www.city-action.org

 

NACVA & The Big Society

The National Association for Voluntary and Community Action has a number of articles and guides to understanding The Big Society. Click here to see listing

 

NEF & Ten Big Questions About The Big Society

The New Economics Foundation has identified ‘Ten Big Questions About The Big Society’, and put together a list of proposals for how concept might work in practice. Click here to read more

 

Red Tape Purge

The Cabinet Office announced on 17 August that red tape would be purged for charities, voluntary groups and social enterprises. Read the full article here

 

---

City Action Community E-Bulletin: August 2010 Edition

The following topics are covered:

 

Funding news

Upcoming events

Corporate Community Involvement in the news

Case studies

Top Tips

Other news

 

Funding news

 

- NatWest have created a Community Fund as part of their Customer Charter. Members of the public can nominate local charities and projects which are making a big difference in their local communities and the fund will be available to support hundreds of local charities and projects across Britain each year. The deadline for the current nomination period is 27^th August 2010.

 

Please visit https://communityfund.natwest.com/Nominate for further details.

 

- Abel Charitable Trust give small grants to projects that support offenders, young people, those with addiction problems and sex industry workers including victims of trafficking. The grants are for groups with an income of less than £500,000 per annum and reserves of no more than 1 year's funding. Application deadlines: 31 October 2010, 30 April 2011.

 

Please visit http://www.abelcharitabletrust.org.uk/grants.html for further details.

 

- For guidance on how to apply for money from trusts, foundations and businesses, please click here.

 

Upcoming events

 

- Proving and Improving Our Worth - Performance Management
Wednesday 13 October 2010, 6.00pm for 6.30pm

Centre for Charity Effectiveness, as part of the ‘Charity Talks’ series

Please visit http://www.cass.city.ac.uk/cce/newsevents/CharityTalks/index.html for further details.

 

- Volunteering England are hosting a conference on Employer Supported Volunteering on 7^th September from 10am-5pm. For full details, please visit the Volunteering England website.

 

Corporate Community Involvement in the news

 

- Volunteering is good for business

An article in City AM on a new report published by the City of London Corporation, which looks at the business benefits of corporate volunteering in the education sector.

 

Case study: partnership between Colt and Friendship Works

 

Colt: Europe’s information delivery platform, enabling its customers to share, process and store their vital business information

Friendship Works: provide mentoring and support to children from vulnerable backgrounds in the UK

 

Colt have a Corporate Social Responsibility Steering Committee that is led by their CEO and they agreed that the charity selected should be in the children and education area, as they felt that this resonated best with their brand. The company were also looking for a charity that was relatively small and local to where they operate in the UK - mainly London- and that had fundraising skills and experience in order to help them engage Colt employees in fundraising activities. Friendship Works were able to quantify the financial benefit they would gain from fundraising - every £3000 helps them support a new child for a year. This was useful in helping Colt put their fundraising efforts into context for employees, making it more measurable and therefore meaningful.

 

Shared goals agreed from the start:

 

1. Awareness raising and employee engagement within Colt: the company wanted to be sure that as many employees as possible were aware of Friendship Works and what they do.

2. Fundraising: set a target of raising £15,000 during 2010 through employee fundraising initiatives and Friendship Works events.

3. Volunteering: committed to offering the charity professional assistance in the areas of IT, marketing and business strategy (Colt employees have 2 volunteering days per year).

 

The company smashed their original fundraising target and decided to increase it to £30k. The funds raised have already made a big difference to the support that Friendship Works is able to provide to children and young people facing disadvantage. The enthusiasm and engagement of Colt staff has raised the profile of the charity within the company, business sector and local community. Friendship Works is also benefiting from the business skills that Colt share with them.

The partnership has enabled Colt employees to use and develop new skills, e.g. taking responsibility for organising an event or initiative, and to also network and work in collaboration with colleagues they do not normally work with. Colt have also been able to access new networks and contacts via Friendship Works.

 

Top Tip

 

Addressing the threat of statutory funding cuts: the following ‘top-tips’ are suggested by www.charity-fundraising.org.uk:

 

·         Analyse the breakdown of your income and consider the potential risks and impact of losing any of your key funding streams;

·         Talk to your commissioners and find out what changes they anticipate;

·         Talk to your service users and make sure you are meeting and exceeding their expectations. If you don’t do so already ensure your service users are engaged in the planning and development, monitoring & evaluation of all of your services;

·         Identify potential changes to future funding that may affect your organisation;

·         Consider how these potential changes will impact on your organisation;

·         Assess the positive changes you can implement now to avert future risks.

 

Other news

 

Helping your organisation focus

Voluntary and community organisations face difficult choices about their future in the months ahead.  It matters more than ever how well they're governed and how effective their strategies are.  Launching into a strategy or governance review can be a major commitment in staff and Trustee time and cost.  To help a wide cross section of voluntary and community bodies, Cass Centre for Charity Effectiveness (Cass CCE) is offering a specific service of scoping days in governance and/or strategy.

 

The scoping day can help your organisation by:

 

·         Surfacing, defining and organising the issues you need to deal with

·         Mapping who needs to be involved and how in engaging with those issues 

·         Establishing how much you want to do in house and how much with expert support, including pro bono assistance

 

Cass CCE provides expert advice and facilitation for the half day session.  Cass CCE charges £850 plus VAT for preparation, facilitation and writing a summary note of the scoping day.  The note will be in a form that can be shared with Trustees and staff.  If you would like to follow up this practical suggestion, please contact Hilary Barnard (hilarybarnard@aol.com) and Ruth Lesirge (ruth.lesirge@btinternet.com).  Both Hilary and Ruth bring many years experience in senior management and consultancy within the sector.

 

 

---