The Chancellor’s decision this morning to ditch the plan to impose a cap on tax relief for major donors was the government’s third U-turn in a week – the fourth, if you count the pasty tax and the static caravan tax as separate items. It came as a surprise to me – in fact, I blogged this morning to say I thought it unlikely (though not impossible). I thought the government was going to tough this one out, at least until after the summer’s consultation.

Working on Third Sector means that I talk about charities outside work much more than I ever did previously.

As a consequence, I’ve been on the receiving end of a little hostility, the level of which has surprised me.

You see, I have the gall to donate to animal charities.

I’ve had two experiences in the last week that have made me think hard about the way I donate to charities.

The first followed a donation I made a few weeks back while watching an advert on the TV. The voiceover urged me to make a one-off, £3 donation to the charity by text that would buy a gift for a beneficiary.

In the last week, we’ve seen some calculations from the Charities Aid Foundation and Oxford Economics estimating how much the tax relief cap will cost the charity sector.

At the moment, the Charities Aid Foundation says it will cost £500m. This has been extrapolated by Oxford Economics to a negative cost to society of £1.5bn.

There must be mixed emotions at Samaritans today – the day of the funeral of Claire Squires. Had she lived, her contribution to the charity from her London Marathon run would probably have been a few thousand pounds. Since her death, it has received a windfall of more than a million pounds in the space of a week. Living with good fortune that flows from tragedy is never entirely comfortable. Other charities must envy Samaritans – yet not envy them.

The windfall amounts to about a tenth of Samaritans’ annual income, and comes in that most desirable form – unrestricted funds. There must have been a gnawing temptation to start buying photocopiers and mending the roof. But that was wisely resisted and the money has gone into a special fund that will be spent in consultation with the bereaved family.

Another heartening aspect was the decision by Justgiving not to levy its usual fee on the donations made through Claire’s web page. Donors were urging them to do this, but they could have kept quiet and taken their cut of the windfall. Instead they quickly decided not to do so – a smart PR move as well as an act of generosity.

Fundraisers would love to define and bottle the motivations of this extraordinary episode. But surely it’s something that can’t be engineered or manipulated. It’s just one of those terrible things life throws out, from which some good can perhaps be salvaged.

Several people in the charity sector have taken the opportunity afforded by the cap on charity tax reliefs recently to have a go at the sector, and whether all charities really deserve the reliefs they have.

The first complaint is about the use that charities put their money to. Should you really get tax relief for giving money to the opera, or Eton, rather than paying for essential services provided by the state? Shouldn’t we have one law for charities doing important stuff – helping the disadvantaged – and another for people doing frivolous nice-to-haves – the donkey sanctuaries and whatever?

Last week I interviewed Nick O’Donohoe, chief executive of Big Society Capital, about his targets for the new £600m social lender.

What was really interesting was his view of the sector – one that was predicated on the idea that social enterprises and charities should be delivering more services.

O’Donohoe’s starting point is one that the majority of workers in the sector, I think, would agree with: the charity sector is better than other sectors at supporting vulnerable and disadvantaged people.

I think we have now nailed down the way HM Revenue & Customs thinks its new cap on tax reliefs will work. Firstly, the relief is based on the level of your gift, not the level of tax you paid on that gift. So as soon as your gift hits £50,000, or a quarter of your income, you’re capped.

Secondly, that limit is taken to include Gift Aid. So if you earn less than £200,000, and give £40,001, and the charity claims Gift Aid on that, you’ll be capped.

Last week, I got in touch with HM Revenue & Customs and asked them how their new tax relief cap would work.

This new idea – George Osborne’s only mention of charity in the Budget – means that you can’t claim tax relief on more than a quarter of your income, or £50,000, whichever is higher, and will obviously make it much more expensive to give very large amounts to charity.

This year brought a new name for the annual Social Enterprise UK conference – the Social Enterprise Exchange – and a new venue – Glasgow.

The conference was hosted in partnership with Social Enterprise Scotland, and it appeared as if around half the delegates were from north of the border. As a result, the whole thing seemed to have a slightly different vibe from previous years, as well as different faces.