Third Sector

Lucinda Rouse is joined by Third Sector colleagues Emily Burt and Emily Harle to reflect on three significant sector stories from the past month.

Emily Burt shares her perspective on concerns raised by small charity representatives following the news of a restructure at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

Lucinda considers the findings of the Charities Aid Foundation’s UK Giving Report, and asks whether falling levels of individual donations point to the need for a strategic shift in fundraising.

And Emily Harle provides details of an experimental AI agent that has raised £500 for a London Marathon runner.

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Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle discuss snippets from a recent interview Emily conducted with Matt Downie, chief executive of the homelessness charity Crisis.

Matt provides insight into Crisis’ plan to buy a thousand homes in the next decade and become a landlord for people experiencing homelessness.

He shares his view that the voluntary sector is entering a ‘third wave’, which will require businesses and wider society to play a part in solving social problems, and questions the value that charitable status offers to social purpose organisations.

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**Content warning: This episode contains references to suicide and sexual abuse**

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by safeguarding specialist Joanna Nicolas and Sebastian Rocca, founder and chief executive of the LGBTQI refugee support organisation Micro Rainbow.

Joanna identifies some of the most common safeguarding challenges facing voluntary organisations, which principally stem from the power imbalance between a charity’s trustees, staff and volunteers and its service users.

Sebastian describes how Micro Rainbow is approaching safeguarding in the face of increasing hostility towards the groups it supports. He explains why he no longer perceives the identification of a safeguarding issue to be a failure on the part of the organisation.

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Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Stephen Roberts, chief executive of North Devon Hospice, to discuss the organisation’s response to some of the challenges facing the hospice sector.

Stephen explains why the charity is aiming to reduce its dependence on legacies and how it encourages innovation in its fundraising work.

He stresses the importance of factoring local need into ideas for new income opportunities, which has led to the opening of a lucrative dog-walking field on land belonging to the hospice. 

He shares his tactics for gaining trustee approval for new ideas and describes how a focus on positive psychology has improved the culture at North Devon Hospice.

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Lucinda Rouse and Emily Burt  are joined by Emma Turner, chief executive of Mind in Croydon.

Emma lays bare the operational realities of meeting soaring service demand in the face of cuts to local authority and integrated care system budgets, which form the bulk of Mind in Croydon’s income.

She explains how the charity has formed partnerships with other local organisations at the instigation of commissioners, enabling all parties to innovate and find new solutions to collective challenges.

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Lucinda Rouse and Emily Burt  are joined by Richard Angell, chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust, and Rupert Whitaker, psychiatrist, immunologist and co-founder of the charity. 

They discuss the legacy of fellow co-founder Martyn Butler, who died on 21 February, remembering the use of his home telephone number as the charity’s first support line in the early 1980s.

Rupert shares his memories of Martyn as an organiser and driving force in the organisation’s early days and reflects on the ebbs and flows of their involvement with the THT over 44 years.

Richard shares his perspective on the role played by both co-founders in keeping the THT at the cutting edge, rather than falling into the common trap for charity founders of idealising times past.

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Host Lucinda Rouse is joined by Third Sector colleagues Emily Burt, Emily Harle and Andy Ricketts to reflect on three significant sector stories from the past month.

Emily Burt draws attention to recent cases of charities declining to voluntarily recognise workers’ unions. She questions the likely trajectory for union action in the sector in the face of increasingly challenging working conditions.

Andy outlines different ways that charities are attempting to inform AI-generated Google search summaries and explains why this is important.

And Emily Harle provides context to regulatory investigations into Stoke Air Ambulance, which advertised free helicopter rides for volunteers and supporters despite having no provision for air transportation at the time.

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Andy Ricketts and Dami Adewale are joined by John Fitzgerald, digital evolution project manager at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations.

John describes some of the easy-to-use AI tools that can improve efficiency in working life and shares examples of charities that are already employing them effectively.

He warns of data privacy issues associated with using free services and the risk of “buzzword bingo” when AI is leaned on heavily in funding applications.

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Lucinda Rouse and Emily Burt are joined by Emily Cotter, marketing, PR and communications officer at Leeds Mind, and Col Grist, co-founder and creative director of the digital agency Few and Far.

Emily provides insight into Leeds Mind’s experience of livestream fundraising as it prepares to host the fourth edition of its Get Together Through Gaming online event in March.

Col explains why he considers the UK voluntary sector to be behind the curve in the livestream fundraising space compared with counterparts in the US. He suggests ways that charities can effectively approach and engage established streamers for fundraising purposes.

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Lucinda Rouse is joined by Third Sector colleagues Emily Harle, Dami Adewale and Andy Ricketts to reflect on three significant sector stories from the past month.

Dami recounts the circumstances surrounding a regulatory inquiry into the sale of City and Guilds’ commercial arm to a Greek-owned certification company.

Andy provides his take on the findings of Third Sector’s recent Charity Pay Study, which identifies the sector’s top earners. 

And Emily assesses the implications of a growing number of complaints about street fundraisers from community interest companies for the reputation of charitable fundraisers more broadly.

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