It is a striking turnaround. In just two years charities that were once at the heart of a vision of a ‘big society’ are now accused of being the playthings of tax avoiding millionaires with the liberating and transformational role of so much of the voluntary sector in communities up and down Britain no longer …

It’s jubilee year! Yes, 25 years since the instigation of payroll giving, that remarkable means by which you can donate to charity from your earnings and not pay tax on that sum.    In that time Britain’s employees have contributed £1.2bn to charities of their choice … which represents a huge missed opportunity. Payroll giving currently …

So David Cameron, in a recent PMQs, has resorted yet again to the old trick of trying to deflect an attack on one of his policies by criticising what he purports to be Labour’s record in office. In this instance, he rounded upon the Welsh government’s running of the NHS in Wales to pretend that …

Bill Clinton recently wrote a piece in the Financial Times entitled ‘Charity needs capitalism to solve the world’s problems’; do I dimly remember Marx saying something similar about how socialism needed capitalism in order to work, too? The point the former president was making is that we have witnessed what untempered capitalism can do – …

Nobody is seriously contemplating a future for public services which does not involve the third sector in an ever more prominent role. The ability of charities to deliver local, personal and cost effective services is understood but their capacity to grow to scale remains in question in many cases. The funding of such services remains …

The chief executive of a charity which organises business mentors to work with struggling charities and social enterprises felt let down when he read the sting in the tail of the Social Action Fund application form. By sponsoring a diversity of innovative approaches to motivate ‘the giving of time, money, knowledge and assets’ the Fund …

Guidance from CLG that councils should not pass on ‘disproportionate cuts’ to the voluntary sector comes six months, almost to the day, since Eric Pickles promised it to the NCVO annual conference. Back in March the sector’s representatives celebrated – though even then it was far too late as budgets were already being drawn up …

The nature of the cuts, as much as the size, is the issue. NCVO reports that there have been nearly a billion pounds of cuts from the voluntary and community sector so far (see here and here) and that funding removed from the sector over the next three years will be £2.8 billion. A few …