Voluntary Action, the journal of the Institute for Volunteering Research, has gone online. A subscription (or one-off payment) is required to access the full articles, but abstracts are available without.

http://www.ivr.org.uk/voluntaryaction/.

Capacitybuilders, the body which took over managing the government’s ChangeUp funding in April, has considered a review on the National Hubs produced for it by Jo Durning. The consultation exercise, which ran from mid July to mid August, was largely confined to sector infrastructure bodies - just a handful of frontline organisations are recorded as making a submission. (VolResource found details on the web too late to publicise.)

The Durning report says that the national ChangeUp programme should aim “to do less better, with a stronger focus on users, more integration between the different strands …….., stronger emphasis on celebrating good practice within the sector as well as drawing from outside”. It identifies three main options for delivery of national ChangeUp services to local, sub-regional and regional infrastructure organisations in the voluntary and community sector: 1) Improvement of the present system, 2) a central agency (along the lines of IDeA for local government), or 3) centralisation of commissioning within Capacitybuilders. The second option was rejected at the Capacitybuilders board meeting last week, while they will discuss the implications of the other two at their next meeting on 22nd November. Durning clearly prefers option 3, but not all the hubs are happy with the idea of losing their commissioning powers and being left to “continue as centres of excellence and advisory bodies, with small budgets to enable them to identify and promote good practice.”

Documents (in a mixture of pdf and Word formats) are now available on the Capacitybuilders web site at http://www.capacitybuilders.org.uk/info/story/default.asp?item=7. The ‘Stakeholder Statement’ gives an overall picture, summarising the recommendations and the board decisions - pdf file, 42kb.

Third Sector new item at http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charity_news/full_news.cfm?ID=19922. Volunteering England; NAVCA: http://www.navca.org.uk/news/capacitybuilders.htm.

The six national hubs cover Finance, Workforce Development, Performance Management, Governance, Volunteering, IT. See http://www.hubs.org.uk/page.asp?id=3.

The government’s Action Plan on Social Exclusion, ‘Reaching Out’, was launched on Monday (11th September).

News release at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/newsroom/news_releases/2006/060911_se.asp, or see the Action Plan material at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/social_exclusion_task_force/reaching_out/.

The Eden Project was the first organisation in the UK to offer a permanent mobile ticketing facility. Visitors can receive their ticket instantly via their mobile phone and benefit from fast-track entry.

News release: http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=176273.

Wales umbrella body WCVA has, with professional help, created a web site development package, WebSpring. This aims to make it easy for voluntary organisations to set up their own cost-effective sites.

We haven’t seen any pricing information and there are some unfortunate coding bugs remaining (the sample sites are a bit of a mess when viewed using our usual Firefox settings) but generally the results look good.

See http://www.webspring.org.uk for more.

The National Hubs web site is to publish a monthly digest of news and events from across the six voluntary sector hubs of expertise - http://www.hubs.org.uk/page.asp?id=4.

The new site also has a downloadable guide to what the hubs do and a short glossary (on the About Us page) - http://www.hubs.org.uk/page.asp?id=3.

Citizens Online, which researches and promotes digital inclusion, has revamped its web site to be more accessible, http://www.citizensonline.org.uk.

They’ve also added resources under the banner Everybody Online Hub - step-by-step guides which are designed to support activities such as students mentoring their grandparents or older people in using the internet, or an introduction for parents. http://www.citizensonline.org.uk/EOLhub/toolkits.

Community Involvement Solutions, a supplier of web sites, design and communications services for the sector, has created a series of resource sheets for groups looking for help with web projects.

Current titles, which are reasonably small pdf files, cover key internet technologies, web design standards, purchasing web design and development services. http://www.cismedia.co.uk/resources/.

Placecheck is a method of assessing the qualities of a place, showing what improvements are needed, and focusing people on working together to achieve them. Originally developed by the Urban Design Alliance in the 1990s, it is described at http://www.placecheck.info.

(Highlighted on Bassac enews, http://www.bassac.org.uk/pages/enews.html)

Rethink, the charity tackling severe mental illness, has developed a new local campaigning toolkit available online.

While obviously focused on mental health issues such as local health or social care budgets, much of the material will be relevant to other campaigners too.

The Fundraising Standards Board has delayed its public launch as it wants more charities signed up first.

With less than 100 so far confirmed, the board’s director is confident that they’ll get to 500 for January 2007, the revised start date for the fundraising self-regulation scheme.

See Third Sector front page item at http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charity_news/full_news.cfm?ID=19841, FSB web site at http://www.fsboard.org.uk.

A map of charity shops in Edinburgh, originally intended to encourage city residents to make more use of them, is being used by tourists to track down good value Scottish items. Any scope to extend the concept elsewhere?

The Scotsman news item at http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1310272006.