Budget 2006 - good or bad for the sector?

Is the freeze in expenditure (in real terms) for the Home Office from next financial year (2007-08) bad news for the voluntary sector? Quite a bit of funding comes through that route including, we think, Futurebuilders and Capacity Builders (launching next week to take over ChangeUp activity). It could come under pressure from competing bids from other Home Office concerns.

Or does the Office of Charity and Third Sector Finance being established in the Treasury mean that funding might be protected or even improved? But when Gordon eventually stops being Chancellor, will interest shrivel?
I’m not going to pretend to have enough political or policy insight to give an answer right now. But sector developments could be about to get even more interesting.

So, there’s to be a new unit set up by the Treasury to coordinate across departments on voluntary sector and social enterprise financial matters.

That’s the Government’s Office of Charity And Third Sector Finance - GOCATS? (OK so there’s a spare F, no rude suggestions please.)

See VoluntaryNews for the real news.

Any regular readers may have noticed the dance around domain names for this blog over the last couple of months. There are reasons behind this madness, one of them being to clear the decks at voluntarynews.org(.uk) so it could be a place to develop our news pages further.

CharityBlog visitors are the first to learn that we are almost there - a couple of facilities we haven’t managed to set up quite how we’d like yet but you can get an idea here. (Basically using the same base as this blog but with extra bells and whistles.)

Reactions please!

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

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!

So whose bright idea was it to put all the Code of Fundraising Practice into one huge 22MB pdf file? Even on a one year old well-spec’d PC my screen went black for some time while it loaded. And it surely must fail any accessibility test. Rather negates Institute of Fundraising distributing a free CD in Third Sector, and presumably elsewhere.

Let’s hope that the self-regulation body understands ‘new media’ a bit better otherwise they could be done under disability legislation!

A ‘new’ sector blog to add to the list shortly:

SCVS (Swansea Council For Voluntary Service) WEBLOGS PILOT
a project to evaluate the use(s) of weblogs in learning, e-learning and, in our case, community development.

Running for 6 months from Sept 05, so take a look quick!

And here’s another involved in the pilot: Torfaen

Welcome to the new incarnation of our blog - previously VolResource Blog. And apologies to the half dozen of you who’ve been reading it since the autumn, as we’ve now moved twice in a month! But a spare slot on our new server and an appropriate web address was too good to miss. Plus we get to play with the newly released version 2 of WordPress, the open source software we’re using.
A good way to start posting to a website entitled CharityBlog is to question their worth. Well, not really. The following leader article in today’s Society Guardian is headed
SocietyGuardian.co.uk Charities are not the answer to everything, and I pretty much go along with the views put by Malcom Dean. Read it for yourself.
One quote: “The most prominent theme pushed by the Tories since the start of the year - voluntary organisations - should be an ideal issue for debate.”

From Community Newswire today (12th Jan):

Britain’s so-called “compensation culture” has left the Scout Association without enough volunteers to run the Scout troops because of fears they might be sued in the event of an accident, charity chiefs have claimed.

Derek Twine, the chief executive of the Scout Association, has told MPs that around 30,000 youngsters are having to wait to join the movement because the threat of litigation is driving away potential Scout leaders.

Speaking to the Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee, which is investigating the impact of litigation on society, Mr Twine said a major concern for Scout leaders was that accidents involving volunteers were seen by some parents as a chance to make money.

More at Community Newswire.