/ December 8, 2016 at 7:22 AM
459 views
Barnet Council has had a campaign running for a couple of years now to achieve 50% recycling of waste by 2016. It was launched on the back of considerable investment and a major revamp of the recycling and waste service…
/ December 2, 2016 at 11:33 AM
188 views
Dismissing Randomised Controlled Trials seems to be an increasingly popular thing to do these days – well, we are living in strange times…Last year Sally Cupitt (Head of NCVO Charities Evaluation Service) asked whether RCTs were the gold standard or…
/ January 20, 2016 at 1:18 PM
1,470 views
Last night I went to a new year party held by the social enterprise the Restart Project and heard about their achievements over the past year and plans for the future. I’ve previously met Restart’s founders, Janet Gunter and Ugo…
/ August 11, 2015 at 4:13 PM
762 views
Recent scandals engulfing large fundraising charities dubious ethics and the collapse of Kids Company following the withdrawal of government funds have put the charity sector in the spotlight. However, things have quickly moved on from the legitimate questions around these…
/ June 9, 2015 at 8:53 AM
575 views
The excellent article by Sally Cupitt – Head of NCVO Charities Evaluation Services – on Randomised Controlled Trials and their use within the voluntary and community sector provides not just an informed explanation of what they are and how they…
/ June 2, 2015 at 4:09 PM
366 views
I couldn’t quite believe it’s been 10 years since CIC’s were created. I suppose the main thing I would say about them is that I have become convinced that they are a useful additional to the governance options for social…
/ April 24, 2015 at 9:03 AM
427 views
A couple of days ago Jake Hayman posted this fascinating post on the widespread flaws among grant making trusts and foundations (and thanks Alice Evans for sharing it). In it he set out his many frustrations with the way that…
/ April 1, 2015 at 1:10 PM
443 views
A charity I’m working with called me yesterday to say that they had just had a call from the telecoms company they have a mobile phone contract with telling them their bill for this month had just gone over £10,000.…
/ February 26, 2015 at 7:37 AM
400 views
As the regulator for the charity sector, the Charity Commission is responsible for ensuring registered charities comply with all the legal requirements placed on them. Charitable status is a privilege that brings with it a host of tax benefits and…
/ February 24, 2015 at 7:52 AM
555 views
Community activist and occasional academic Bob Holman has been (along with my parents) possibly the greatest influence on my professional career. When I first became a chief executive in my 20s he told me to ‘stay radical’. At the time…
/ January 5, 2015 at 6:14 PM
440 views
Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan was quoted in the Independent saying that political parties neglect young voters in favour of targeting older voters. The reasons for this include changing demographics, with more older people and proportionately fewer younger people, and…
/ December 19, 2014 at 1:33 PM
430 views
In a previous post I wrote about the experience of being a ‘professional outsider’ with a role to creatively and positively disrupt normal ways of working. This sparked a really interesting discussion on twitter with Mark Brown and Roxanne Persaud…
/ December 9, 2014 at 10:39 PM
390 views
Former Big Society Network CEO, Steve Moore, posted the second in what he promises will be a ‘series’ of pieces about his reflections on the organisation’s brief existence. Moore is to be applauded for sharing his views on BSN’s demise.…
/ December 9, 2014 at 10:09 AM
452 views
I used to find it easy to answer the question ‘so, what do you do?’. I’d simply reply, I run a charity and that was generally met with ‘oh, how rewarding’….to which I always replied, ‘yes, it’s great, I get…
/ December 3, 2014 at 10:44 AM
453 views
The National Audit Office’s second investigation into funding awarded to the Big Society Network, and its parent body the Society Network Foundation, was published last week. It is peppered with descriptions of Big Society Network’s activity by those who funded…
/ November 28, 2014 at 10:31 AM
483 views
I’m quite a fan of devolution and the idea that local areas (or Nations, if we’re talking in a UK context) should be able to determine their own priorities and aspirations. So you’d think I’d be pretty pleased with the…
/ November 19, 2014 at 9:32 AM
471 views
When former Nesta trustee Liam Black responded to my blog on funding of the Big Society Network by saying that Nesta had been ‘forced’ to fund David Cameron’s favourite charity, there were shockwaves. What had been a sector specific story…
/ November 6, 2014 at 12:20 PM
413 views
The interests of low income consumers are being failed by markets across a wide range of sectors and the State has too often failed to intervene. We should not be under any illusion as to the impact of this market…
/ November 5, 2014 at 7:42 AM
372 views
In a previous post I bemoaned the failure of collective energy purchasing schemes, in particular the Big Switch which is supported with public funds, to deliver financial benefits to consumers. Despite the real potential for consumers to join together to…
/ November 2, 2014 at 7:42 PM
379 views
In a recent piece I quoted a figure that Senscot had published, claiming that over one-third of Unltd’s Millennium Commission funded investments were going to organisations without any form of asset lock. Unltd’s chief executive, Cliff Prior, contacted me following…
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