Perhaps oddly, we’ve never had an introduction to the sector on VolResource. There are views on what’s different about working in a voluntary organisation, and various issues are mentioned as part of other topics. But in redesigning the site recently, something other than a list of relevant topics seemed a good idea to help those new to the sector, or newly given responsibility when they had previously been happily working away in the frontline.

We’ve started work on this, but as your editor has some 30 years of sector baggage in the way, your thoughts on what newbies need to know would be great.

Here’s our starter:
- With increasing attention from politicians on what voluntary organisations can deliver, and a higher profile for some charities from recent natural disasters and upcoming new charity law, the ‘operating environment’ is increasingly complex. But most people in most organisations still just need to get on with establishing good practice.

(We’ll make noises about the best being the enemy of the good later.)

The Canadian Charity Village site has this week’s cover story as “Mandatory volunteering”: What’s in a name? As it says, “While “mandatory volunteering” is an oxymoron, it is a growing trend that is worth watching.”  While there are differences between how the sectors work in Canada and UK, much is very similar.

Would we call it ‘community service’ rather than ‘mandatory service’ this side of the pond, and does the high profile of CSV confuse matters further?

Charity Village®NewsWeek: Cover Story

Yesterday’s conference (21st February, London) on Voluntary Sector Databases was an interesting event. Independently organised it sold out and has a waiting list for a repeat event (due in May).
At the start of the event I was wondering why it was so popular, given that databases have been growing in use in the sector for quite a while. Perhaps the answer is that we are now moving on to the second phase of database use - not starting from a blank sheet but having existing systems which have been forced to adapt to do more (and maybe failing), more than one database system being used in different parts of the organisation and now a perceived need to bring information (or rather data) together to improve efficiency, reporting and quite possibly understanding of the services that the charity provides.

Could this be called ‘Database 2.0′ as per ‘Web 2.0′ being the next stage of web use? Hopefully not - the latter term is used to mean different things by different people, often just to look trendy.

I was facilitating a session on Change Management - see the VolResource wiki for some thoughts arising from that, and you can add your own contributions on the issues in selecting, developing and implementing too. But what I’d really like is something more of a cross between a blog like this, where comments are encouraged, and a wiki where usually text is updated by different users in isolation. There’s probably a way of setting up the wiki to do that, but I’m not that familiar with the technology.

In the meantime, please feel free make comments or additions whichever way.

A short item on Fundraising Technology: Starting blogging? is worth a mention, if only for pointing out a couple of blogging Codes of Ethics. The one from Joho the Blog is the more friendly.

A new facility which generates a spoken version of a blog feed has come to my attention (via Ecademy). Currently free, but I guess some advertising or charges will appear if it takes off - feed2podcast.

Listen to the OCB feed.

New research on discussion forums run by public bodies is due to be published next month, according to E-Government Bulletin. This week they have an item anticipating this and, while there aren’t very many examples to chose from, does say that “one of the most impressive examples of best practice with online forums singled out for praise in the new research is Highland Council in Scotland’s sub-site entitled thinknet.”

It’s worth a look, although you could hardly call it the most active forum ever (and it probably requires cookies to work). We can talk.

I’ve set up a new Links category, for examples of web sites from voluntary organisations which make use of open source Content Management Systems. That’s web server software which makes it easy to keep content up-to-date without any technical knowledge. Blogs like WordPress could be seen as a very basic type of Open Source CMS, but we’re thinking more of Drupal, Mambo/Joomla or Plone. (This week I went to a really good seminar on these run by Open Advantage in Birmingham - organisations in the West Midlands region should check them and/or MOST out.)

So far, only American examples found but hopefully British ones to follow.

A two-way exchange on the role and success of social enterprise between China and Britain gets a write up in China Daily: Social enterprises to play bigger role.

I was amazed to find that someone from Lambeth had spent more than 12 minutes having a look at my blog Multiple Sclerosis - MS Research Seeks Help ! Then, even more amazed that my blog is listed as an example to give ideas to charities.

I did it because it was there and free. I joined this blog for the same reasons. Also, I love using languages and writing websites using html, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) or xhtml is very interesting. So, it is part of the new day job. I am a webmaster for two charities: MS Research for the charity helping to fund the MS Unit (I started by setting up a website saying that the MS Unit needed help with the website MS First) and Clover House Therapy. Every week, I help find research news on the internet for the researchers at the MS Research Unit in Bristol. When I have a moment of free time I find out what is new and free for volunteer webmasters.

Now, I wonder how long it took me to find out about the links to my blog from this blog?

Hey, I know, I could give you a link. Oh, it is so enjoyable…

Must say I tend to agree with Adrian Sargeant on the misguided approach to GuideStar UK, in this December article from Professional Fundraising just published online:

Double trouble is on horizon for the sector, Adrian Sargeant on Professional Fundraising.

In it he says “….. I wonder who will use the site. Charities will, as they will want to
identify potential competitors or collaborators, and to look at their
performance. Academics will use the site for research. I suspect some
highervalue donors looking for an organisation in a particular cause
category might use it. But the idea that charity donors will flock to
the site and achieve £6m worth of value is nonsense.”

I’ll declare neutrality on his other point, whether “The sector has scored a huge own goal….. on the [fundraising] self-regulation scheme.” Probably, but then I don’t trust any professional fundraisers myself anyway!