Thirty charities or community groups with new or existing internet projects will benefit from £2,000  and a year’s subscription to TalkTalk with the Innovation in the Community Awards.

Entry is open until28th September, and applications have to be made online. See TalkTalk Awards info.

A draft Reserves Policy for all voluntary and community organisations in Northern Ireland has been developed by a working party including umbrella and government bodies. This offers best practice advice on how the holding of reserves should be understood and justified, with much of the detail based on the Charity Commission’s guidance (but it could be affected by the eventual charities legislation in NI).

Comments invited by 10th September. http://www.nicva.org/index.cfm/section/news/key/draft_reserves_policy.

A guide for voluntary organisations to think through costings for their own organisational development work has been produced by the Workforce and Governance Hubs. It’s not as easy reading for the uninitiated as it might be, but does appear to be quite comprehensive.

Easiest to download ‘Funding and Costing Workforce and Governance Development - A Resource for the Voluntary and Community Sector’ from Governance Hub (pdf 443kb).

Measure for Measure: Assessing the impact of employer supported volunteering. Conference from Volunteering England examines how leading companies measure employer-supported volunteering. At The Mermaid Conference Centre, Blackfriars, London.

Through interactive workshops, keynote speeches and debate, this conference enables delegates to:

• debate with leading thinkers and practitioners on measurement issues
• identify practical examples they can use in their own workplace
• network with fellow professionals

Conference highlights

• A state of the sector report from the three leading agencies measuring the impact of employer-supported volunteering: The Corporate Citizenship Company, Business in the Community and the Institute for Volunteering Research.

• BT won Business in the Community’s prestigious Company of the Year award at the 2007 Awards for Excellence, for its positive impact on society. Adrian Hosford, BT’s Director of CSR, will share with delegates BT’s thorough approach to impact measurement.

• A choice of seven workshops from leading practitioners: Arts & Business, Barclays, Boots, Deloitte, Home-Start, NCH, the British Red Cross, The Corporate Citizenship Company and Volunteer Centre Westminster.

Prices for non-members
£150 + VAT – Non-members, voluntary sector
£180 + VAT – Non-members, public and private sector

Booking forms at www.volunteering.org.uk/whatwedo/events, to be returned by 12th September at the latest.

The New Economics Foundation has published ‘Measuring real value: A DIY guide to Social Return on Investment’ as a way of proving the wider social value created by organisations with a social purpose. It gives guidance on undertaking a rigorous social return on investment (SROI) process and report, and can get a little technical, but nef suggests that how far you take it depends on the depth of analysis required.

It is hoped that expressing value in terms of social return will work well when talking to funders. You need to register to download the pdf (1.41MB) -
http://www.neweconomics.org.uk/gen/z_sys_PublicationDetail.aspx?pid=241.

Race equality will now become part of the remit of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights from when it starts operating (1st October) rather than later, as originally planned.

See Sandy Adirondack’s legal update, http://www.sandy-a.co.uk/employment.htm#cehr, or the interim CEHR site at http://www.cehr.org.uk.

Nonprofit Online News’ Michael Gilbert recommends a list of “essential knowledge management sites” recently produced by unCommon Knowledge blog. Not sector specific and of course with an American flavour but could be worth an explore: http://www.lucasmcdonnell.com/essential-knowledge-management-sites-and-blogs/.

‘Unlocking Innovation: Why citizens hold the key to public service reform’ from think-tank Demos collects essays and analysis from a wide range of public sector experts and practitioners.

Somewhere in the almost 200 pages (pdf is 525kb) is a case study on In Control, a social enterprise that provides social care users with easy and flexible access to individual budgets. http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/unlockinginnovation.

The ability of the voluntary sector to thrive as a public service provider will depend on the quality of leadership, not just policy interventions, according to a new research report from charity chief executives body Acevo and Futurebuilders. ‘

The Future of Commissioning: Leadership Challenges’ focuses on the leadership skills and behaviours required from third sector providers and public sector commissioners to improve public services. More about the report and a link to the download (a large pdf, 2.69MB).

A new research report from NCVO’s Campaigning Effectiveness unit identifies challenges that campaigners face in achieving and sustaining change. ‘Challenges to effectiveness and impact’ is the first in a Campaigning in Focus series.

Download via http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/ce/index.asp, or direct from here (a large pdf, 3.9MB).

The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator has clarified its stance on charities registered in England and Wales which also operate in Scotland and now need to make changes to their constitutions, to comply with Scottish charity law.

OSCR says that, although it has no discretion in applying the ‘charity test’, it will exercise discretion in not taking immediate action against such a body provided it has made an application to be entered in the Scottish Charity Register and confirmed to OSCR’s satisfaction that it intends to take appropriate action within a reasonable timescale. News item.

The Performance Hub is looking for examples of practice to feature in a new guide on user involvement for smaller voluntary organisations.

See http://www.performancehub.org.uk/news.asp?id=931&pageno=1.