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People can nominate someone they teach, a colleague, a relative or a friend and give them the recognition they deserve for their outstanding learning achievements. Every year, NIACE receives around 1,500 nominations from colleges, workplaces and other adult education providers.

Adult Learners' Week Awards identify people who have used learning to help them transform their lives, often beyond what they ever thought was possible. Awards are also given to innovative projects that provide adults with the opportunity to learn and improve their lives and the lives of their families and communities.

David Hughes, NIACE Chief Executive

"As a lecturer I often feel humbled by the sheer determination of some students to strive to achieve. To these individuals, each setback is merely another challenge to be overcome. I nominated such an outstanding student, Fran Bunce, in 2011. The short video clip of her story in her own words has been used hundreds of times as part of the recruitment process for our computing course and we believe it has helped inspire some non-traditional learners to make that leap of faith and enter higher education."

All awards categories are open to learners living in England only. The closing date for nominations is 5pm, Friday 27 January 2012. For more information about how to nominate for the Adult Learners' Week Awards 2012, visit www.alw.org.uk, email alw@niace.org.uk, or phone the NIACE Adult Learners' Week Team on 0116 204 4200. You can also nominate online.

The newsletter, titled 'New Year resolution and determination', reminds Navca members of all the tools and resources now available to them to help them resist statutory funding cuts, such as the government's own Best Value Statutory Guidance issued last September.

Curley described the guidance, which essentially aims to stop councils from cutting voluntary sector budgets more deeply that they cut their own services, as "powerful - meaning that if it is ignored by your local council it could form the basis of a legal challenge".

He also urges CVSs not to underestimate the importance of their local Compact, reminding them of the Public Law Project's comment in December that any breach of the Compact in the context of the Best Value Guidance could be perceived as a statutory breach "with potential legal consequences".
 
Curley told civilsociety.co.uk that he intended the newsletter to strike a positive new year note, to fire up local CVSs "not to simply whinge about the cuts, but to fight them".
 
Navca is hosting a half-day workshop on 'Using the law to fight the local cuts' in Leeds next week. 

Kevin Curley is retires from Navca later this month.

Source: Civil Society

Joe has a rich and varied background in senior posts having worked as Director of Parliamentary affairs for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Director of Public Affairs at the British Airports Authority, Chief Special Adviser to John Prescott (as Deputy Prime Minister), Director of Policy at the Transport and General Workers Union, and in the 10 Downing St Policy Unit.

Mike Martin MBE, Chair of NAVCA, said:

"After the outstanding contribution of Kevin Curley to the cause of local voluntary action, trustees were looking for a candidate who could bring fresh thinking and new skills to steer NAVCA through the difficult times ahead. With his senior leadership experience in Government, the corporate and not for profit sector we believe we have found just such a person in Joe. Among a strong field of candidates, we were looking for someone who would put the interests of our members and the people they serve at the heart of NAVCA's operations. In addition we sought someone who could work across organisational and political boundaries because partnership is central to our approach. On both counts Joe was completely convincing."

Joe Irvin said:

"I am delighted to be taking up the reins as Chief Executive of NAVCA - one of the most important posts in the voluntary sector. People really value what we do in local voluntary and community action - in health, housing, disability and social care, championing communities, combating poverty and inequality, conserving our heritage and the environment, giving consumer or employment advice, and working with children and young people. But organisations are facing huge challenges in a time of austerity. NAVCA has built a tremendous reputation under Kevin's leadership. It has excellent staff and an impressive set of trustees. I will be putting all my experience and effort into supporting NAVCA's members and ensuring the local voluntary sector's work is recognised and supported."

Please click here to view and download the latest tendering documentation

Applications are now being accepted for Community Grants 2.

Click here to go to the Community Grants page including deadline dates for applications

Grants of £2,000 to £10,000 are available now to voluntary and community organisations in the Humber and South Yorkshire regions who provide learning opportunities that help unemployed people move closer towards a job or training.

Download the 2011-13 Application Form

Download the 2011-13 Guidance Notes

Community Grants are targeted at the following priority groups:

• People in hard-to-reach/deprived communities


• People with disabilities and health conditions


• Lone parents


• People aged 50 and over


• People from ethnic minorities

Community Grants activities included:

• Initial help with Basic Skills


• Taster work experience (including voluntary work)


• Training advice and guidance


• Job search assistance


• Confidence building and personal development


• Debt counselling

Eligibility

• Organisations applying must be not for profit/charity organisations


• Company turnover must not have exceed £300K in the last three years


• Organisations must employ 9 or less staff


• Organisations must not be in DIRECT receipt of ESF Funding (through the SFA)

The Community Grants programme is part funded by the European Union through the European Social Fund and co-financed by the Skills Funding Agency.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact either Scott or Emma on 01482 327438.

The Community Grants programme is part funded by the European Union through the European Social Fund and co-financed by the Skills Funding Agency.

The European Social Fund (ESF) was set up to improve employment opportunities in the European Union and so help raise standards of living. It aims to help people fulfil their potential by giving them better skills and better job prospects.

The 2007-2013 England ESF programme is investing £5 billion over seven years of which £2.5 billion is from the ESF and £2.5 billion is national funding.

The programme is helping people who are unemployed or at a disadvantage in the labour market to find work and develop their skills. By focusing on people who need support the most, it is helping to tackle poverty and promote social mobility. ESF also trains people in work so that they have the skills that businesses need to compete in a global economy.

For more information about the 2007-2013 England ESF programme go to www.dwp.gov.uk/esf

David Miliband, the Labour MP and former foreign secretary, will chair a taskforce on youth unemployment set up by the charity chief executives' body Acevo.

The taskforce will tour the country gathering evidence from charities, academics, businesses and local authorities.

Another member is the Conservative peer Baroness Stedman-Scott, chief executive of the employment charity Tomorrow's People.

It will investigate the role of the voluntary sector in tackling youth unemployment, but will also "look more broadly at potential solutions to the issue", according to a statement from Acevo.

The taskforce will seek evidence from Acevo members and will invite others from the public, private and voluntary sectors to give evidence.

It is today asking charities and social enterprises to submit evidence to six questions about youth unemployment.

The taskforce will hold its first meeting on 13 September and is due to publish its report this winter.

An Acevo spokeswoman said it had been in talks with Miliband, who will not be paid for the role, for several months.

In a statement, the MP for South Shields and former Labour leadership contender, said: "I'm looking forward to talking to third sector organisations, local government, academic experts, businesses, further education institutions and young people so we can develop practical solutions to tackle this crippling problem that is threatening Britain's next generation."

The panel membersannounced so far are: David Miliband MP, Katherine Kerswell, chief executive of Kent County Council, Paul Gregg, economics professor at Bristol University, Baroness Stedman-Scott, chief executive of Tomorrow's People and Jonathan Portes, director of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research.

Source: Third Sector

The chief executives body Acevo has called for voluntary organisations to be given a significant role in the government's new enterprise zones.

The government announced yesterday it had selected 11 geographical areas to become zones, which aim to stimulate local growth and employment. Eleven other zones were selected in a previous round of bidding.

Each zone will benefit from tax breaks, planning concessions and super-fast broadband. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, said they would be "trailblazers for growth, jobs and prosperity throughout the country".

Local enterprise partnerships, which are partnerships between local authorities and businesses, put forward bids.

But Acevo is concerned that some LEPs are failing to involve voluntary organisations and ignoring the role they can play to boost local economies.

"There are LEPs whose engagement with the sector is, in our mind, not good enough," said Ralph Michell, head of policy at Acevo.

"This is all about economic growth and regeneration, and clearly the third sector should have a role in that."

Drawing on All Resources?, a report published by the think tank IPPR North in January, raised doubts about the sector's level of engagement with LEPs.

Source: Third Sector

The Office for Civil Society's total spending is expected to fall from £192m in the current financial year to £74m in 2014/15, according to the Cabinet Office's annual report and accounts.

The accounts, which were published last week, show that departmental spending at the OCS peaked at £227m in 2009/10.

It fell to £192m in 2010/11 and will remain at that figure this year. Spending is forecast to fall to £146m in 2012/13, £82m in 2013/14 and £74m in 2014/15.

This represents a 61 per cent decline in three years, which is higher than most other government departments.

The OCS's administration budget is also expected to shrink from £4m this year to £3m in 2014/15, when the next spending period ends.

The department's main programme cost in 2010/11 was the youth volunteering charity v, which received £47.3m, the accounts show.

V received more in grants than the combined costs of the Grassroots Grants programme, the Targeted Support Fund, the Transition Fund and the strategic partners programme in 2010/11.

An OCS spokeswoman said: "Civil society cannot be immune from reductions in spending."

She said the sum allocated over the current spending period "shows our support in the light of very tight finances".

The higher budgets in 2011/12 and 2012/13 were largely due to the £100m Transition Fund and the pilot stages of the National Citizen Service, she said.

Roberta Blackman-Woods, the shadow minister for civil society, said she was concerned by the figures.

"Cuts of this nature might hinder the delivery of the big society programme and suggest that the government is not fully committed to investing in the voluntary and community sector in the long term," she said.

Source: Third Sector

Sir Ronald Cohen, the founder of private equity firm Apax, will be chair of Big Society Capital on an interim basis. Nick O'Donohoe, the former head of global research at JP Morgan, will be chief executive.

The pair were responsible for drawing up a blueprint for the bank, which received government approval earlier this year, and have been involved in its creation since the early stages.

Cohen, who has previously said he would not chair the bank, said he would act only as interim chair until a permanent appointment could be made.

Big Society Capital will be independent of government. It will be divided into Big Society Capital Ltd, a company limited by shares that will look after the money, and the Big Society Trust, a company limited by guarantee, which will provide oversight of Big Society Capital Ltd but will not have any day-to-day functions.  

The organisation will also create a charitable foundation to receive any profits from its investments, as well as any donations Big Society Capital might receive.

The four high-street banks investing money in the new organisation will have one seat between them on the board of Big Society Capital Ltd and 20 per cent of the voting rights. The trust will hold the other 80 per cent.

The trust board will include a number of figures from the voluntary sector, including Peter Holbrook, chief executive of the Social Enterprise Coalition, and Sir Stephen Bubb, chief executive of chief executives body Acevo, which will rotate its board membership every three years with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

Eventually, Big Society Capital will have access to capital from dormant bank accounts, estimated at £400m, as well as the money from high-street banks. However, it will not have access to these funds until it receives approval from the Financial Services Authority and the European Commission, both of which are expected to take several months.

Until that point the funds will be held by the Big Lottery Fund. The BLF has formed a committee to disburse those funds, which includes its own nominees, O'Donohoe and Cohen, and other members of the Big Society Capital board.

That committee's first investment will be about £1m in the Private Equity Foundation, half of which will be equity in a fund that will make payment-by-results investments in charities supporting disadvantaged young people. The other half will support the PEF to attract other investors into that fund.

Cohen said that he felt that it would take a "10 to 20-year project" before social investment became a fully mature market.

"But we should expect to begin to see results after five years," he said. "We've set criteria against which you can judge our success: the number of organisations existing, their size and their ability to maintain a high level of activity.

"And the total amount of money attracted into the sector should be a multiple of the amount we've invested directly."

Board of Big Society Capital Limited:
- Sir Ronald Cohen, chair (the Portland Trust and Bridges Ventures)
- Nick O' Donohoe, chief executive (formerly JP Morgan)
- Dawn Austwick (Esmée Fairbairn Foundation)
- David Carrington (independent consultant)
- John Kingston (Association of Charitable Foundations)
- Geoff Mulgan (National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts)
- Dai Powell (HCT Group)
- Lady Susan Rice (Lloyds Banking Group)
- Danielle Walker Palmour (Friends Provident Foundation)

Board of the Big Society Trust:
- Sir Richard Lambert (University of Warwick)
- Ian Davis (formerly McKinsey & Co)
- Baroness Pitkeathley (House of Lords)
- David Robinson (Community Links)
- Sir Stephen Bubb (chief executive of Acevo), ex officio, in rotation every three years with NCVO
- Peter Holbrook (chief executive of Social Enterprise Coalition), ex officio
- Gareth Davies (Cabinet Office), ex officio
- Sir Ronald Cohen (Chair of BSC), ex officio

Source: Third Sector

Curley will leave in March 2012, a month after turning 60 years old. NAVCA have begun recruiting his successor, who they hope will be in place by April.

Prior to joining Navca in 2003, he ran councils for voluntary service in Hull, Derby and Leicestershire, was chief executive of brain injury association Headway, and directed volunteer programmes for VSO in Tanzania and Vietnam.

Speaking about his decision, Curley said leading Navca was his dream job, but added: "I chair two charities - Sengwer Aid and the Pickering Family Centre - and want to give them both more time.  I also want to play a part at national level in defending the independence of the local voluntary sector. 

"And I also intend to give some energy to community organisations in Tanzania - where I lived from 1988 to 1992 - supporting sector leaders as they search for international funding."

Mike Martin MBE, chair of Navca, said Curley's leadership had made the organisation "a highly respected national charity which speaks for and effectively supoports local charities and community groups."

Of the future, Martin said: ""In common with many other national charities, Navca faces issues of long term sustainability. As you would expect the new chief executive will be working with the board on these issues.

"However, we believe that the strategy we have set in terms of becoming a more enterprising charity that is less dependent on state funding is the right course."

Source: Civil Society

The Investment and Contract Readiness Fund will be open for three years from April 2012, Nick Hurd, minister for civil society, announced today. The fund, he said, will "create a pipeline of civil society organisations ready to grasp new opportunities".

"They will break down barriers and build expertise in the sector so that it can become a mainstream option for public service delivery. And as the Big Society Bank capitalises the social investment market, finance to grow organisations will become increasingly available," he said.

Government must move further and faster

Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) welcomed the funding but said the government needed "to move further and faster on mainstreaming the concept of social value in its public services plans as a key mechanism for driving improvements in services".

"Helping the sector get contract-ready is positive, but we also need contracts which are ready for the sector," he said.

Hurd has also invited civil society organisations to take part in a new consultation to identify further changes needed to the commissioning process, but Etherington criticised the move while detailed analysis of the Modernising Commissioning Green Paper is yet to be provided.

"While it is positive that the government is engaging with the sector, it is disappointing that another listening exercise is being rolled out whilst we still await detailed analysis of the responses to the Modernising Commissioning Green Paper. Moreover, it strengthens the concern held by many NCVO members that the journey towards open public services outlined in the letter lacks either a clear destination or an estimated time of arrival," said Etherington. 

Over 400 responses to the Modernising Commissioning Green Paper were received. Hurd advised that these were used to inform the Open Public Services White Paper which was published on 11 July. 

Source: Civil Society

The consultation has been published alongside the government response to the Sayce Review, Getting in, staying in and getting on, which makes a number of recommendations about how the Government can deliver more effective specialist disability employment programmes to help more disabled people move into and keep work.

The recommendations range from principles that should govern the design of future disability employment programmes to practical ways in which current programmes can be improved. Recommendations include: the department's disability employment funding should be focused on supporting aspirations for sustainable work and career choices across all types of employment, as for other citizens, in every sector; Access to Work8 should be transformed from being 'the best kept secret in government' to being a recognised passport to successful employment, doubling the number of people helped. Government should improve equity of access, use innovation to create efficiencies, remove unnecessary waste and mobilise the power of peer support; DWP should, by the end of the current Spending Review, have introduced a new model for Remploy, and Government funding should be invested in effective support for individuals; and DWP should commit to ongoing monitoring and continuous review of Work Choice and the Work Programme.

Consultation questions include: as resources are limited, it may not be possible to implement all of the recommended improvements to Access to Work straight away. Which ones do you think should be the priority as funding becomes available? do you agree that any funding released from reforms to specialist disability employment programmes should be used to expand the Access to Work programme?

The consultation will close on 17th October 2011.

The position puts Acevo directly at odds with Navca's take on the subject, as the CVS umbrella body has long argued that grants are vital for the sector.

Sir Stephen had been invited to speak at the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) inquiry into the Big Society, after he had asked MPs for a session to address the criticisms made towards the voluntary sector at a meeting earlier this year.

The meeting, in January, saw charity representatives Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of NCVO, and Thomas Hughes-Hallett, chief executive of Marie Curie Cancer Care, forced to defend the sector's right to campaign and charity chief executives' salaries.

In the PASC session yesterday, Sir Stephen defended charities' involvement in public service delivery, after PASC chair Bernard Jenkins MP accused some charities of being too dependent on public funding.

Sir Stephen argued that charities had delivered public services for centuries:

"It has been agreed that the role of the state is to provide free universal services and pay for them," he said. "But they don't necessarily have to be delivered by the state."

He did, however, say that charities needed to ensure a diversity of funding, and said grants were sometimes "problematic":

"At least with a contract you have set an established relationship with duties on both sides," he said. "Grants are a form of patronage."

Sir Stephen also attempted to convince the committee of the sector's right to campaign, highlighting Shelter as an example.

"Shelter can be a right pain at times," he said. "But the strength of its model is that through service delivery it becomes aware of the problems facing homeless people and can bring this to the table of government when discussing policy."

In response, Conservative MP Robert Halfon argued that Shelter had issued press releases attacking government:

"When the Taxpayers Alliance do it, it is wrong," he said. "So what is the difference?"

Sir Stephen said that the role for charities in campaigning was "crucial":

"Charities can't deliver services for a managerial case," he explained. "Charities want a better place for beneficiaries."

He continued: "Shelter is not aligned to a particular political party, like the Taxpayers Alliance." 

Source: Civil Society

Charity Commission chair Dame Suzi Leather revealed the finding, which comes from soon-to-be-released independent research on charities' experiences in consortia, in a speech at the 'Leading your charity through a time of change' conference in Westminster today.

She said that while being involved in a consortium "can be an excellent way to expand your reach, have more impact and enable precious growth", it is "not easy".

She said: "They involve real financial and reputational risks and they're a very complex governance issue.

"It's hard to imagine how trustees can properly fulfil their duties if they're not party to these decisions."

Source: Civil Society

Community Development Foundation (CDF) will partner with a number of organisations including Charity Award-winning Community Foundation Network (CFN) to deliver the government's £80m Community First programme, the Cabinet Office has announced.

CDF was awarded the contract following a competitive bidding process after successfully delivering the government's four-year Grassroots Grants programme, which ended in March this year. The grantmaker will now deliver a £30m small grants programme and £50m endowment match fund to encourage communities to develop their strengths and funding potential to strengthen their resilience for the future.

A spokeswoman for CDF said that the programme differs from the Grassroots Grants programme as it works as to create "real aspiration for communities to get even more involved" because of the match-funding elements.

Some 800-1000 areas will benefit from the £30m small grants programme, where community groups will be able to apply for grants of up to £30,000, but will be encouraged to match the financial investment with in-kind investment, such as time dedicated to the cause or offering specific expertise.

CDF will work with CFN to raise an additional £100m in communities, which will be matched by the government's £50m endowment. This will provide community groups with future revenue potential through the investment of these funds.

Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd said: "Community First has introduced a new approach by providing grants to neighbourhoods on a matched basis, primarily to encourage the giving of time. The programme offers support to communities to enable them to build more self-reliance and capability to make the changes they want to see in their area. We have committed to making £30m available to targeted neighbourhoods around England to provide financial support for community-led projects and a £50m endowment fund to create a sustainable source of grants for neighbourhood projects in the long term."

New community groups

The Community First programme could encourage new community groups to form, advised the spokeswoman for CDF: "We know from previous experience in the Grassroots Grants programme that new groups do form. For instance 40 per cent of those applying for a Grassroots grant had never applied before," she said.

CDF has gained corporate support from supermarket chain ASDA, which already partners with the Big Society Network on the Your Square Mile programme, to help raise funds in-store and identify local priorities.

CDF will also work closely with Locality to ensure the Community First programme complements the Community Organiser programme, which was set up to train a new generation of community organisers as part ot the Big Society manifesto.

Source: Civil Society

A lot of work has been done on the economic impact of Humber Bridge tolls on business, but very little to show the effects on people's daily lives. NBF has been commissioned to carry out a piece of work looking at the local social impact of the current toll system.

NBF has developed a short survey to help gather that evidence and, whether you use the Humber Bridge regularly or only occasionally, we hope you have five minutes to complete it and tell us your views. 

The survey closes at 5pm on 1^st July 2011.

All replies are confidential and the results will be published on the NBF website

To fill in the survey please click here

The comments were made last week at a Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) meeting on the Big Society, where representatives from the Cabinet Office and a selection of think-tanks gave evidence to MPs on the Big Society.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the RSA, told MPs that the Big Society brand had become "toxic" and repeated the oft-made complaint that it lacked clarity. He added:

"I don't think Number 10 has driven the agenda hard enough. When I worked in Number 10 on public sector reform you had to battle with Whitehall. Number 10 has not fought, now it is having political difficulties."

Andrew Haldenby, director at Reform, said the Big Society was struggling as it had placed too much focus on charities being preferred providers to deliver public services, instead of emphasising the best-value provider:

"Now once a contract is lost to a charity it is seen as a blow to the Big Society, when it should really be about the best-value provider," he said. 

During the meeting it was also suggested that some parts of Whitehall were not engaged with the Big Society, with civil servants being at a loss as to how to implement it. 

Taylor claimed that the Treasury did not even use the phrase 'Big Society', saying staff there were "utterly dismissive of the idea".

Later in the year the PASC intends to cross-examine ministers on how government can take a more direct role in spelling out what the Big Society is.

Source: Civil Society

Sir Ronald revealed the delay at this morning's Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) meeting on the subject.

He told MPs that the matter could take "some months before it is completed", but added that there was an agreement with the Big Lottery Fund to make investments in its place in the meantime.

Chair of the PASC, Bernard Jenkin MP, asked if the situation was frustrating. Sir Ronald said he had gone through the same issue when he set up the social investment company Bridges Ventures. He added: I am confident that we will get state aid exemption for the Big Society Bank from the EU and that, in fact, the EU will turn out to be a big proponent of social investment."

Investment from the high street

During the meeting, Sir Ronald also addressed the ongoing negotiations between the big four high street banks and the government on the proposed  £200m investment in the Big Society Bank, after Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke said a discussion with the Royal Bank of Scotland's Sandy Crombie had revealed he had reservations.

Sir Ronald said there was more room for agreement between the banks and government and stated that an announcement was expected in the next few weeks.

He added that the £200m investment, which will be on commercial terms, would not be at normal market rates and would not necessarily be a typical loan.

At the meeting, Sir Ronald also said it was projected that the Big Society Bank would be cash-positive in seven years. After Jenkins asked if there would be enough deal-flow, he said he was confident that the supply of money would create demand.

However, Sir Ronald admitted it was a challenge to galvanise local engagement after MPs asked whether smaller charities would find it difficult to engage with the Bank.

Sir Ronald also said the Big Society Bank may have to change its name as it wasn't a bank.

Source: Civil Society

A statement from the NCVO said: "Critics have questioned whether the Work Programme will enable voluntary and community sector providers to provide services on a fair and equitable basis when compared with the private sector - in particular, how they will fare in the new payments-by-results environment."

It said the special interest group would be a "vital forum for the charities involved in the Work Programme to share experiences and gather evidence in order to shape and influence policy". The group will also allow the NCVO to relay concerns about the programme to the government, the statement said.

The group will hold regular face-to-face meetings and will also have an online network. Charities that want to be part of the group should contact Paul Winyard, the NCVO's welfare-to-work lead.

In the Work Programme, 289 charities will be subcontractors and two charities will be prime contractors to deliver welfare-to-work services.

The national welfare-to-work charity the Careers Development Group will be a prime contractor in east London and a partnership between the Dublin-based charity the Rehab Group and the support services company Interserve will be a prime contractor in Wales and in south-west England.

In total, there are 40 prime contracts on the programme in 18 regions, which will be run mainly by organisations other than charities. Charities including Mencap, Citizen's Advice, the Prince's Trust and Action for Blind People will be involved as subcontractors on the programme.

The charities will be paid on a payment-by-results model, based on the savings to the public purse that result from getting people back into work. The Department for Work and Pensions has estimated that the total value of the programme to contractors will be between £3bn and £5bn over seven years.

Source: Third Sector

The new wording also brings the documents into line with the model constitutions of the new Charitable Incorporated Organisation.

All of the model documents now:

• allow a trustee or connected person to be paid for supplying just goods to the charity (in addition to the statutory power for them to provide services)


• allow a trustee or connected person to be employed or remunerated by the charity subject to getting permission from the Commission


• include the same provisions for addressing conflicts of interests and conflicts of loyalties
  
  
  
  
  


• allow a minority of the trustees to receive financial benefits as beneficiaries (ie where the benefit is money or has a monetary value)


• encourage charity members to resolve internal disputes themselves before resorting to litigation


• make it clear that charities operating substantially in Scotland and/or Northern Ireland must not apply their property for purposes which are not charitable in those countries.

The Commission stated that the new wording in the documents allows charity trustees "to run their charities in a flexible way, subject to a range of controls which reflect sound operational practice".

This is consistent with comments made by Commission chair Dame Suzi Leather at a public meeting of the regulator earlier this month, where she announced that the Commission's new strategy would involve "less hand-holding" of trustees and greater trust that they know best how to run their own organisations.

Source: Civil Society

However, the good news for clients is that in light of our experience to date and to ensure that this limited and finite resource is properly focussed; from 6th June the grant will be made available on an invitation only basis exclusively to those clients who are seeking to borrow from us, with a view to giving their project the best possible start.  Applications already received will be assessed on a case by case basis and you will be contacted in the next few days.

Please note that all of other funds are available as normal and are unaffected by this change.  If you have any queries, or wish to discuss your bid, please do not hesitate to contact us on 0845 140 1400

The Big Lottery Fund has awarded nearly £25m to solicited bids since the beginning of last year, according to figures released on Friday.

Two charity chief executives last week criticised the practice of soliciting bids, under which the BLF invites organisations to apply for funding rather than leaving them to apply for themselves.

The two said it was unfair and lacked transparency. They also questioned the number of awards made to London-based organisations, such as the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, which shares a building with the BLF.

The BLF has the power to solicit bids when it sees fit. Of the £25m awarded this way over the past 18 months, £11.25m has been given in two instalments to Social Finance, a company developing new voluntary sector financial products, including the social impact bond.

The Eden Project has also been solicited twice, on both occasions for its initiative The Big Lunch, an annual national community-building event. It received £4.55m in total.

Other beneficiaries include the Media Trust, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and Your Square Mile.

A BLF spokeswoman said it had solicited 14 awards since the beginning of last year out of 14,000 total grants. A BLF statement said:"We maintain a broad dialogue with the voluntary sector at large about emerging programmes, themes and strategies and occasionally this throws up an opportunity to invest in the delivery of outcomes we are not reaching through our demand-led programmes. 

"We have made no secret of our powers to solicit and it is part of our intelligent funding approach to grasp those opportunities."

Organisations funded by solicited bids

Social Finance £11.25m

Eden Project £4.55m

UnLtd £2.2m

Nesta £2m

Media Trust £1.9

NCVO £842,707

The Young Foundation £822,508

Enterprise UK £250,000

Third Sector Research Centre £198,143

Local Government Improvement and Development £100,000

G4S £48,918

Source: Third Sector

Please note that due to unprecedented demand for the Adult & Community Learning Fund 2011, Humber Learning Consortium is unable to act as partner to any further organisations wishing to apply to this programme.

The Local Infrastructure Fund will get the lion's share of the government's financial commitment to initiatives aimed at boosting the giving of time and money to charities.  This fund, to be delivered by the Big Lottery Fund, will "help both general and volunteering infrastructure organisations to modernise and improve the relevance of their services" to frontline organisations.  This was one of the key recommendations from the NCVO's Funding Commission.

The government will also allocate £10m to a two-year Social Action Fund that will be used to pilot "game-changing innovations" that have the potential to radically change the ways people give. Challenge prizes of up to £100,000 will be awarded for ideas that encourage people to be more generous, such as, potentially, the best new mobile phone volunteering application.

Charities and social enterprises can claim the prizes for themselves, while winning individuals, businesses, companies and universities can donate the cash to a charity of their choice.

The Social Action Fund will also be used to fund new models that incentivise people to give their time. Spice, a Wales-based reward scheme that gives people vouchers or discounts with local businesses when they volunteer, will receive £400,000 from Nesta and the government to roll out into various areas in England.

The Association of Charitable Foundations and Community Foundation Network will receive £700,000 to develop the Philanthropy UK website to better serve existing and would-be philanthropists, and YouthNet will get £1m over the next two years to expand the Do-it website to provide a national database of volunteering opportunities. In return, YouthNet has agreed to make this data available to other websites and Facebook has already agreed to publish the information on its site.

Giving Summit planned

The government will run a Giving Summit this autumn to bring together developers, mobile providers, charities and community groups to explore opportunities for mobile giving.  At this event the government will launch a year-long national campaign to promote payroll giving to employers, and it also plans to work with payroll giving agencies to look at ways of reducing the numbers of employees that stop their giving when they move jobs.

In an effort to lead by example, ministers have pledged to take part in a 'One Day Challenge', where they commit to volunteer for a charity for one day per year. And the government has already begun providing space within its offices for charities to use; the White Paper invites others to get in touch if they would like to access government buildings.

The new Infrastructure and Social Action Funds will be additional to the £30m Neighbourhood Match Fund and the £50m Endowment Match Challenge that have already been announced under the Community First banner.

The White Paper also confirmed a number of proposals contained in the Giving Green Paper that preceded it, such as round-up-to-a-pound schemes, reductions in red tape around donating and volunteering, and reform of gift aid.

Donating via cashpoint

Alongside the White Paper, the ATM network Link has announced an agreement with the major high-street banks to enable donations to charity at cashpoint machines. The donation option, to be introduced next year, will be offered as a separate option on the ATM screen with customers able to choose from a range of preset values or enter their own amount.  Individual ATM operators will be able to choose which charities will benefit and which of their ATMs will provide the service at all.

Source: Civil Society

The review of the Charities Act 2006 will begin later this year and is likely to finish in 2012, the Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd, has told MPs.

In response to a parliamentary question from Sam Gyimah, the Conservative MP for East Surrey, Hurd said: "A person must be appointed before 8 November 2011 to undertake an independent review of the Charities Act 2006.

"The timetable for the review itself has not been finalised, but the review is likely to take between six and nine months, concluding in 2012."

Hurd said the review would be put before parliament once it had been completed.

The 2006 act contains a requirement that a review of the legislation should be started five years after it was passed.

Source: Third Sector

A former Conservative MP has been appointed as the new chair of the Big Lottery Fund.

Peter Ainsworth, who was the Tory MP for East Surrey between 1992 and 2010, will take on the role for four years from 1 June, the Cabinet Office has announced.

The department has also appointed Nat Sloane, the co-founder and vice-chair of the Impetus Trust, as chair of the BLF's England Committee.

Ainsworth is a founder member of the consultancy the Robertsbridge Group and chair of the charities Plantlife International and the Elgar Foundation.

He held several minor roles in John Major's government between 1992 and 1997, including that of parliamentary private secretary to the disgraced former minister Jonathan Aitken. He also worked as shadow environment secretary and shadow culture secretary while the Conservatives were in opposition.

Ainsworth will be paid £21,600 a year for the job, which is expected to take up an average of six days a month.

He replaces Sir Clive Booth, who completed his term last year. Booth apologised to the Conservative Party in 2008 after he accused it of being "hostile to the voluntary sector" and said he thought it needed a "seminar in elementary arithmetic".

The Cabinet Office said the appointment was made in accordance with the Code of Practice for Ministerial Appointments to Public Bodies. "All appointments are made on merit and political activity plays no part in the selection process," it said.

Sloane, who replaces Sanjay Dighe as chair of the BLF's England Committee, is a member of the Bridges Social Enterprise Fund's Investment Committee and the advisory board for the Social Finance Social Impact Bond.

He has also been appointed for a four-year term, starting on 1 June. He will be paid between £18,000 and £24,000 a year for between six and eight days per month.

In a statement, Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, said: "It's vital that every penny of the annual £600m or so of funding for good causes is used for the greatest impact. The wealth of knowledge and experience Peter and Nat bring will help greatly in meeting this challenge."

Source: Third Sector

John Kingston, founder and director of the social lender Venturesome, has been named chair of the interim investment committee of the Big Society Bank.

The committee will make initial investments in other social lenders, using money from dormant bank accounts, while the bank is being set up.

The bank will not be able to start operating until it receives approvals from the Financial Services Authority and the European Commission. In the meantime, it will operate through an interim agreement with the Big Lottery Fund.

The other members of the investment committee will be Sir Ronald Cohen and Nick O'Donohoe, who drew up the blueprint for the bank, Dawn Austwick, chief executive of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Anna Southall, interim chair of the Big Lottery Fund, and another as yet unnamed BLF representative.

John Low, chief executive of the Charities Aid Foundation, Venturesome's parent organisation, said: "John's experience and understanding means the interim investment committee will be able to act quickly and with confidence to provide immediate and meaningful support to social investment organisations and their beneficiaries."

Source: Third Sector

Lord Nat Wei has urged Labour to stop "bashing the big society" because it could deter people from getting involved.

Wei, the government's big society adviser, told a Lords debate on the subject on Wednesday that the more politicised a topic becomes, the less people might want to engage with it.

"With this, I must urge the opposition in particular to be more responsible," he said. "Just as Labour's love of spin-doctoring has eroded at times public trust in politics, the danger of bashing the big society may be that people end up wanting to get involved less."

Wei suggested Labour's criticism risked "undermining their own ideals for participation in society" and that it was "advocating a selfish society to protect special interests".

The Labour peer Baroness Pitkeathley responded by saying the big society was not a new invention and that spending cuts were hampering the efforts of infrastructure organisations to support volunteers.

"The danger is that once the support networks for volunteering have disappeared - and many of them are disappearing: we hear horror stories every day - how long will it take to re-establish them?" said Pitkeathley.

Baroness Tyler of Enfield, the Liberal Democrat peer and chief executive of the relationship charity

Relate, said the voluntary sector had been "rather lukewarm" about the big society because the concept wasn't considered to be new.

She said the problem of funding cuts to volunteering needed to be recognised, otherwise "we are in danger of turning the clock back to the 1950s, when virtually all volunteers were middle-aged, middle-class women not participating in paid employment".

Source: Third Sector

The fund, from the Skills Funding Agency and to be administered by NIACE, will contribute to the Government's aspirations for Informal Adult and Community Learning. It will help build the Big Society, through learning to support independence, personal development, mental/physical health and well-being, digital inclusion, democratic engagement, social cohesion and stronger families and communities.

John Hayes, Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, said:

"I really welcome this initiative. Adult and community learning is an extremely important part of our education system, enhancing the lives of individuals and building a better society."

Geoff Russell, Chief Executive of the Skills Funding Agency, said: "Skills should be at the heart of every community and the Government is committed to making that happen with its vision for the Big Society. The Adult and Community Learning Fund will help some of the most disadvantaged groups of adults take their first steps to learning new skills, sparking their interest in learning as a way to improving their prospects."

Peter Lavender, Deputy Chief Executive at NIACE, said: "The Adult and Community Learning Fund is going to help maximise the impact of the Big Society and engage and motivate disadvantaged adults to help them make more of a contribution to their lives, their families and their community. This is exactly what the sector needs. The positive contribution that funds like this can make was proven by the Transformation Fund which helped stimulate new and different opportunities for adults."

"We look forward to hearing from adult learning providers, from the private, public and voluntary sectors, and organisations which reach a whole diversity of adults and communities. The projects will help demonstrate the role adult learning plays in the achievement of a range of the government's wider social policy goals. This might include the resettlement of offenders, inter-generational learning, and support for independent and active later life."

The Adult and Community Learning Fund is offered in two ways - small grants of between £10,000 and £25,000 and larger grants of between £25,000 and £75,000 are available. For bids of £50,000 and over, some additional resources in cash or 'in kind' are expected. All projects should be ready to start by 1 September 2011 and all activity needs to be completed by 31 March 2012.

The closing date for applications is noon on Friday 10 June 2011. More information, including a prospectus and application form can be found online.

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The Work Programme, due to start in June, involves 18 prime contracters, two of which are charities. Around 289 charities are sub-contracted according to the DWP, but a full list has not been released.

Speaking at Cabinet Office questions in the House of Commons yesterday, Maude said government estimated that 30 to 40 per cent of the value of work under the Work Programme will go to the voluntary sector:

"We believe this will be worth in excess of £100m per year," he said, in response to a question on improving access to public contracts for small charities.

Public Services White Paper

Maude was also questioned on delays to the Public Services White Paper by shadow Cabinet Office minister Tessa Jowell.

The Public Service Reform White Paper is proposing the opening up of public services to new providers and bringing in private resource and expertise to support reform.

Jowell said to Maude: "The Public Services White Paper was commissioned last October, to be out in the new year? Has the government given up on it?"

Maude told Jowell the government was still committed to it and it would be "well worth the wait":

"I'm glad you are waiting for it with such excitement," he said. "It will come out this summer. And I'm sure you will be delighted with it."

The Modernising Commissioning Green Paper that was supposed to inform the White Paper, drew loud complaints from the charity sector last year because the consultation period was only for one month and included the Christmas/new year break.

Source: Civil Society

Forty £1million or more donations were made in London in 2009/10 compared with only six in the North East.

The government should therefore boost giving in areas where the private sector is weaker by pledging to match a proportion of business donations for a fixed period.

The report - Can the Big Society be a Fair Society? - argues that areas with a weaker private sector are also where voluntary and community organisations are more reliant on public funding. The proportion of voluntary and community organisations in receipt of public funds is:

• 43 per cent in the North East


• 42 per cent in the North West


• 39 per cent in Yorkshire and Humber


• 38 per cent in the East midlands


• 38 per cent in the West Midlands


• 37 per cent in the South West


• 34 per cent in the East of England


• 33 per cent in London


• 33 per cent in the South East

Spending cuts and a move to greater reliance on business donations could therefore doubly disadvantage organisations in the North unless the government provides innovative forms of finance.

To help vital services offered by voluntary and community organisations survive spending cuts and make the Big Society in their areas flourish, the report recommends:

• the Big Society Bank should offer products that are accessible to small and large organisations and should support a range of forms of finance;


• the Transition Fund should provide 'seed corn' grants to help voluntary and community organisations to become more enterprising to make them more sustainable;


• commissioning should be reviewed so that VCS organisations, social enterprises and service users are involved in identifying need and shaping services;


• a strongly branded local community fund should be established in priority areas, backed by a government pledge to match a proportion of business donations for a fixed period in order to strengthen relationships between the VCS and private sector.

Ed Cox, director of ippr north said:

'Our research shows that the Big Society will not be a fair to the North without changes to government support for philanthropy and charitable giving. Good will is beginning to wear thin as people in the voluntary and community sector try to deal with budget cuts, and organisations in the North cannot turn to big corporate or high value donors to make up the gap as London-based organisations can. We need to target what little money there is to organisations that struggle to find it elsewhere. Less attractive organisations that lack donor appeal or those operating in areas where business or corporate gifts are hard to come by should be a priority.'

The Communities and Local Government department has set aside up to £400,000  for the four areas the government designated as big society 'vanguards' last year.

In a speech made in Liverpool in July, the Prime Minister, David Cameron, announced that Liverpool, Eden Valley in Cumbria, Sutton in south London and Windsor & Maidenhead would each be given an organiser and access to a team of civil servants to help them to set up projects that contributed to the government's big society agenda.

Liverpool City Council has since pulled out of the project, claiming it was not sustainable because cuts to the local authority's budget had forced it to cut funding for the voluntary sector.

Greg Clark, the decentralisation minister, told parliament earlier this week that CLG believed each of the projects would cost about £100,000.

A CLG spokesman was unable to provide figures on how much funding had so far been given to each of the projects, including how much was given to Liverpool before it pulled out of the scheme.

He said the department had set aside up to £400,000 of start-up funding for the four projects combined, based on an assumption that each would need between £50,000 and £100,000, and that this would be allocated to the projects as needed.

The big society vanguard projects include a local group in Cumbria that is attempting to take over its community centre. The project in Liverpool involved recruiting more volunteers to work in the city's museums.

Source: Third Sector

New guidance from the Big Lottery Fund says there will be £100m in the programme this year but demand is increasing

Organisations applying for a Reaching Communities grant from the Big Lottery Fund have a chance of success of less than a 10 per cent.

The figure is contained in new application guidance published this month by the BLF in response to increased demand for funding.

Reaching Communities awards grants of between £10,000 and £500,000 for projects in deprived areas. Public and voluntary sector organisations can apply.

The guidance reveals that in 2010/11 the programme received 5,730 outline proposals asking for a total of more than £1bn. Of these, 1,322 were invited to apply formally and the programme made 500 grants, totalling just under £125m during the year.

A BLF spokeswoman said it had introduced a new applications procedure in 2010 to eliminate more bidders at the outline proposal stage.

She said the programme was planning to award grants totalling at least £100m in 2011/12.

"We are experiencing increased demand for our funding and we expect this to continue because of the changing and more challenging environment in which voluntary and community sector organisations operate," she said.

The guidance says the programme is likely to fund fewer large projects in the future. "We will only consider making grants of more than £300,000 if we think your project is an example of excellent practice," it says.

Source: Third Sector

The commissioning of local public services and the impact on communities and organisations is more important than ever. Huge numbers of people play some role in supporting voluntary and community organisations to navigate this often complex world of local commissioning. There is not always enough information to know where to start, this publication aims to solve that by providing a simple step by step guide to commissioning.

The guide is free to download here or can be ordered from the NAVCA website for £10.

The Social Investment Business plans to launch a series of consortia, involving up to 10,000 charities, to bid for local and national government contracts.

The SIB is currently in advanced negotiations for contracts with a number of large local authorities and expects to announce up to three contracts shortly, according to Ian Charlesworth, its commercial director.

In 2009, the SIB launched 3SC to bid for welfare-to-work contracts. It plans to replicate the model used by the 3SC consortium to win business in other sectors.

Charlesworth said the new organisations would potentially provide services for children, health, education, transport, leisure and offender management.

He said that at first the SIB would plan to tender for and win business, then set up a number of management organisations to run those contracts. The management organisations would then build an appropriate supply chain using a mix of charities.

"It's important that this involves both small local providers, who often have the best ideas for solving these problems, and the large national charities," he said. "The big national charities would need to give up some autonomy.

"We've already built the supply chains that we need to fulfil many of these contracts."

The SIB might create nationwide consortia for each sector, or regional consortia that focus on several sectors, he said.

Each consortium would have its own management arm that could be part of the SIB, but this was still under consideration, he added. Once up and running, those management arms could bid for more business themselves.

Charlesworth said he was also involved in negotiations with two retail banks to develop a product similar to a social impact bond to provide finance for each project.

"We haven't finalised this product yet," he said. "But we hope it will take the social impact bond idea and move it further."

Source: Third Sector Online

HLC keeps a register of organisations that have a desire to work with them on contracts.

Register your interest so HLC know what skills partners have when writing tenders and funding bids.

Visit www.hlc-vol.org/p-reg to register your organisation