Bulletin Contents - 10 October 2007

High Peak CVS AGM

An Introduction to the Media – Free MediaTrust Training

Radical Plan to Simplify Gift Aid

Online Hub for ChangeUp

Donors Need Proof of Green Charities' Value

Health and Safety for Disabled People

Company Law Changes from October

Funders Guide to Assessing Organisation Capacity

Youth Boost for Virtual Volunteering

Understanding Collaborating with GoogleDocs

High Peak CVS AGM

Don’t forget, the CVS AGM takes place tomorrow at Whaley Bridge Uniting Church. It looks as if it will be our largest yet. If you are unable to attend, all of the presentations, video, and comment from the day will be available at the special microsite – www.highpeakcvsis5.org.uk. Log on and tell us what you think about our work!

An Introduction to the Media – Free MediaTrust Training

Want to get your groups' message across better?
Struggle to get press releases into the paper?
Then this session is for you!

Delivered by national experts The Media Trust, this 1/2 day training aims to help organisations improve their media and communications skills. It is pitched at an introductory level giving participants the skills and self-confidence to gain positive coverage in the media and to produce better promotional materials.

Monday, 19th November, 1.45pm-4.45pm, Agricultural Business Centre, Bakewell

The event will teach groups:

• how to decide who is their audience
• how to target the relevant media
• what makes a news story
• how to write a press release
• when and how to approach a journalist
• how to build relationship with journalists
• how to prepare for a radio interview, and what to ask beforehand and understand your rights
• how to deal with difficult questions and hostile interviews.

The training programme has an in-built time for delegate participation and for opportunities to ask pertinent questions as well as to learn from one another.

This training is organised by High Peak CVS and will be run by Gaynor Vaughan-Jones, a skilled and experienced media professional of more than 20 years. The session is aimed at charities and voluntary organisations, primarily at the Media Trust’s Improving Reach Project target groups, i.e. Black and Minority Ethnic (BME), Faith, Isolated Rural and Migrant & Refugee.

To book your place (it is FREE!) contact Nicola Dinsdale at High Peak CVS – nicola@highpeakcvs.org.uk or 01663 735 350.

Radical Plan to Simplify Gift Aid

A coalition of sector umbrella bodies has announced that its central proposal to the Government's Gift Aid consultation will be the introduction of a fixed tax reclaim rate for each charity, based on the proportion of voluntary income it receives.

Representatives of the Charity Tax Group, Acevo, the NCVO, the Institute of Fundraising, the Charity Finance Directors’ Group and the National Church Institutions told a press briefing that their suggestion would simplify the complex audit trail necessary for reclaiming Gift Aid and increase the sector’s revenue through charitable tax relief by £400m each year.

Under the new scheme, charities would avoid the laborious process of persuading donors to fill in Gift Aid forms and collecting the completed receipts, listing their donations and submitting all the information for auditing.

Instead, each organisation could agree a fixed rate of reclaim with HM Revenue & Customs on the basis of how much voluntary income it receives each year, as listed in its annual accounts.

Online Hub for ChangeUp

Capacitybuilders is to begin work on an online communications centre that it hopes will act as a hub for all the activities carried out under the ChangeUp infrastructure programme.

The centre will run a website that will draw together information about services at national and regional levels and act as a first point of contact for charities and voluntary groups seeking support from the ChangeUp programme. ChangeUp has been criticised in the past for being disjointed.

Plans for the centre, which will form part of the new-look structure in which the current six national hubs will be replaced by nine national support programmes, are expected to be unveiled in November.

Donors Need Proof of Green Charities' Value

Environmental charities need to better communicate the value of their work if they are to boost their share of charitable grants above its current 2 per cent figure, according to donor information organisation New Philanthropy Capital.

The organisation’s Green Philanthropy report found that only 5 per cent of the £8bn given annually by people in the UK goes to the environmental sector, despite growing public concern about the natural world. In contrast, 18 per cent is given to medical research charities and 12 per cent to charities working with children and young people.

Green Philanthropy says charities often lack the resources to provide evidence of their effectiveness but also calls for charities to give more priority to doing so.

The report also calls on donors to help strengthen the sector’s infrastructure by, for example, supporting networks and forums and exchanging scientific data and practical advice.

Health and Safety for Disabled People

The Health and Safety Executive has new material around health and safety for disabled people at work, including issues around risk assessment, at
http://www.hse.gov.uk/disability/index.htm.

There’s an Easy to Read guide, produced with the Disability Rights Commission, in pdf format, 730kb, from http://www.hse.gov.uk/disability/easyread.pdf.

Company Law Changes from October

Sandy Adirondack’s Legal Update has an overview of the legal changes coming in from 1st October as they apply to companies limited by guarantee, linking through to a summary from Bates Wells and Braithwaite Solicitors.

There are changes in areas such as proxy voting and presentation of annual accounts at AGMs, the register of company members and the statutory duties of company directors.
http://www.sandy-a.co.uk/managing.htm#companiesact-1oct07.

Funders Guide to Assessing Organisation Capacity

A guide has been published to help funders understand how to assess the capacity of an organisation, and how and why funding it effectively is crucial to the organisation’s service delivery and sustainability.

This is a joint production by the Association of Charitable Foundations, UK Workforce Hub and Governance Hub. ‘Is it seaworthy? - Assessing and funding the capacity of voluntary and community organisations’ can be downloaded here (pdf, 504kb).

Youth Boost for Virtual Volunteering

A Virtual Volunteering project has been put together by the Choose Action Alliance (Changemakers, Youth Action Network, Worldwide Volunteering and YouthNet) and supported by v, the youth volunteering charity. It is calling for young people aged 16 to 25 to help an organisation, campaign or individual via the internet or telephone.

See http://www.thesite.org/chooseaction/virtualvolunteering.

Understanding Collaborating with GoogleDocs

A new ‘plain English’ short online video from Commoncraft explains why GoogleDocs is a great way to collaborate on producing material (articles, spreadsheets, presentations) especially compared with email.

Worth a couple of minutes viewing - http://www.commoncraft.com/video-googledocs.