dale lane

I had an interview with someone from LearningNet today.

LearningNet is a workforce development project created by a group of voluntary sector organisations. It aims to identify and meet the learning needs of staff and volunteers working in the voluntary and community sector.

They’re an interesting organisation that I first heard of a little while ago. They’re working with us in Solent Youth Action to produce a learning needs analysis of the staff and directors.

For the staff, it is an opportunity for a thorough and independent review of their training needs which is not normally possible within an organisation as small as us.

Perhaps more importantly, for the trustees, it is an independent perspective on any gaps in our knowledge and skills. As volunteers from a variety of professions who came together to start this organisation essentially in our spare time, I think this is very valuable. When we started, we knew nothing of the laws or regulations we would encounter in starting a charity and company, being an employer, leading an organisation, or managing hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money. We’ve learnt a lot, but what don’t we know? What skills don’t we have that we don’t realise – skills that could potentially help us to do a better job? Or more worryingly, what don’t we know that could help us avoid a future pitfall we haven’t considered?

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Interesting statistics from the Charity Commission:

• 57% of charities earn less than £10,000 a year
• 29% of charities earn between £10,000 and £100,000 a year
• 6% of charities earn between £100,000 and £250,000 a year
• 5% of charities earn between £250,000 and £1 million a year
• 2% of charities earn between £1 million and £5 million a year
• 1% of charities earn more than £5 million a year

In other words, the majority of charities get less than £830 a month. And 86% of charities (the vast majority of the 168,000 charities registered in the UK) earn less than £100,000 a year.

This surprises me – and makes me look at Solent Youth Action a little differently. I always describe SYA to people as a small charity. But we earn over £200,000 a year. So, relatively speaking, that means we’re not a small charity. We’re actually in the top 14% of the wealthiest charities in UK. Eeek…. scary thought 🙂

I went to a Child Protection training session tonight. I’m not feeling too well at the moment, so I’m not gonna say much. Basically, we spent the evening discussing the different types of child abuse (emotional, physical, sexual, neglect), how it can happen, and what you can do to recognise the signs.

It was quite depressing. It wasn’t abstract – we were discussing the sort of stuff that can happen, and is happening, locally. How can people do this sort of stuff to kids?

I wonder whether it has always been like this, or if it is increasing? For example, I don’t remember my schools having a Child Protection Officer when I was a kid, but they all do now. Are things getting worse, or am I just more aware of it?

The Companies Bill became The Companies Act 2006 last week. I’m technically (and somewhat scarily!) a company director, so it’s something that I need to be aware of, although I’ve got to admit that I’ve not followed the progress of this one as closely as I did the other recent Bill to be passed – Charities Act 2006.

This one is big. It’s apparently the largest Bill ever to go through Parliament. At one of the last debates on the Bill a couple of weeks ago, the amendments being discussed filled 319 pages so I shudder to think what the whole Act would look like if printed!

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I mentioned a couple of days ago how charities are increasingly becoming more business-like, or at least are keen to give the impression of this to support an image of professionalism. So, I thought it was worth pointing out that we’re no different!

It’s Annual Review time of the year again – with SYA having our Annual Awards Evening on Thursday and the Southampton Samaritans AGM next Monday. As part of the work for both, we’ve put together Annual Reports. And for the first time (for both), instead of doing it ourselves very simply with Microsoft Word, we’ve got a graphics design person to give it a glossy, professional look for us.

The finished products can be found here (SYA) and here (Samaritans). They look amazing, so much better than our efforts in previous years, and we owe a big thanks to the guys who did them.

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Samaritans provide a 24-hour helpline offering emotional support to anyone who wants to phone. How the 24-hour-a-day service is provided is soon to change.

At the moment, we take it in turns to do the ‘night shift’ – manning the phone from 11pm to 7am. Opinions on the night shift vary – Artangel offers an interesting perspective on what it’s like which is well worth a read. Samaritans websites mention it in various ways, such as this from Guildford branch:

…a night shift – manning the phones from 11 pm till 7 am next day. So if you see a colleague at work, a family friend or a neighbour looking a bit bleary eyed sometimes, perhaps that’s why. We are one of the few 24/7 charities in Britain – and thus callers are welcome equally at 3 pm and 3 am.

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A story on the Third Sector caught my eye this evening. It raises an interesting question – should charity trustees be paid for their work?

The Charity Commission has paved the way for wider payment of trustees by allowing one of Britain’s wealthiest charities to pay five of its 12 board members.

The current situation is well described by the article:

Charity law forbids trustees from receiving benefits without express authority from a clause in the governing document, from a court or from a Charity Commission ruling.

It’s perhaps a bit of a leap to assume that this latest case sets the sort of precedent that the article seems to see, but the principle is an interesting one.

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