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DEVELOP & GROW Enhancing Community Support - 22/07/10 E-Bulletin

 

The top section of this bulletin gives you news, information and updates relevant to the voluntary & community sector in general, if you would like to view news and information from your local area please either scroll down to the bottom or click on the relevant link:

Free Guide to Social Networking - Updated Link
The Volunteer Centre Brighton and Hove has produced this great, free resource to guide people through the world of social networking. Although this is a guide designed for people working in volunteering organisations, the information is of use to all organisations. Read and download a copy from here.

 

New FREE Online Tool to Simplify Your Daily Administration

Charity Builder UK is a Tennyson Insurance initiative designed to help not-for-profit groups become compliant quickly, easily and free of charge. CBUK will guide you through key areas such as Human Resources and Health & Safety but it doesn't just signpost advice. It actually helps you produce documents such as contracts, policies and job descriptions and because the content is written by lawyers you'll be kept up to date with any changes in legislation. You'll also find practical guides to insurance, governance and volunteering. CBUK is an ideal way of simplifying your daily administration and is a great staff training tool. Register now and benefit from the peace of mind CBUK brings. For more information and to register visit: www.charitybuilderuk.com.

 

National & Regional Training Opportunities

Social media and recruitment: looking beyond the hype, 28 September, 8.30-10am, London. The internet's changed the way that we communicate, and that means it's changed the way we recruit. Now with the rise of social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, there's a huge new opportunity to slash your recruitment costs, reach out to skilled, experienced candidates and promote your organisation's work. Steven Fine, Social Media Director with Prospectus will show you how to get beyond the hype of social media recruitment - and get the results you need. View the flier for the event here. A Practical Approach to Fundraising: maximise your success and explore new income streams - Tuesday 14th September (Taunton) With: Jane Galloway   Cost: £129. This course delivers essential knowledge and skills for those new to fundraising, but will also appeal to more experienced fundraisers who are looking for fresh ideas and to managers and trustees who have an overall responsibility for maximising income - and need a good understanding of fundraising. For further information about all of our open training courses and to make bookings, please visit the website or contact: lauren@cascadetrainingplus.co.uk.

 

‘Winning a Bigger Buck for your Bang” Training Courses

ACEVO are running a training programme called ‘Winning a Bigger Buck for your Bang” which consists of 5 separate events that will provide participants with the wide range of skills that are needed to successfully support third sector organisations to bid and win contracts from the public sector. We also have a special offer where individuals can book onto all courses for the price of 4, and we are also running this series of events in three other regions so you are able to complete the entire package in a manner that best suits you. The topics are: 1. How to successfully approach commissioning and procurement processes – 2nd September 2010. 2. How big is your bang? Setting targets and measuring benefits – 5th October 2010. 3. Influencing commissioning processes – 2nd November 2010. 4. How to negotiate during commissioning processes – 7th December 2010, and 5. Financial planning and budgeting to win – 11th January 2011.

 

Ebulletin from Government Office South West

Click here to view the latest ebulletin issued by the Government Office for the South West (GOSW) Safer Communities. Directorate (SCD). As you may all be aware, as part of the Review of the Government Office Network, the future of the Safer Communities Directorate within GOSW is uncertain at this time. Meanwhile, we wanted to take this opportunity to draw your attention to the following speeches and documents that provide a policy framework for Community Safety. Please click here to read.

 

Continuing to Support the Local Community by Providing New Routes to Recovery

Please read on to find out about exciting news from Bath Area Drugs Advisory Service (BADAS). In order that we can be even more passionate about achieving community goals and  providing new and varied routes to recovery for our service users we have changed our name and refreshed our mission, vision and values. Therefore from today forwards we will be known as New Highway and we Enable Positive Change by providing New Routes to Recovery. We began as Bath Area Drugs Advisory Service (BADAS) in central Bath in 1986 as the local innovator for issuing clean needles to protect against the spread of the HIV epidemic. From that date we have consistently grown and today we support over 2000 people in Bath and North East Somerset and Wiltshire by providing a wide range of services that are designed to help people fulfil their potential as they move from being dependent to living independently and making positive contributions to all aspects of community living. To reflect our new drive to enabling recovery and the fact that we have grown beyond the original geographic location that BADAS served we are therefore now called New Highway. New Highway is committed to supporting local people with advice, support and treatment services. We help people to make changes and find the right support for their own or someone else’s drugs and/or alcohol use.  Our ethos is to enable positive change by supporting people to identify their recovery goals and work with them to make changes that enable them to live healthy and fulfilling lives. Our new website  (www.newhighway.org.uk)  will be up and running in the next few days and this will be the place to get up to date information on all aspects of our work, and to find out about new and exciting ways that you can engage with New Highway. Kevin McAlpine, New Highway Chief Executive.

 

Breaking Down the Barriers - Reaching out to Deaf people and their organisations:  A guide for the third sector
This guide for the third sector provides an insight into the lives of Deaf people, and how to involve them in your organisations and services. Written by members of the Nottinghamshire Deaf Forum the guide includes case studies, exercises, examples of good practice and checklists to help improve the way you reach out to the Deaf Community. A copy can be downloaded here
 

Legal Update: Challenging Threats to Discretionary Rate Relief
Charities and registered community amateur sports clubs (CASCs) get 80% mandatory rate relief on premises used wholly or mainly for charitable/CASC purposes. In addition the local authority may, at its discretion, allow relief to charities and CASCs on all or some of the remaining 20%, and may grant discretionary relief of up to 100% to other not-for-profit organisations. Faced with the need to make huge cuts in expenditure, some local authorities are not surprisingly planning to cancel or reduce discretionary rate relief. If this is happening in your area it is important to be aware of regulation 2(3) of the Non-Domestic Rating (Discretionary Relief) Regulations 1989, which says any change or revocation of discretionary relief can take effect only at the end of a financial year and only after there has been at least one year's written notice. The regulations won't stop the local authority from reducing or revoking discretionary relief, but will at least give organisations a year's notice or more before the change can take place. The regulations are available to view here.

 
The Equality Act 2010
The Equality Act 2010 replaces the existing antidiscrimination laws with a single Act. It simplifies the law, removing inconsistencies and making it easier for people to understand and comply with it. It also strengthens the law in important ways to help tackle discrimination and inequality. You can download the summary guide .pdf here.

 

Big Lottery Fund Share of Good Cause Money will be Reduced to 40% in September

Arts, sports and heritage organisations will together get 60 per cent of lottery money, Department for Culture, Media and Sport confirms. The voluntary and community sector’s share of lottery ‘good cause’ money will be reduced from 50 per cent to 40 per cent in September, the government has confirmed. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s structural reform plan, published yesterday, says plans to allocate 60 per cent of lottery 'good cause' money to arts, sports and heritage organisations, and 40 per cent to the Big Lottery Fund, will be enacted by a statutory instrument in September. Arts, sports and heritage organisations currently have a combined 50 per cent share of the funding. Some of this funding is given to charities. The structural reform plan also says the government will tell the Big Lottery Fund by September that it must stop funding "politicised projects", and will ask all lottery distributors to reduce their administrative costs to 5 per cent of their total income. The government will agree cost-cutting plans by December, the document says. A consultation on the proposal to award 60 per cent of ‘good cause’ money to sports, arts and heritage groups is open until 21 August. But a DCMS spokesman said the sector was supportive of the move and it was "highly likely" to go ahead. He said the change would give an extra £50m each a year to those groups. Asked about the 5 per cent administration target, Peter Wanless, chief executive of the Big Lottery Fund, said: "We are in discussions with the department about the issues and implications that follow from that. Obviously there’s a risk that it could lead to us allocating fewer, bigger grants." On the changes to the projects that the BLF could fund, he said: "There have been occasions on which a strong improvement to society was achieved through funding going down the statutory route."

 

Saving for the NHS

"The role of the third sector in developing significantly better health care outputs for the same level of resource", written by the former Labour policy advisor Paul Corrigan, this interesting report includes some information on how the VCS might be impacted on and can best work with the NHS of the future.

 

 

Develop Enhancing Community Support

Chippenham: 3-4 New Road, Chippenham, Wiltshire, SN15 1EJ. Tel: 01249 654089

Bath: South Vaults, Green Park Station, Bath, BA1 1JB. Tel: 01225 330090

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Grow is a partnership between DEVELOP & VAK promoting and supporting the development of a thriving voluntary & community sector www.growwiltshire.org.uk

 

Develop Enhancing Community Support Limited is a Company Limited By Guarantee registered in England and Wales 01986363. Registered Office is the Chippenham address above. Registered Charity 1096008.

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