Newry. CO3 is holding its first ever conference for leaders in Northern Ireland’s Voluntary and Community Sector.

See CO3 website for details.

The chief executives of NCVO and Acevo have held an informal meeting with the head of the Learning and Skills Council, to discuss the nature of the problems between the government agency and the sector.

Following this, a formal meeting is to be held between sector representatives and the LSC to look at how working relations can be improved.

NCVO news item at http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/press/releases/?id=6398, or see New Start news.

The summer’s hotbed of government policy announcements around the third sector gets an overview, context and comment in an item by Professor Ian Bruce, Director of Cass Centre for Charity Effectiveness, for its newsletter.

http://www.centreforcharityeffectiveness.org/newsletter_sept07/ianbruce_sept07.htm.

Eiris, the ethical investment research organisation, has created a web site aimed specifically at charities and their supporters, to encourage socially responsible investment.

It covers what SRI is, reasons for doing it and how to go about it - http://www.charitysri.org.

This has been sitting in our pending pile for a few months, but as it has now appeared on Sandy Adirondack’s legal update: At http://www.leasingbusinesspremises.co.uk is a user-friendly guide to a newly updated Code for Leasing Business Premises which gives a useful checklist when negotiating a new lease or a renewal.

Also via Sandy, a new Code of Practice on Service Charges in Commercial Property which aims to make service charges more transparent and fairer - http://www.servicechargecode.co.uk.

Both of these apply to England and Wales.

Futurebuilders England has a ‘sector spotlight article‘ from Julie Court, Acting Regulator of Community Interest Companies, explaining what a CIC is and some of the advantages of this fairly new legal structure for third sector organisations.

A new streamlined application form for charities wishing to register with the Charity Commission will appear on 1st October, and the old style won’t be accepted after 30th November.

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/registration/newregform.asp.

A speech by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears to the Development Trusts Association annual conference last week, as well as covering community asset transfer and participatory budgeting (as pioneered in Brazil), went into more detail on government plans on “how we can make petitions a more effective tool in enabling communities to raise issues with local councils”.

There’s also brief mentions of community land trusts and ‘community anchors’, those organisations which give “a home and support to a whole range of people and groups”.

Speech at http://www.communities.gov.uk/speeches/corporate/confidentcommunities.

Northern Ireland’s Volunteer Development Agency has published its latest research into volunteering, ‘It’s all about Time’, with headline figures that it is worth around £937 million in NI, but volunteering levels have declined since 2001.

More of an overview is on Community NI news page], or download the report summary (pdf, 227kb).

Companies House runs several regional Information Days during the year, to help keep companies on the right side of the law, with daytime or early evening sessions. The next ones are in Edinburgh (25th September) and Dundee (27th September).

Details via http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/seminars.shtml.

The ICT Hub asks “How safe are charity IT systems?” (originally published in VS magazine).

A quick run down of the most important issues and what to do about them. http://www.icthub.org.uk/articles/online_security.html.

In ‘Reviving Anorexic Web Writing’, an article on A List Apart (”for people who make websites”), Amber Simmon believes that we have starved the life out of most web writing with marketing speak and lack of emotional connection.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/revivinganorexicwebwriting.

(Another item from Nonprofit Online News.)