department of Health have continued a year-long argument over NHS charities controlled by the hospitals and primary care trusts they are attached to. The answer,… Read more »
Full marks for Pell & Bales
There was a bit of lull in the rugby between England and Argentina – in fact, the whole thing was a bit of a lull – so I didn’t object too much to taking a call from a charity on a Saturday afternoon. And when the young woman said she was calling from “P&B on… Read more »
Nude charity calendars: had enough yet?
Another week, another nude charity calendar. Bright young internet entrepreneurs are the latest to strike coy poses for the London Nude Tech 2010 to raise cash for education charity Take Heart India. Will anyone buy it? Yes, according to the charity’s spokesman Lucian Tarnowski: the calendar is fully expected to raise its… Read more »