Category Archives: Sector Developments

Skimming the current (April) issue of NCVO’s Voluntary Sector magazine, which has a focus on Campaigning, I was intrigued by a quote: “Many people forget that campaigning is a relatively new discipline. We need to foster credibility and legitimacy.”

This is from Chris Stalker, who is to head up NCVO’s new Campaigning Effectiveness Programme, launching in May. My immediate reaction was a thought that the Chartist Movement, trade unions, anti-slavery campaigns and more date back to early 19th Century if not before. But maybe I need a better understanding of what a ‘discipline’ is in this context – perhaps it means a professional career option?

Having been involved in a variety of campaigns in my time, I can’t say I look forward to the passion and excitement of volunteer-led campaigns being sanitised by respectability from a “10 week certificated course” and other developments. But perhaps I’m just showing my age (not quite an ageing hippy).

The branding survey being run for the new youth volunteering charity following on from the Russell Commision is clearly after under 25s, and doesn’t warrant a mention on VoluntaryNews. But some readers may be interested in the weird and wonderful questions.

I gave up at the first page of ‘real’ questions, asking views on ‘words’ like saint, V., inc., mustard. Some on the volunteering professionals list UKVPM got a bit further before deciding it was too abstract for them (and wondering if they were in the wrong business!)
See the Flash intro or go direct to the survey.

More comment on the launch event for the national hubs of expertise (Brum, 28th March), roughly in ‘order of appearance’. (Note to Lizzie – I’ll find a news item in here somewhere, I promise.)

Firstly, it was good to be reminded by Chris Pond, the chair of the new CapacityBuilders body, that all ChangeUp funding will go through them in future, rather than the present disjointed affair where the national hubs get dealt with at one level, while regional/local sector infrastructure projects go via Regional Offices with varying understanding, capability and priorities in managing the process. On the other hand it was disappointing that CapacityBuilders itself is having its own launch in the same venue in a few days time, so that Chris couldn’t say anything new here.

Back on Finance Hub, somehow I had missed that this was even further delayed in development than the ICT Hub. It seems unlikely that contracts for work (mainly research) that were only sorted last week can deliver quality results in just 3 months. Most of the sector doesn’t work at that speed, however much certain ‘voices’ for the sector claim, unless it is an absolutely crucial issue.

One quote of note from the governance session (not word for word) “a step change in trustee diversity is needed”, in contrast to most of the other good governance issues.

And from NCVO boss Stuart Etherington’s winding up (or perhaps winding down, as there were some drooping heads): “In part, this (Hubs) programme is devised to re-engineer aspects of the (sector) infrastructure” – a deliberate strategy from NCVO, and that it is crucial that there is a better relationship between national, regional and local ‘capacity’ (we presume he means capacity building organisations, such as NCVO, regional forums and local CVS). These comments were interesting partly because this event was aimed at frontline organisations rather than infrastructure bodies, as supposedly the latter had already been involved and informed. But the many Council of Voluntary Service and other ‘LIOs’ present somewhat undermined that statement.

Yesterday’s Hubs Launch Event in Birmingham was interesting as much for the private conversations as the public messages. A wide variety of frustration and anger came my way from a range of people I spoke to, from concerns from sector suppliers that their business model was being undermined by public funds, to what I guess was annoyance that the brochure invite to “Find out how you can run your organisation more effectively” bore little relation to an event that was more an update and request for views on what the hubs are planning to do. And plenty of comment on wasted money both nationally and in the ‘sub-regional consortia’, although some appeared based on inaccurate information.
The event got off to a bad start for me by the ICT Hub stand offering a free mouse mat, while the others were all providing information. Hardly an encouraging indicator of direction, but perhaps that was because today sees the separate ICT Hub launch event in London.

Enough of the negative. I was impressed by the comprehensive thought and prepation evident in the Governance hub workshop, even if my neighbour reckoned his organisation had already done everything they suggested.

And it was encouraging to learn that the Finance Hub, which had previously seemed to be purely focused on funding issues, was aiming to put resources into supporting existing funding advice networks and develop a community accountancy network. As another participant said, successful funding is also about strategic planning, financial management, monitoring and reporting. A slight shame that this has meant income generation issues are on the back-burner but getting the basics sorted before the ‘sexy’ has got to be right.

Speaking of which, I heard that the word ‘hubber’, which could be a description of someone involved in hubs, means condom in Australia. Anyone want to confirm or deny?

For those not in the know, the 6 national hubs of expertise are: finance, ICT, performance, governance, volunteering and workforce development. See Professional Bodies page on VolResource.

A few key quotes to come in another blog post.

[tags]hubs of expertise, infrastructure, finance, governance, ICT[/tags]

Budget 2006 – good or bad for the sector?

Is the freeze in expenditure (in real terms) for the Home Office from next financial year (2007-08) bad news for the voluntary sector? Quite a bit of funding comes through that route including, we think, Futurebuilders and Capacity Builders (launching next week to take over ChangeUp activity). It could come under pressure from competing bids from other Home Office concerns.

Or does the Office of Charity and Third Sector Finance being established in the Treasury mean that funding might be protected or even improved? But when Gordon eventually stops being Chancellor, will interest shrivel?
I’m not going to pretend to have enough political or policy insight to give an answer right now. But sector developments could be about to get even more interesting.