Some interesting articles from the latest Public magazine (published by The Guardian), on whether social enterprises are worth shouting about and the implications of greater involvement of the voluntary sector in delivering public services, are available online.

Was third item on Society Guardian home page when we wrote this: http://society.guardian.co.uk - if coming to this late, start at http://society.guardian.co.uk/futureforpublicservices/comment/0,,1866138,00.html (further links at the end of the piece).

The National Care Forum, the body for not-for-profit health and social care providers in the UK, has completed its third annual Personnel Statistics survey. With the forum consisting of mainly large employers, and half of them employing more than a thousand staff, they are hardly typical voluntary organisations. Some 45% of workers leave within 12 months of joining.

http://www.nationalcareforum.org.uk/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=1256.

You may well have noticed already that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was host to Tony Blair’s lecture on social exclusion on Tuesday (5th September). Both a transcript and a video of his speech are online. As well as links to these, JRF also has background papers and a press release linked from http://www.jrf.org.uk/events/poverty%2Dsocial%2Dexclusion/. JRF director Richard Best said afterwards: “I think everyone attending the lecture warmed to the Prime Minister’s positive support for more investment in preventative work in children’s early years. But if parents feel that their children are being labelled as future troublemakers, they may be put off from taking part.”

The minister for social exclusion Pat McFadden, will be answering questions in a ‘webchat’ next Monday (11th September). You can pose them in advance - details at http://www.webchat.pm.gov.uk/webchat.asp.

As part of offering tax-effective giving support services for charities across England, the Institute of Fundraising has produced ‘Making Giving Go Further - The Definitive Guide to Tax-Effective Giving’ as a CD-Rom as well as a web download.

To order the CD (no charge), email: taxback@institute-of-fundraising.org.uk, or see
http://www.institute-of-fundraising.org.uk/teg_intro.shtml for more details. (Site front page at http://www.institute-of-fundraising.org.uk.)

IT analyst firm Gartner has published its annual “hype cycle” for emerging technologies, both on the internet and more general IT. Out-law.com gives it a pretty full rundown at http://www.out-law.com/page-7183. Click on the small graph there to get the full picture - technology trigger, peak of inflated expectations, trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment and plateau of productivity.

Web 2.0 is at the peak, wikis just about to hit the trough bottom. I’m not sure that VOIP has really reached the plateau yet, though.

The Gilbert Center, publishers of Nonprofit Online News in the US, has been working on the idea of getting charitable foundations over there to publish their grantmaking decisions in RSS feeds. This would allow such information to be distributed and aggregated in new ways and make for more informed grant officers, for example.

Surprisingly perhaps, a recent survey of gauging interest in next steps got a high response. An idea for Britain too? See http://news.gilbert.org/RSSGrantsSurvey2006.

A new site, IssueLab at http://www.issuelab.com, aims to be an easily searchable archive of nonprofit research on social issues from across the political spectrum, helping to bring current and historical work to a broader audience.

It is an American production and while it’s not clear whether they are currently looking to be fully international in scope, have some well-known names signed up. There’s an RSS feed and monthly e-newsletter.

The latest issue of The International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law has an article looking at the Canadian experience of implementing its Accord voluntary sector/government agreement compared with the Compact in England.

Written by a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, its more for researchers and academics, but some sector professionals might find something useful in his Policy Implementation Framework approach. http://www.icnl.org/knowledge/ijnl/vol8iss4/special_4.htm.

‘Living Values: A report encouraging boldness in the third sector’ addresses the questions: “What are the values of the third sector, are these values unique to the sector, are these values under threat and what can we do to promote and protect these values?”. Written by Community Links, available in pdf format from http://www.esmeefairbairn.org.uk/grants_reports.html#Living_values.

‘Letting the Future - a celebration of innovative projects for children and young people’ is a booklet intended to inspire voluntary and community groups planning to start projects for youngsters. Again from Community Links, but download from http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/localnetworkfund/.

‘How voluntary and community organisations can help transform public services’, a policy paper from NCVO, can be read on the web or downloaded from http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/policy/index.asp?id=2876.

A survey by RBS/NatWest of almost 300 of the new Community Interest Companies established since July 2005 is featured in the August issue of Social Enterprise.

The in-depth look at the results can be downloaded in pdf format, 55kb, from http://www.socialenterprisemag.co.uk/upload/sem/story/136_document1.pdf, or see the intro at http://www.socialenterprisemag.co.uk/sem/features/detail/index.asp?id=136.

The Aid Workers Network web site, set up to enable aid workers to share practical advice and resources, has been spruced up, with a new discussion forum, easy access to past Exchange articles and advice pages.

http://www.aidworkers.net.

Only Connect, a scheme which enables voluntary and community organisations to explore their ideas for generating income through trading, by visiting others already doing it, is to award 5 bursaries every 3 months. There’s up to £100 visiting expenses plus £150 consultancy fee for the visited organisation.

Next closing date is 8th September. See http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/sfp/?id=2105.