So the chancellor has said that he’ll cap the amount you can claim back in tax each year at a quarter of your gross income, or £50,000, whichever is higher.

How will this affect charities?

The first thing to say is that it only applies in a limited number of cases, but those will be the ones involving the biggest donations.

Last week, along with my colleague Gemma Quainton, I went along to a “speedmatching” event for charities that wanted volunteer support for their media strategy.

It was soon obvious that it was surprisingly hard to find a good match between my skills and the needs of small charities.

After my recent blogs on my problems getting started with my new year’s resolution to volunteer, I was asked by the Media Trust to one of its ‘Speedmatching’ events –  you know, speed dating, but for would-be volunteers.

The aim of the event is to put charities that need advice in touch with eager volunteers who are skilled in PR, comms, or journalism.

The past year has seen a lot of stories about charity mergers. A lot more are coming across our desks at Third Sector, and it’s obvious that the financial climate is driving people to think very hard about their independence.

Nonetheless, when you read these stories, it’s clear from the common themes that at least one of several things usually needs to happen for a merger to take place.

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 adverse publicity”  to the Department for Work and Pensions.

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 most likely to allow you to maximise resources”.

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 wide-ranging journey through various economists’ theories and reasearch as to why and how people give to charity.

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 only organisation that ought to provide any health services to anyone.

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, hare-brained challenge of cycling 900-odd miles with three mates in a ridiculously short amount of time that was his real stimulus.