Charity

More than 1,000 people have signed a petition calling on the RSPCA to abandon plans to close three of its centres and a hospital.  The animal welfare charity announced last week that, as part of a restructure to tackle a predicted £47m income shortfall over the next three years, it planned to close its Putney

The Big Society Trust, which oversees the work of social finance bodies including Big Society Capital, has changed its name to the Oversight Trust – Assets for the Common Good. The trust was established in 2012 to oversee the work of Big Society Capital, which uses unclaimed asset monies from bank and building society accounts

Charities should look to promote tribute funds in order to attract more legacy donations and help donors “cut through darkness and grief”, according to new research. In a new report, In-memory Through the Pandemic, the legacy consortium Legacy Foresight says tribute funds are powerful tools that have healing power and strong symbolic function in encouraging

The Clap for Our Carers initiative is among the finalists of the inaugural Third Sector Digital Awards. The awards were launched in February before the coronavirus outbreak in the UK and recognise the transformational role digital plays in the charity and voluntary sector. However, they have been scaled back this year because the pandemic affected

The umbrella body UK Community Foundations has appointed Rosemary Macdonald as its new chief executive. Macdonald, who has been acting as interim chief executive of UKCF since March, previously spent 12 years as chief executive of the Wiltshire Community Foundation. She succeeds Fabian French, who stepped down in April after five years in the role.

The shortlist for the Purpose Awards EMEA 2020 – the awards scheme from PRWeek, Campaign and Third Sector – has been revealed. The awards – previously called the Campaigns for Good Awards – are open to agencies, brands, public sector bodies, charities and NGOs throughout EMEA. They recognise the steps taken to use creative ideas

Charities can return to public fundraising if they judge it to be safe, new guidance published by the Fundraising Regulator and the Institute of Fundraising suggests.  But the guidance warns that charities are unlikely to be able to return to business as usual just yet, and says they must ensure social distancing is observed. The

The Charity Commission has told a college at the University of Oxford to enter mediation in a bid to settle a long-running dispute with its dean.  Christ Church college has been locked in a protracted battle with the Very Reverend Martyn Percy after he was suspended in November 2018 for alleged misconduct.  He returned to

After a brief hiatus because of the coronavirus crisis, the Third Sector Podcast is back, with an episode looking at planning for the next normal in the non-profit sector.  On 18 June, Third Sector sat down with a panel of charity leaders, as part of a webinar sponsored by Salesforce.org, to discuss their approach to planning

The Prime Minister has asked the MP and former charity leader Danny Kruger to review how the government can make the most of the voluntary sector in the UK’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. In a letter to the Tory MP for Devizes, Boris Johnson said he wanted to enlist Kruger’s help as the UK

A five-year old boy with prosthetic legs has raised more than £1m for Evelina London Children’s Hospital by walking 10km over the past month.  Tony Hudgell today completed his challenge to walk the distance during the month of June to raise funds for the hospital, which saved his life when he was a baby.  He

This month’s epsiode looks at planning for the next normal in the non-profit sector.  On 18 June, Third Sector sat down with a panel of charity leaders, as part of a webinar sponsored by Salesforce.org, to discuss their approach to planning for changing times and for the road to recovery.  We listen in as Allison Dufosee, chief

The Charity Commission has urged the leaders of hundreds of the UK’s largest charities to ensure their organisations are not responsible for management or governance failures that could further damage public trust in the sector.  The regulator today concluded that serious mismanagement at the RNIB exposed vulnerable children in the sight-loss charity’s care to harm

The University of Cambridge Judge Business School has launched a new centre to focus on strategic philanthropy in emerging markets. The new Centre for Strategic Philanthropy said it would examine responses to the coronavirus crisis by philanthropists and foundations in high-growth markets, including Africa, developing Asia and the Middle East, and the lasting impact of

The British Heart Foundation is facing the “biggest crisis in its 60-year history” because of the coronavirus pandemic, the charity has said. A statement from the BHF said the fall in income it was expecting because of cancelled fundraising events and the closure of its shops meant it anticipated having to halve its annual £100m

The foundation sector is heading for a “moment of reckoning” if it does not change the existing systems to make them more equitable for BAME people, leaders have been told.  Speaking at an online conference hosted by the Association of Charitable Foundations, Fatima Iftikhar of the anti-racism campaign group CharitySoWhite, said that in the foundation

The hearing loss charity Action on Hearing Loss will move out of its London headquarters and ask staff to work from home for the foreseeable future. The charity started viewing new workspaces before the government-enforced lockdown, having sold its Highbury office in December and rented it back in the interim.  But working through the coronavirus

The government and the Bank of England should provide additional support to community banking institutions in order to ensure the survival of local communities after the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report from the research and innovation charity the RSA.  The report, called The Road to Resilience: How Community Financial Services Can Help Level-up

Mary Creagh, the former Labour MP for Wakefield, has been appointed chief executive of Living Streets, the charity for pedestrians. Creagh, who lost her seat in December’s election, will succeed Joe Irvin, who retired in March after six years at the charity’s helm. During her 14 years as an MP, Creagh served as shadow Cabinet

A charity volunteering site has experienced a threefold rise in people coming forward to volunteer, in what it has described as a “silver-lining” of the pandemic. Reach Volunteering said 2,100 new people registered to volunteer on its site between April and May, compared with 750 people in the same period last year. The total number

Third Sector has launched a tracking service to help charities find sources of funding during the coronavirus pandemic.  The Covid-19 grant tracker has been set up to save fundraisers and charity professionals time by collating information on the funds available, eligibility and deadlines in one place.  The service, which is available only to Third Sector

The proportion of people giving to charity has fallen to the lowest level in a decade, new research indicates. Figures from the research consultancy nfpSynergy show that 60 per cent of the 1,000 adults it surveyed last month said they had donated to charity in the previous three months, the lowest level recorded by the

Charities are facing a £12.4bn shortfall in income for the year because of coronavirus, new figures show. A survey by three major charity umbrella bodies has found that organisations expect to see a reduction of 24 per cent in income for the year. The survey, conducted by the Institute of Fundraising, the National Council for

Liz Tait, fundraising director of the Teenage Cancer Trust is to step down.  Tait was appointed as director of fundraising at the charity in 2018, succeeding Kate Collins after the latter’s promotion to chief executive. Latest headlines Tait, who is a well-known face in the fundraising community, is also a trustee of the Institute of

Geneva, June 20, 2020 -World Refugee 2020 sees funding for refugee response plans at an all-time low. Despite the added threat of COVID-19 across all refugee hosting countries, international financial support is significantly lower than this time last year. The total amount required to respond to the 6 regional refugee response plans globally represents only

Charities are being invited to apply for a share of £500,000 in funding from the specialist insurer Ecclesiastical. The company is offering 10 grants of £50,000 through its Movement for Good Awards, which can be used for the advancement of education, skills, arts, culture or community development. Charities with an annual income of less than

Google has pledged an additional $200m (£160m) in advertising grants for not-for-profit organisations that tackle “pressing” issues such as responding to coronavirus and racial injustice. Latest headlines The move takes the amount committed to Google’s annual ad grants programme to $1bn (£800m) in 2020 and has been put forward in response to charities shifting their

The RSPCA has proposed making up to 300 people redundant amid concerns that it will record losses of up to £25m this year.  The animal welfare charity, which employs more than 1,600 people, said it had been reviewing all of its activities as part of a new 10-year strategy, but the need for change had

The community organisation membership body Locality has called on the government to support a community-powered economic recovery post-pandemic, including establishing a £1bn investment plan for community assets.  The call comes as part of a report, We Are Built For This, in which Locality highlights the role that community organisations have played in meeting community needs

WASHINGTON (June 17, 2020) – CARE applauds today’s introduction of the Keeping Women and Girls Safe from the Start Act by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), a bipartisan bill that will ensure that the U.S. prioritizes the needs of women and girls in responding to humanitarian emergencies. This legislation works