Today, on International Day of Charity, we're very pleased to launch The Wheel’s new podcast with a very special opening episode, "Budget 2026: Charting a New Course" 

In this first episode, we get to the heart of what's needed to tackle Ireland's most pressing issues—from the housing crisis to the struggle against poverty and the future of our communities. 

  

Tune in to hear from leading experts, 

Susanne Rogers, Research and Policy Analyst with Social Justice Ireland 

Ber Grogan, Executive Director of Simon Communities of Ireland 

Fleachta Phelan, Policy Advocacy Manager at Disability Federation of Ireland 

  

Along with our own Advocacy & Campaigns Manager, Guillaume Jacquinot, Susanne, Ber, and Fleachta share their insights on how the State can support our sector in Budget 2026, what should be avoided, and the course of action the new government should take over the next 5 years to allow the community and voluntary sector in Ireland to thrive and continue to show up for those who need us most. 

Discover what's needed to enable our sector to truly address the challenges faced by vulnerable communities across Ireland, in a conversation you will not want to miss. 

This season, we’ll take the time to look at some of the not-so-good stuff affecting our members as 2023 draws to a close. But, more importantly, we’ll focus on the ways in which the people who keep our sector going—those who put their all into keeping civil society afloat—are managing to make things work and, ultimately, keep the lights on. 

In our first episode, we discuss one of the biggest issues facing our sector today. The ever-widening pay gap between thousands of workers in the charity and voluntary sector—particularly those employed in Section 39, 56, and 10 organisations—and their counterparts in organisations directly funded by the state, has had a debilitating impact on the efficacy and viability of many health and social service providers across the country. 

The collapse, in July, of talks at the Workplace Relations Commission was greeted with a widespread sense of frustration, and ultimately led to balloting on strike action. The strike itself was only recently called-off pending conversations with union membership.  And, while government has committed to some initial pay increases and the beginning of a process aimed at addressing key impasses, the conditions of people working in the sector have yet to be significantly improved.

How then can we, as a unified sector, act to address these complexities, and, perhaps just as importantly, how can we communicate the need for improved conditions for staff and service users to the wider public? 

On this episode, we talk with Dr Shana Cohen, CEO of the Think-Tank for Action on Social Change, or TASC, about a recent study produced in conjunction with The Wheel. The Future of Public Service Delivery by the Community & Voluntary Sector, analyses staffing, funding, and the demand for services among hundreds of Section 39, 56, and 10 organisations who deliver essential public services countrywide in diverse areas like health, disability, family support, childcare, eldercare, homelessness, and addiction. 

Shana chats with The Wheel’s own Campaigns Manager, Dr Emily Bourke, about her work in bringing The Wheel’s 2024 Pre-Budget Submission, “A Budget for Civil Society”, to fruition, as well as how our submission encapsulates many of the key concerns shared by our members. 

It's a bumper episode of The Good Stuff to round off 2021. Ivan Cooper, The Wheel's Director of Public Policy, joins us as host once again to look back at the highlights and challenges of the year, plus the big opportunities in store for 2022.

Ivan is joined by special guests:

Ivan Cooper, Director of Public Policy at The Wheel, hosts a special episode exploring the differences between governing a charity versus governing a private firm. 

This episode was produced to celebrate Trustee Week 2021, which runs from 15 to 21 November.

We interrupt our usual three-part series to bring you a very special podcast episode on the future of our sector.

As we take some tentative steps back towards "normal" life, what have we learned from a year of crisis?

Join us for a new 20-minute episode of The Good Stuff, where policy expert Dr Shana Cohen (TASC) and public affairs consultant John Gallagher weigh in on the big lessons of the COVID crisis for Irish nonprofits.

To round out our exploration of language and the nonprofit community, in this episode we're looking at empathy. Many of us in the nonprofit community work on behalf of other people, and few would contest the importance of keeping them at the centre of our work at all times. But although we're always working with this goal in mind, it can be a challenge to make sure that our language always reflects this reality.  

 

In the first section of today’s podcast, our guest is public affairs consultant Kathleen O’Meara. Our second guest is Laura Murphy, a poet, activist, camapigner, and communications strategist — and an outspoken advocate for survivors of Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland. 

This is the second episode of our three-part series about language and the nonprofit sector. Today, we’re all about keeping it simple and saying what you mean. Our guest is Sean Driver, who works with the National Adult Literacy Agency as their plain English editor, and he explains why it's so important to use straightforward language whenever we can.

The language of the nonprofit sector is constantly shifting, and in this series of The Good Stuff we’re looking at why that matters.

 

In episode 1, we first talk to experts about why words matter, and how they affect the way that we perceive the world. Then we sit down with the Wheel’s own CEO, Deirdre Garvey, to discuss charities, community groups, voluntary organisations, social enterprises... and why so many terms exist that seem, from the outside, to describe the same thing. 

Episode 3 of The Good Stuff tackles the resilience of organisations. As we face a period of economic uncertainty, we speak to Sarah Fagan from Adare Human Resource Management about what employers should keep in mind as their employees begin the return to work (or not), and Keith Whelan, “The Grants Guy”, about planning for financial resilience in 2021

In this episode, we look at the resilience of ideas. At the start of the COVID-19 crisis, community was at the forefront of the national conversation, and there has been widespread acknowledgement that any recovery must focus on creating an economy that serves society as opposed to a society that serves the economy. But how can we resist pushback against this as the longer-term financial impacts of the crisis start to manifest? And how do we sustain the momentum of the moment to create concrete, positive policy change? We speak to Michelle Murphy from Social Justice Ireland and Claire Brophy from the Abortion Rights Campaign about policy, activism, and proven strategies for change.