A short online survey seeks to identify if good campaigners (paid or voluntary) need minimum knowledge, skills and attitudes that can be set out as National Occupational Standards.

Commissioned by the Workforce Hub and conducted by BOND and the Campaigning Effectiveness Programme, go to http://www.bond.org.uk/emailings/survey/campaigning/campaignersurvey.htm to complete.

There are two current accounting consultations from the Charity Commission:

- Directions for the Independent Examination of Charity Accounts and associated guidance: a draft for consultation with the sector and practitioners. Deadline 16th November,  http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/enhancingcharities/cc63consintro.asp.

– CC15 Charity Reporting and Accounting: The Essentials - a chance to comment on the new style. This is on style, accessibility and usefulness of the draft publication, not the actual contents. To 21st September, http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/investigations/cc15feedback.asp.

There is a brief chance to comment on outline proposals for five research ‘think pieces’ on the future of social enterprises commissioned by the Office of the Third Sector from leading names in the field.

See their news item before 14th September.

The Childcare Forum has been set up to represent 350,000 childcare providers across the UK by the heads of the Daycare Trust, 4Children, National Childminding Association, National Day Nurseries Association and the Pre-School Learning Alliance.

Children Now news item.

Gerry McGovern’s weekly New Thinking article is often a good read on managing effective online content.

One we particularly liked, as did Nonprofit Online News, is ‘Web redesign is bad strategy’, highlighting that a push for redesign can actually hide a more crucial need to deal with underlying processes and should be the last resort, not the first: http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-07-30-redesign.htm.

Your editor also liked the previous ‘The best websites are useful and ugly’ - http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-07-23-ugly-websites.htm.

Open contribution and editing via online ‘wikis’, according to Nonprofit Online News, “seem to work well when (a) there is a defined topic that’s important to a community of interest and (b) either prestige or network effects create a perceived credibility for the resulting work”.

NON points to a potentially effective US example from the National Center for Charitable Statistics dealing with the important financial reporting document, Form 990. See http://www.nccs2.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page.

A Local Compact Survey conducted by Wales Council for Voluntary Action through county voluntary councils, of local authority and voluntary sector relationships, has produced concerns that Compacts are still making little impact in Wales. That’s the news headline from Third Sector (http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/News/731076/, registration required), but a quick scan of the report shows the picture is a little more complex than that.

Download the document, in Word format 178kb (summary conclusions on page 4).

A new coalition of benevolent charities wants to reach out to a wider community and gain in effectiveness by developing referral relationships with other charities. These charities would be providing services to people who in the course of illness, crisis, old age, disability or sudden events face hardship or social exclusion.

Most of the Benevolence Today partners have an occupational link in the criteria for who qualifies for that charity’s help.

See the new web site at http://www.benevolencetoday.org.

Social Purchasing Portals set up in various areas in Canada are an interesting example of efforts to get everyday business purchasing going in the direction of community suppliers. See http://www.sppcanada.org/canada/index.cfm for more.

(Source: Senscot)

Around 140 voluntary organisations recently attended a workshop run by Birmingham City Council and Digital Birmingham to find out how to get a web site for their group using the new Birmingham Voice web facility. See http://www.e-voice.org.uk/birmingham/.

(Source: PublicTechnology.net)

The Economic and Social Research Council has published ‘From local to global’, which examines the implications of modern communications technology for civil society organisations and other activists and follows from a series of seminars held with NCVO.

Its news headline is “Local campaigns are building transnational movements, but global citizenship remains a challenge” and goes on to say that such technology is “helping to speed up international mobilisation to causes and campaigns and are contributing to changes in governance structures”.

Currently on ESRC front page at http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/index.aspx, or go to the press release.

The Government Funding web site, managed by Directory of Social Change to provide information on central sources of money for the sector, has made a number of updates. These include reflecting the new Department for Children, Schools and Families taking over from Department of Education and Skills, plus the addition of funding programmes from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs.

http://www.governmentfunding.org.uk.