Not every charity has the public profile of Comic Relief or Live 8, but there are ways to boost your income, says Anne Nicholls Child In Need India is a small charity that provides support for poor mothers and children in India. It has an office in the UK with just one paid member of staff, whose main role is fundraising. All other work – marketing and public relations, web development, design, finance, administration and writing fundraising bids – is done by volunteers. The dilemma is that they don’t have the funds to employ professional communications and fundraising staff or run large-scale awareness-raising campaigns. It’s chicken-and-egg. To hit their target Read the Rest

Engaging with employees has never been more important David Mills

Do charities sometimes fail to communicate well enough with their staff? Do bears frequent wooded environments? In times of rapid change, it’s more important than ever that charities get their internal communications right. Consulting with employees on an organisation’s plans, informing staff about a change of strategy, or letting employees know about redundancies all require careful and sensitive planning and execution – not least because charity employees are increasingly recognised as important message-carriers and ‘brand ambassadors’ for their organisations. How charity bosses communicate with their staff will inevitably affect how they will communicate their organisation’s messages. Our live Q&A on internal communications will explore some of the key questions facing Read the Rest

A green gap year could be a big pull for students – especially if it means money off fees, says James Derounian Utter the words “national service” and you are likely to provoke a strong reaction; probably infected by the pervading influence of Dad’s Army, and Spike Milligan’s memoirs about Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall! But why does service have to be militaristic? Why not invite students to undertake an optional peacetime national service, as practised in places like Italy? I’d like to see such an opportunity in the form of a Big Green Gap Year. The Institute for Public Policy Research argued, as far back as 1994, Read the Rest

The white paper on giving fails to explain why people should give their time and money and why it is so crucial The government’s Giving White Paper was released last week. While it contains some good initiatives and ideas, it also raises some serious issues that threaten the government’s vision of a ‘step change’ in giving. Human motivations trump tax incentives and reciprocity The white paper misses the opportunity to state the very real, very human, case for giving and lacks a compelling case for why people should give their time and money. There is much evidence on what motivates people to give, and on the benefits that result, for Read the Rest

Businesses should spare more time for volunteering and charities need to reciprocate equally for effective social corporate partnership Today marks the end of this year’s Volunteer Week, a time when the charity sector celebrates the crucial role volunteers have in social change. But I wonder, has the private sector been celebrating with us? The rise of corporate responsibility means that the private sector has been supporting staff to volunteer for many years. But when it comes to business volunteering it’s important to recognise the difference between a staff activity that is done as a team-building exercise and professional skill sharing that genuinely and effectively helps a charity. There is a Read the Rest

Community manager Elena shares her experience of the principles and challenges of running a community for people affected by autism

A follow up from last month’s Be Good Be Social event in Scotland; Ross’s top ten outtakes from the evening…