The Finance Hub has commissioned a survey on voluntary organisations’ experiences of local authority contracting, as part of researching current and best practice.

Online responses wanted to 30th November: http://www.financehub.org.uk/get_ready.aspa.

Third Sector reports that new research by Bassac due to be published next year shows that the Charity Commission’s guidelines on campaigning are not hindering smaller community organisations. Instead “the real issue is capacity. These groups often don’t have the skills or the understanding of how to lobby and negotiate”.

http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/News/767917/ (registration required).

OSCR, the Scottish charity regulator, has published Key Facts and Figures gathered from the Scottish Charity Register. There are 23,784 charities with a total income of £10,932,783,575. Two thirds of charities having an annual income of less than £25,000.

More at http://www.oscr.org.uk/NewsItem.aspx?ID=bbe789fe-3df8-4867-ae97-468f558cf74c.

Thursday 15th November was Social Enterprise Day, with a raft of announcements:

– The government’s Business Link agency produced a guide which “aims to explain the reasons why you might consider setting up a social enterprise and the benefits of doing so”.
– A resource pack from Department of Health signposting support and guidance on setting up a social enterprise in the health and social care sector.
– Five think pieces commissioned by the Office of the Third Sector last year were published. They include ‘Social enterprise and social innovation: strategies for the next ten years’, ‘What is the future of social enterprise in ethical markets?’.
– The Office of the Third Sector published an update on progress and achievements to date on its social enterprise action plan. This and more news from OTS.
– The Welsh Assembly Government “is committed to strengthening the framework of financial and asset related support available to new and expanding social enterprises” according to a speech on 15th November. http://new.wales.gov.uk/news/presreleasearchive/1805148/?version=1&lang=en.

London. Governance for Professionals, from ICSA.

This one-day conference has been designed to meet the information needs of the company secretary in a range of non-profit making organisations including charities, social enterprises, and industrial and provident societies. The programme will bring together leading speakers from government, regulatory bodies and leading practitioners providing both theoretical and practical understanding to the challenges introduced by the Charities Act 2006, Companies Act 2006 and the ongoing HM Treasury
review of industrial and provident society legislation.

Delegates will experience a masterclass in governance for professionals that will enable them to put in place the mechanisms required to comply with the changing regulatory framework and enhance best practice in their organisation.

See www.charitysecretariesconference.com.

More copies of the pocket guide ‘Introducing funding and finance’ are now available. Produced for the Finance Hub by the NCVO’s Sustainable Funding Project, the guide includes advice, checklists and a series of exercises that groups and advisers can use to work through the issues involved in developing a sustainable approach to fundraising. To order a free copy call NCVO Publications Tel: 0800 2798 798 or download from our website.

Introductory guides - Funding and Finance

A pack for funding advisers working with new and small to medium-sized voluntary and community organisations and social enterprises. Each of the six guides contain practical information on a specific area of funding or finance, including case studies, tools and signposts to resources to assist organisations in their search for long-term financial sustainability.

Have you been successful in winning Local Authority contracts? If so, SCEDU (Sheffield Community Enterprise Development Unit) would like to hear from you. SCEDU commissioned by the Finance Hub are currently researching what is the current and best practice in third sector contracting with the public sector, and also what the barriers are in gaining Local Authority contracts.

This piece of work will also draw out possible benchmarks to help third sector and public sector organisations learn from what works and what doesn’t. Case studies are being developed, using examples of organisations that have been successful in being awarded 3 year contracts. These will be available in the coming months.

To take part in the survey please click on the following link: 
SCEDU survey on local authority grants
SCEDU - Sheffield Community Enterprise Development Unit

A one day seminar in successful procurement and negotiation, following 4 briefings that have now been published.

The briefings will cover:

• best practice in negotiation
• best practice in tendering/bidding
• best practice in impact reporting
• VAT issues in establishing delivery partnerships and consortia

The seminars will be held by experts in their field and will give you the knowledge and skills to diversify your organisations income revenue, as well as providing the opportunity to explore the sectors need for support and information, comment on briefings and discuss best practice with your peers, commissioners and other third sector staff.

Other dates and places:

More details:

Finance Hub

Acevo booking details

Capacitybuilders has just announced (21st November) the lead organisations it will be working with over the next three years to strengthen national support services for the third sector across England.

The seven workstreams are:

• Campaigning and Advocacy to be led by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations;
• Equalities and Diversity - Women’s Resource Centre;
• Income Generation - Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations;
• Leadership and Governance - NCVO;
• Marketing and Communications - Media Trust;
• Modernising Volunteering - Volunteering England;
• Performance Management - Charities Evaluation Services.

More work will now be done on the remaining two workstreams, Collaboration and Responding to Social Change, to clarify focus and priorities.

See Capacitybuilders, or Plaza Publishing news alert at http://www.plazapublishing.co.uk/hebditchnov21.html.

Last week’s Spending Review Scotland saw a major commitment to the Scottish third sector. A total of £93 million of central government funding over three years includes a new £30 million social investment fund, and £63 million to be allocated to ‘development programmes’.

Read more in Third Force eNews article at http://www.scvo.org.uk/scvo/NewsAndEvents/TFNetArticle.aspx?pid=3787.

The Institute for Volunteering Research and Volunteer Development Scotland are exploring the demand for online resources linked to the Volunteering Impact Assessment Toolkit, which was developed to help organisations undertake their own research.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=g_2feXaDXDW8Bh37K5g4OMBg_3d_3d.

A video on OneClimate.net (an initiative of OneWorld UK) has a go at explaining why it is a good idea to swap carbon-heavy real world flying for Second Life meet-ups (with flying avatars).

Not everyone is convinced that virtual worlds are a good way of exchanging static information though, which it also suggests - http://oneclimate.net/virtual-meeting?island.x=71&island.y=6.

From latest Circuit Rider roundup newsletter (http://www.lasa.org.uk/circuitriders/).