Small Charity Week (15th-20th June) celebrates and raises awareness of the essential work of small charities (defined as charities and CICs that have an annual turnover under £1.5million).
This year, we’re joining in with the celebrations and running special activities and workshops across the week including:
Photo credit: Lotus Carroll / Source / CC BY-NC-SA
It’s that time of year again when we start thinking about our annual report, a review of how, collectively, we have helped to build caring, vibrant and strong communities where everyone can achieve their potential. I enjoy taking a step back and looking at what small differences I may have made throughout the year, so I’m inviting you to take a glimpse of my personal snapshot of 2014-15 (April-March), supporting small community groups, voluntary organisations, charities and social enterprises.
Photo credit: mkhmarketing / Foter / CC BY
A study published by Lloyds Bank has reported that more than half of charities lack ‘basic digital skills’, especially compared with small business. You can read the full report here.
The study particularly focuses on the lack of understanding about how a web presence can increase donations and other forms of finance, but it also chimes with one of Dudley CVS’s priorities for the forthcoming year and one of the key findings of our recent state of the sector survey – voluntary and community organisations would like some support with telling their stories online.
Being able to demonstrate your impact online, at a time when organisations cannot solely rely on grant-funding alone to survive, might expose your organisation to new sponsors, supporters, crowd-funders, investors, donors, businesses looking to fulfil their corporate social responsibility principles. But the reasons may not be purely financial. Having a web presence can be empowering for your organisation and the people you support; you can run campaigns, dispel myths, inspire people, connect, share and learn.
But what do you think? What do you think about the report? What has an online presence allowed you to do more easily? What are the barriers to getting your organisation on the web? Is it resources, skills in tech and design or anything else? How could we all support each other to grasp new opportunities that the digital world might offer?
I was delighted to see that some of the fabulous voluntary and community groups that we support had been recognised for their diverse achievements at this month’s Mayor’s Civic Awards.
I’ve been following reaction to the recent publication of data by New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) and IPSOS Mori on public perceptions of and trust in charities.
“Trustees are the people in charge of a charity. They play a vital role, volunteering their time and working together to make important decisions about the charity’s work. Trustees’ Week is an annual event to showcase the great work that trustees do and highlight opportunities for people from all walks of life to get involved and make a difference.”
From the Trustees’ Week website
It’s a busy and exciting time here at Dudley CVS as we’re gearing up for our AGM and Volunteer Awards, which will be held on Thursday evening. Within all this preparation and planning, we’ve been working on a new style of annual report that celebrates what we’ve been doing to support our sector and the wonderful people within it and we’re so happy to share it now.
In the beautiful surroundings of Priory Park, a space that itself has excellent facilities for sport, is Priory Park Amateur Boxing Club, a charity that’s always building links within its community to give young people opportunities to excel. I paid the club a visit in the final week of its summer boot camp to see what impact it had had.
Meet some of the staff, volunteers and swimmers from Thomas Pocklington Trust Stourbridge’s project supporting people with sight loss to access sport and physical activity, a piece of work which is not only helping people to feel healthier, it’s also giving participants a new lease of life.
As one of the projects funded by the Improving Physical Activity Fund (mentioned in my previous post), I met with some of the group members, 3 volunteers, Sharon the instructor and project-manager David, to discuss what impact the project has had on them.
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Finding and recruiting new leaders for your community organisation needn’t be as hard as locating the elusive Easter Bunny.
This post briefly looks at how ‘community organisations’ (shorthand for the wide range of organisations that make up our vibrant sector – charities, voluntary organisations, faith groups, sports clubs, social enterprises…) can find and recruit new ‘leaders’ (e.g. trustees, committee members, directors, board members) to keep them diverse, relevant and strong in a changing climate.
Sharing inspiring stories of people doing good stuff in Dudley borough and how we support it
Sharing information and activities for our members
Putting people in the lead to improve lives and communities across the UK.
Supporting people to become more involved, connected and active in their communities
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