Think Pieces News
Olympic success
At the moment I quite like being British. I don’t always feel that way, but as we win ever increasing number of medals at the Olympics, it seems to be having an impact on my feelings towards the country I live in. Don’t worry; this is not about to be a monologue on how wonderful it is to live on this small island. But it got me thinking, if it affects me in this way, who else might it be affecting, and what effect might this have on the country, and the VCS within it?
Recent trends have...
The Future Face of Enterprise
Anyone else ready to jump on the enterprise bandwagon? Dragons Den is trying to make entrepreneurs of everyone, enterprise has now entered the national curriculum, and everywhere I turn, it seems that organisations within the sector are embracing enterprise with a gusto usually reserved for voting on Britain’s got Talent. The capacitybuilders programme has recently announced a £6million investment in social enterprise, and Gordon Brown aims that ‘enterprise is truly open for all’’.
Rela...
Membership in the future
I wrote this think piece as the basis of a presentation on the drivers shaping the future of membership, for the NCVO membership schemes conference on the 22 April. It draws on lots of our previous work, including on public attitudes in the last Voluntary Sector Strategic Analysis, the ICT Foresight work and our Future Focus guides on social attitudes and volunteering. It will inform our proposed project on the future of membership which we are developing with colleagues at the RSA, Ruralnet ...
Trust in public institutions – lessons from the BBC
Who is to blame, if anyone, for the apparent decline in levels of trust in institutions? An interesting speech given by the BBC Director-General in January explores the relationship between the media and the public sphere. The speech was given after Tony Blair’s memorable speech blaming the media for low trust in politicians, as well as the scandals that damaged trust in the BBC (the faked Blue Peter phone-in and manipulation of footage of the Queen for example).
Thompson explores whether...
Postcards from the music industry
So what exactly does, you are already thinking, the music industry have to do with the voluntary and community sector? Well aside from the obvious that many VCOs are in the business of making or performing music, the recorded music industry is going through the sort of structural changes that seem to be relevant for our sector. Let me explain.
Record companies have traditionally generated revenue from selling content generated by a roster of artists contracted to them. This intellectual...
Diversity and foundations
One of the frequent comments I tend to make on the site is that some of the developments in the US nonprofit sector might be indicative of what the future looks like in the UK. An emerging argument about diversity and foundations is one such example.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently reported that the Californian state assembly has passed a proposal (its not yet been agreed by the Senate) to force the largest nonprofit foundations to disclose the composition of their workforce and...
Charitable giving and fundraising in a digital world
Today we're launching the third in our series of ICT Foresight reports, each of which looks at a different aspect of how ICT is changing how the sector works, and particularly the relationship between organisations and their stakeholders.
The report is free to download as a pdf (or you can request a hard copy by emailing Catherine Morgan). The summary for those with less time is below.
But first, third sector this week reported a new site called My Charity Page, which will launch in January....
What does the private equity boom imply for the third sector?
I’ll start this post by freely admitting that I am not an economist…so these thoughts (opinions?) probably won’t stand up to rigorous analysis. As such, I am trying to stimulate debate.
Private equity funding – those investors who are taking companies private by buying the publicly listed shares and then delisting them in the expectation that they can run them more efficiently and therefore profitably – is a global phenomenon that has been boosted by low interest rates (and in turn cheap...
The impact of ICT on the design and delivery of public services
Public service reform is high on the political agenda and the role of the VCS in this process has been increasingly recognised. At the heart of the debate around transforming public services, is the need to engage better with citizens, and to ensure that they have both choice and voice. ICT can provide those commissioning and delivering services with useful tools to improve public services and can enable much better user engagement, by not just allowing citizens to easily access...
