Charity

Campaigners have accused the Royal Voluntary Service of “running down the clock” on their attempts to save a community centre from closure. Residents and local groups in Pickering, North Yorkshire, have been trying to save the Hungate Centre since it was put up for sale by RVS in March last year. The £150,000 building was

Staff members from all marginalised groups experienced “overt oppression” across all levels of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, according to an excoriating independent report into the umbrella body’s culture.  The equality, diversity and inclusion report, seen by Third Sector, was compiled last year by external consultants. It found evidence of “bullying and harassment” on

This week, Rebecca and Emily explore a perennial debate in the charity sector – should trustees get remuneration for their work? Charity people! The next episode of the @ThirdSector podcast (recorded Weds am) will be looking at the perennial issue of trustee payment. So here’s a quick poll: Should charity trustees be paid? (*Please* feel free

Charities can “shake things up”, but they must not “go out of their way to divide people”, according to the outgoing chair of the Charity Commission.  Speaking at a virtual event held by the think tank The Social Market Foundation earlier today, Baroness Stowell used what was likely to be one of her last speeches

Charities are being encouraged to make use of the government’s revised youth job creation scheme after it was made simpler for employers to get involved. The Kickstart scheme provides funding for six-month job placements for 16- to 24-year-olds who are at risk of long-term unemployment. It has created more than 120,000 roles across all industries

A charity has reported itself to the regulator after Third Sector made it aware that a convicted sex offender was part of its advisory panel. Karl Sabbagh, an author and filmmaker, joined the British False Memory Society‘s scientific and professional advisory board in June 1994, after expressing an interest in false memory-type allegations, according to

Charities must avoid putting in overly-low bids to win public service contracts and stop acting as competitors in an attempt to maximise their market share, a major new piece of research urges.  Rebalancing the Relationship, published today by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, the charity leaders body Acevo and the Lloyds Bank Foundation for

The chief executive of a major global aid charity is on administrative leave after she approved the use of an intermediary to make monthly payments to an armed opposition group in a conflict zone. Third Sector has learned that Nancy Wilson, who has been the US-based head of Relief International since 2014, went on administrative

A social action charity based in east London has completed a multimillion-pound merger with the social business Catch22. Community Links, which has a total income of about £3m a year and a team of more than 100 staff and volunteers, provides a range of services in youth, employment, health, advice and policy. It has been

The former Conservative Party comms director Carrie Symonds has become head of communications at a the wildlife charity The Aspinall Foundation. The charity aims to protect rare and endangered species and preserve the habitats they live in. Symonds joins the charity from marine conservation charity Oceana, where she specialised in combating plastics pollution. She will

Charities lack humility and need to face up to difficult decisions in order to truly achieve their aims, according to the head of media and PR at Christian Aid. Speaking at the creative agency Good’s virtual event “Change Conversations: 2021 in Focus” last week, Chine McDonald called for charities to be brave if they wanted

There is no evidence to suggest that antisemitic comments made by senior leaders at Islamic Relief Worldwide had any link to its charitable work, a review by the former attorney general, Dominic Grieve, has concluded. Grieve was asked to chair an independent commission in August after claims emerged the previous month that two senior figures

The Charity Commission appears to have shelved plans to publish a long-awaited report into executive pay in the voluntary sector, it has emerged.  In December 2019, the regulator announced plans for a study into top-level pay after it criticised the board of Marie Stopes International for failing to properly record discussions that led to the

Charities should be required to report on the impact they have made and should be able to pay their trustees without seeking the permission of the Charity Commission, according to the think tank NPC.  In a letter to Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, Dan Corry, chief executive of NPC, says the upcoming appointment of a

Cancer Research UK has appointed a new executive director to lead on its policy development, communications and clinical engagement. Ian Walker will join the charity’s executive board in March as director of policy, information and communications. He will succeed Sarah Woolnough, who left the charity in October last year after 15 years. Walker has also

This year’s RideLondon cycling event, which has raised tens of millions of pounds for charities in previous years, has been cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic, organisers have said.  The annual cycling event, which involves tens of thousands of people riding a variety of courses over the same weekend, has raised more than £80m for

In this month’s bumper episode of the Third Sector Podcast, editor Emily Burt and features and analysis writer Rebecca Cooney find out what the National Council for Voluntary Organisations‘s Respond, Recover and Reset project can tell us about the impact of lockdown on charities. The Respond, Recover, Reset project, run by the NCVO with Nottingham

Stephen Hale, chief executive of Refugee Action, is to step down after six years in the role. He said he would leave in two months’ time to take on a new role at a “new global organisation focused on climate change”, but did not reveal the identity of the organisation.  Tim Naor Hilton, head of

The collapsed fundraising agency Home Fundraising is being liquidated, facing claims totalling more than £5m. The liquidator’s report, published on the Companies House website this week, reveals it has received claims totaling £4.8m from 56 unsecured creditors, while a further 92 claims have yet to be received for sums totalling more than £300,000. The unsecured

The professional services network PwC has been awarded a contract worth almost £1m to provide administrative support to a £16m government fund. According to the government’s Contracts Finder website, the company will provide “grant admin services” in the running of the Youth Covid-19 Support Fund. The £950,000 contract, which was awarded last month, runs until

The government will appoint an interim chair of the Charity Commission while a long-term successor to Baroness Stowell is sought, it has emerged. The Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport told Third Sector that it had not begun advertising for Stowell’s long-term replacement, despite her announcing in October that she would step down at

The government is making decisions on programme cuts to international aid programmes behind closed doors and without proper scrutiny or consultation, a group of international aid organisations has warned.  The NGO umbrella body Bond, Publish What You Fund, an NGO that campaigns for aid transparency, and Development Initiatives, an international development organisation that aims to

Karl Wilding, chief executive of the NCVO, has stepped down from the role after 18 months so that someone who is “not part of the past” can take over. Wilding, who took up the role in September 2019 having already spent 21 years at the umbrella body, said in a statement today that he was

Total income at the disability equality charity Scope fell by more than £13m last year after the multimillion-pound sale of its former London headquarters in the previous 12 months. The charity’s accounts for the year to the end of March 2020 show income fell to £41m from £54m in the previous year, leaving the charity with

Five years after its high-profile collapse, the demise of Kids Company played out in a High Court trial at the end of 2020. The case reignited conversations in the sector about the role of trustees in a charity’s governance, and where ultimate responsibility for an organisation’s sustainability and solvency lies. Third Sector attended more than

The leaders of almost 20 mental health organisations have said supporting the health of frontline workers, including those in the voluntary sector, “must be a national priority”.  In an open letter to people working in health, care and formal and informal education, the chief executives of charities including Mind, Samaritans, Rethink Mental Illness and Young

The RSPCA has pledged to put partnership working at the heart of its new 10-year strategy, which will be launched next week. The strategy, called Together for Animal Welfare, has goals including reducing animal cruelty by half over the next decade, the introduction of statutory powers to help its animal welfare officers, and inspiring one

Current and former volunteers for St John Ambulance have described a “cult-like” atmosphere at the first aid charity, where complaints about bullying were “swept under the rug”. Several sources allege their mental and physical health was “weaponised” against them and used to undermine them after they made complaints about the behaviour of senior volunteers at

In the latest weekly epsiode of the Third Sector Podcast, editor Emily Burt and features and analysis writer Rebecca Cooney explore what we know and what we don’t know about the Brexit deals impact on charities.  On 24 December 2020, the UK government and the European Union announced a last-minute trade deal in the wake

The deadline for thousands of excepted charities to register with the Charity Commission has been extended by 10 years. An exception for church charities with annual incomes of £100,000 or less was due to come to an end on 31 March this year, meaning those with an income of more than £5,000 a year would