Economics News
Sharing: does online leave you hollow?
For strapped for cash charities, spreading information online can seem like a golden option. Think of the print and posting cost of your annual report and the idea of a pdf emailed out (or whatever version you use) beckons seductively. But there is still a widespread wariness of engaging with web technologies for this. Sometimes such a view takes the form of top-level reluctance to, for example, engage with twitter; or manifests itself when an organisation plans and designs for publications ...
Hand in hand into the sunset?
A title with more than a whiff of cheddar – I apologise! But the event I went to earlier this week left me feeling as optimistic as the title suggests. I attended the NCVO Corporate Community Involvement Seminar: A Climate for Change? A couple of coporate-charity partnerships presented: Sky and Global Action Plan, followed by WSP and Resources for Autism, and some thoughts from BITC’s Business and the Environment Campaign Director Jim Haywood, all pithily chaired by Dame Julia Cleverdon of aRead on
Implications of the budget
First, apologies for the dry title: it feels like the puns have been taken a little too far, for example in the constant references to ‘axes’ across the front pages of all the major newspapers today.
These give a pretty clear sense of the overall tone of the budget. But how does that affect voluntary and community organisations, and more important, how can we anticipate and plan for the changes that may come as a result in the way we work, who we help, and who funds us?
Some major...
From Einstein to economics
If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left.
Such an apocalyptic view, from the mouth of a rather respected gentleman, has set many scientists, agriculture experts and others atwitter. For me it’s been a rather worrying thought, but one that I’ve trusted ‘the experts’ to sort out. Head in the sand approach maybe, but I don’t think I’d be alone in this. Similarly, there are many who see climate change and other environmental issues as...
The future of Good Society
Carnegie report launch
Making Good Society (the final report of the Carnegie Trust’s Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society) thinks about the role of civil society moving forward. They focus on four key areas that they think civil society can play a key role in developing for a ‘better’ society. Their report positions itself almost as a manifesto – their aspirations for the future. To what extent do you think civil society can take up their challenges and turn them into...
What do we value?
On the day we have officially come out of recession, and new research on our social attitudes has been published, I would recommend taking a look at the McKinsey interview with the extremely lucid Jim Wallis (you can watch, listen to or read it here on the McKinsey Quarterly website, though you will have to create a free account to do so). In the light of the current discussions taking place at Davos, he suggests that the question we should be asking about the economic crisis is not ‘when...
Wellbeing: a new paradigm or just a fad?
As someone with a long interest in language and how it is used, I am often fascinated by how changes of terminology take place. Suddenly people are using a new term, sometimes to refer to a new concept or approach, but sometimes the new term simply replaces an old one. Well-being is not a new term or even a new concept, but it is certainly being used much more these days, and in different ways too.
I am a great believer in the idea of ‘confluence theory’, the notion that significant changes...
Future of wellbeing: what does this mean for you and your organisation?
From debates on wellbeing as a political goal, to positive psychology 'wellbeing' is being used more and more. But what does this term mean? And more importantly, perhaps, what does it mean to civil society organisations?
Many charities have wellbeing at the heart of what they do, even if they don't realise it. The sector can play a vital role in this directing this issue to shape society into a good society.
Join us on 23 February for the Future of Wellbeing seminar (PM4) at NCVO's annual...
More on whether we get what we pay for
A while ago, I wrote a piece on the ‘freemium’ model that seems to be growing in relevance as people’s patterns of consumption of information and products, and their willingness to pay for them.
If you are interested in this topic and have a spare few minutes over the weekend, you might like to take a look at this slideshow (warning - there are 263 slides). Since we're all time poor, I thought I'd highlight that of particular interest to membership organisations are slides 200, 216 and 217...
Social media and membership organisations
The apparent threat (or opportunity) that social technology presents to membership organisations is summed up in the subtitle to Clay Shirky’s zeitgeisty book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of organizing without organizations. If ‘everybody’ can organise action by themselves (or rather, together), what possible reason is there for organisations to exist?
The first answer is, of course, that ‘everybody’ is not coming quite yet. Older people in particular – precisely those who,...
