Blogs

There seems to be plenty of rhetoric around the importance of collaboration in the social purpose sector. Most people think it’s a “good thing” and many organisations will have collaboration, co-operation, openness and partnership written into their mission and...

There’s a charity I know pretty well that swiftly shifted to home working for all their staff when the Covid pandemic started to ramp up. It wasn’t really a problem – a lot of their staff worked from home, at least part of the time, anyway. They worked with...

One of the questions we often ask during an evaluation is “what would you miss if the service wasn’t here”?  Other questions we ask include:  “what would your life be like if the service hadn’t been here for you”?  and “if the service was in a fire, what would you...

Many of the people we speak to in small charities and social enterprises are struggling.  Having been in full battle mode through lockdown, delivering services above and beyond what they normally do for vulnerable clients… there’s no end in sight - its not getting...

The Covid-19 crisis has put, amongst many, many other things, the financial stability of voluntary and community organisations in the spotlight. Good practice means organisations should hold an appropriate level of funds in reserve to help them cope with the...

I read a great analogy around COVID-19, which painted a picture of us all being in the same ‘storm’ but in different places within that storm.  It rang much truer than the “we’re all in this together” statements.  Some are safely sheltering from the storm but perhaps...

We are thinking about all the organisations we work with… and the difficult decisions that are having to be made.  How do you tell your vulnerable clients that they can’t come to the groups that are their lifelines?  How do you explain the situation without scaring...

Funders are great… they enable some fantastic work to take place.  But there seems to have been a trend in recent years of key funders changing their criteria, their focus or their approach.  We appreciate that with austerity and with decreasing incomes for many that...

Am I alone in being increasingly irritated by people who refer to charities they have helped set up as “my charity”? This turn of phrase seems rather self promoting to me. Look what a good hearted, philanthropic and wonderful person I am; I don’t just give to charity...