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Thursday Jan 26, 2006
Transparency in the Voluntary sector..
The whole issue of financial transparency in the voluntary sector has quite rightly been big for a while now. On the back of this (and after £3M + investment) Guidestar launched in November of last year, with the intention of providing donors with a searchable database of registered charities in England and Wales.
It's meant to be a resource for grant makers, researchers and general donors, but I'm not sure how big it's impact will be. Each charity can update some of the information on there, but you can also access standard regulatory documents like the annual report and accounts. Given that these are documents that each charity has to produce anyway, I don't know how useful this is for an "average" donor on the street. Personally, if I'm convinced a charity is doing great work in an area I care about, I'm happy to donate, and I trust them to spend my money in the best way they possibly can - I don't need a new site (that cost more than £3M) to pool all this together.
Another good point (see Charity Blogger's review) is that it still relies on people typing information in from paper records, so how up to date is it going to be next year?
Anyway, what do you guys think?..
Posted by Sam Thomas ( 3:32 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]A challenge to current perspectives on volunteerism
In response to articles recently posted on the World VolunteeringWeb voicing concerns that volunteering may hold no place for theunemployed, indigent or disenfranchised, Jayne Cravens of CoyoteCommunications writes that current promotions of volunteerism should bebroadened to include individuals from across all socioeconomicbackgrounds.
Rather than seeing volunteering activity as a function of thegovernment and large corporations wishing to tackle social concerns,she argues that individuals have historically volunteered their time"to positive affect people and the environment in confrontationto or outside of the state or other power structures". She points tothe example of Americans in the 1950s and 60s who, in spite of -or because of - their socioeconomic exclusion, volunteered their timeto address a community problem: state-sanctioned apartheid in theAmerican deep south. Fighting for one's own civil rights as a volunteer?
As a call to reconsider what it means to be a volunteer,particularly in light of the promotions of volunteering activities onthe part of both the Government and opposition party, it's aninteresting perspective.
http://www.coyotecommunications.com/volunteer/realvolunteering.html
Articles on World Volunteer Web:
"Volunteer in Yemen? Please be serious!" http://www.worldvolunteerweb.org/?id=9921
"Is volunteering just for the privileged few?" http://www.worldvolunteerweb.org/?id=10032
Posted by Kirsten Olson ( 1:08 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
McDonalds changes the face of the workplace
McDonalds (one of the largest employers of young people in the UK) may have just changed the way job contracts work forever.
Always an easy target, mainly because their food is (to be honest) shit, McDonalds have decided to allow whole families to share work, and may even be expanded to include friends sharing jobs.
It's an interesting new way to work and one that's bound to have an impact on students who may be unable to commit to full time work, but that can't find suitable part time work either. The idea of a job and flat-share doesn't seem that far away.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4649666.stmPosted by Jim Valentine ( 12:44 PM ) Link to this post Comments[1]
