A member speaks, and time to act on Gift Aid.

I thought it was worth reproducing a comment from the CEO of one of the country's largest and most respected charities, the WRVS. Lynne has been blogging about the disgrace of the Burnham reversal of reforms in DH.

As she says:

"But what’s worrying many of us in the third sector is that it seems to be part of a trend. On the one hand, DH and the wider Government talk about partnership and the encouragement of the third sector - but then guidance is issued (or proposed) that seems to give precedence to the interests of the NHS over any sort of partnership agreement. Whether it’s about volunteering and the control of volunteers managed by third sector bodies; whether it’s decisions to take on the apparently profit making aspects of third sector activities in hospitals and communities; whether it’s the DH appearing to go after charitable funds in direct conflict with the requirements of the Charity Commission and Charity Law – it all seems to express a fundamental lack of understanding of the independent rights and accountabilities of third sector bodies. And it really does feel as though the Third Sector is not yet taken seriously . "

This sums up well the feeling amongst members working in Health and Social care. It is a great shame that Labour is squandering the goodwill it has built up over the last decade.

And it is not simply in health there is this lack of interest. As I blogged yesterday the Chancellor has shown scant attention to the letter from 260 sector CEOs offering to engage in talks on sensible public spending cuts.

But the Government has a chance to show commitment by tackling Gift Aid and making changes on higher rate .

Lindsay Boswell (the great CEO of the Institute of Fundraising) and I have written to Treasury with the following demands,

" We are writing to ask that you:

•set a clear timetable for the forum’s consideration of Gift Aid reform options, starting as soon as possible in January 2010 and ending ahead of the 2010 Budget;

•enable us to engage with you productively on Gift Aid reform by specifying a small number of options that you are prepared to consider, thereby moving us on from the current position of being ‘open to all options’. Given the extensive evidence base we now have on the three options for reforming higher-rate Gift Aid detailed in your recently-published research, we would suggest these should be the options we narrow the discussion down to.

Without a clear steer from you on the two above points, we fear it would be difficult for us to work together with you in the productive process of engagement that we would hope for."

Frankly we have had two years of unproductive discussion on Gift Aid and without a clear response to these points we will not be engaging in a charade of further pointless discussion. The sector faces significant funding difficulties. Gift Aid reform would be a huge benefit for us in meeting the increased demand from all our beneficiaries. Last year it netted £1bn for charities so it is a hugely important source of support. Ensuring the Gift Aid scheme covers all the tax for higher rate tax payers would be a huge boost at a time of great demand.

Snow and Search!

The recent inclement weather led to various gaps opening up in my Diary this week as people cancelled meetings and visits. Interestingly these were sometime replaced with telephone calls or conference calls for meetings. I'm a great fan of the use of telephone conferencing; it is so much more efficient and saves time and money (not to mention the carbon footprint saving!).


The prolonged cold spell and snow should remind us of the huge value and importance of the third sector. The thousands of staff and volunteers of the WRVS for example, (the splendid Lynne Berry CEO and ACEVO member) who are doing sterling work supporting isolated and vulnerable old people in their homes, or the work of carers (ACEVO member Imelda Redmond, CBE, CEO of Carers UK), who will be battling to ensure care is provided come what may.

Just a shame that the media cover all the work of the statutory authorities but hardly touch on the work of volunteers and the many charity and community organisations that help ensure life carries on.

As Lynne Berry says in her recent Blog, " we’ve been out there maintaining services for older people throughout the country, supporting the emergency services, getting essential supplies to people living on their own and mobilising the strengths of communities to act together and deal with whatever gets thrown at them (and that’s not just been snowballs, lately). "


Whether we have snow or no, climate change is happening and we must take action on it. Following the Copenhagen disaster we will need to ensure more direct action ourselves and the third sector has an important role to play itself. The sector is involved whether as big players like RSPB or the wildlife trust to BTCV and the Green Alliance. But we all consume energy and as employers need to do more to cut carbon emissions. We are investigating how we do more with our CEOs to promote good practise.

One of the sector Greats to be knighted in the New Years Honours was Graham Wynne, CEO of the RSPB. Sir Graham is retiring so there is a great CEO post to fill if you have the interest and skill. And David Fielding of Tribal, head hunter extraordinaire is in charge of the search. And if you don't fancy that there is the CEO of Tree Aid , an international NGO , which is also vacant and where David is conducting the search. So he moves on from his recent assignments with the new CEOs for Scope and Guide Dogs ... a chap worth chatting too if your ambitious! And certainly not worth falling out with (not to mention that he is a world champion in Aikido)!

The RSPB is a good example of just how important the sector is today in engaging citizens and contributing to well being and conservation . They have 1 Million members ; which makes their membership bigger than all the three political parties, 13,500 volunteers, 1,300 staff and 200 nature reserves .

Anyway its off to wonderful snow swept Charlbury - I'm running low on logs but Ill survive!

Discourteous Chancellors and Burnham (again)

Another example of the Burnham folly of "prefered supplier" comes to light. The Guardian report today that an abstinence based alcohol treatment course has had to be shut down because the Notts PCT have not renewed funding in the light of the Burnham policy.

I'm glad to say the organisation (UK Advocates) is not taking this lightly and will be taking judicial review. Good for them.

We are now getting news from members that PCTs are ready jumping the gun to implement the Burnham public sector first policy and not use third sector providers. We have letters now to this effect. We will be using this as evidence to get the policy challenged and changed.

What I find inexplicable is that the PM says he wants to take public sector reform wider and deeper but in the NHS its been taken backwards.

I have a meeting with Liam Byrne MP on Monday. A great Minister and a strong reformer. I want to explore this further, as well as talking about how we achieve banking reform and a Social Investment Bank.

And I will be raising the strange case of the discourtesy of the Chancellor.

On December 1st myself and 260 Third Sector CEOs wrote to the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, to suggest that the third sector could play a major role in helping reform public finances by offering more cost effective and customer focused services. We proposed a summit to bring together CEOs and key ministers and civil servants ot discuss how we could do this.

Now given the state of the public finances you might think an offer to help reduce public spending would be grabbed with both arms? You might think that when key leaders of the third sector write on a matter of national importance it would be taken seriously?

But no. It is not. We have heard nothing. Not a peep. Not even the courtesy of an acknowledgement, let alone a reply. And when my Office chase it up with HMT we are told it is going to be passed onto Stephen Timms MP as, presumably, it is to unimportant for the Chancellor and Stephen looks after charity things. So discourtesy is compounded with being patronised.

I wonder how many private sector CEOs it would take for Alistair to respond to them personally ?5? 20? 260?

We are often concerned in the sector that we hear more rhetoric on the importance of what we do than the actual reality of involvement. This is but a sad example of the gap. So Alistair, if this does not interest you, I know people who are...

Wise thoughts for the year ahead and Burnham again!

There is a wonderful new book "Keep Calm and Carry On" which contains "wise advice for hard times".

Two thoughts are particularly apposite for Sector CEOs.

"There is no education like adversity".
Benjamin Disraeli.

And the wisdom of the ancients from Horace:

"Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant ".

These eloquently make the point that there are opportunities for our sector in the year ahead if we grasp them. And we will!

This was a point I stressed to Rolande Anderson when I met her yesterday. She is the new Head of the OTS, replacing Campbell Robb who is now CEO of Shelter (and an ACEVO member naturally). It was good to hear that Rolande actively sought the OTS job as she saw the potential and challenge of it!

And good to have a one to one with one of ACEVO's new members, Simon Antrobus, recently appointed as the CEO of Addaction - a great charity working on the serious issues of addiction in our society. Currently with a turnover of 40m and 1200 staff it's an important player in this crucial area of work. He stressed their worry about the Burnham anti sector policy as some 90% of their income comes from contracts. Any attempt to row back contracts from our sector and place them in house will be disastrous for them. And he stressed that the contracts they have won from the public sector have been transformational. He said in Cambridgeshire, where they took over a service from the NHS, they have radically improved services and raised productivity. This illustrates the folly of the Burnham stance - he is ignoring the huge potential for improving services and creating greater efficiency by this sop to the unions' approach.

Simon also Chaired the Centre for Social justice's National Inquiry into Youth Crime and Gangs which reported last year.

I was able to tell Simon the good news yesterday when we heard that the DH Competition Panel have accepted our complaint about anti competitive behaviour by the Great Yarmouth PCT, following the Burnham U turn on preferred supplier and will investigate it. All strength to their arm. The Panel is part of DH so we have to hope they will be robust in resisting improper influences from other parts of the Department who want to protect Burnham from the consequences of his ill thought out policy which discriminates against the third sector.

This should also be a warning to any other PCT who wants to exclude the Third sector from increasing better service supply to citizens and communities. Although this is a complaint against one PCT, it is the first instance of a PCT implementing Andy Burnham's 'preferred provider' policy, so can therefore be interpreted as a complaint against the Secretary of State's position.


The real significance of this on a public policy and political level is that the official guidance to commissioners on 'preferred provider' policy is due for clearance soon, and DH is also trying to alter the remit of the Competition Panel. Both would need Cabinet sign-off, at which time it will become official government policy. We would therefore not be able to bring this complaint in the future.

So we have a unique opportunity here to have Andy Burnham's stance judged and it is highly possible they will say that it is anti-competitive. This would mean that an independent NHS panel set up by the previous SoS could in effect rule that the SoS is rolling back on competitive practice and failing to act in the best interests of patients and tax payers.

Interesting !

Clear out!

Must be the start of the new decade, but I arrived at work with a mad desire to clear out my office, having already rearranged furniture at home. I attack the bookshelves and desk and have a throw out. It was therapeutic.

And amazing what I found. An interesting document from the days of "acenvo", before I started in this job. In 1987 the Association was set up to represent only national bodies, though wisely members decided the sector's leaders needed support whether they were running a community organisation or a large national charity. So today ACEVO has a large number of CEOs from smaller organisations. Indeed 819 of our members lead third sector bodies with a turnover of less than £1m.

I re-read the strategic plan for 1999: at the start of the last decade. There was a strong desire to develop an "influence on policy" and to "increase the political influence on behalf of members". Well , we have certainly done that in spades!

And now that the Election campaign has begun in a flurry of adjectives, adverbs and attacks, we must ensure the crucial role our sector can play in developing a cohesive society and thriving communities is pushed to the forefront of debate.

But what I also saw from these old documents is how, as ever, leadership development was seen as the core task for ACEVO. As I blogged yesterday, this year we need a strong emphasis on support for the CEO role. It was the key message of my "All Members" email to ACEVO CEOs today.

I suspect, as my friend John Low from CAF says, we will increasingly feel the effects of the recession in this year; giving falling, cuts in public spending and rising demand for services from us. There will also be opportunities for growth and for new ideas and innovation. It's not all doom and gloom.

But this just emphasises again the need for support for the Leader at the top of the organisation.

Now back to the election. Another document I discovered was my speech to the acevo annual conference back some 8 years when we had the then Leader of the Opposition, Ian Duncan-smith speaking to us.

I said then:

"Has the sector realised its strength? We still act like a disparate group of individual organisations happy to be patronised and grateful for private sector handouts or Government contracts. "

Well, to an extent we have moved on from there - it's a mark of how our sector has grown that we are now more central to debates. But we have yet to fully realise that strength we have. So ACEVO's task remains to promote and develop our sector leadership!

And as we are in reflective mode let me reproduce some photos from the recent Bubb gathering to celebrate my Mother's 80th birthday.

My sister Sara's kids did a sketch on the life of Diana Bubb. Here they are; Julian, Miranda and Oliver.

Then this is the wider clan.

So my mother contemplates a coming decade as I work with members to ensure the continuing rise of the third sector over the Teen decade.

Back to the coal face

So a new year and new decade starts , and at ACEVO tomorrow.we will need to redouble our efforts for our members in challenging times.

I am going to resist the usual predictions ; the papers are full of them but an interesting discussion with the charming and erudite Chief Executive of London Recycling , Matthew Thompson , as we strolled round Brockwell park ; he with his young kid and me with the hound , made me think about putting down some markers for 2010 and the work of ACEVO with its members .

Whatever view one takes of the chances of recovery in 2010 , we know that the tail effect of recession in continuing unemployment and falling living standards will pose continuing strain on members and their organisations . Demand continues to rise for support and help from our clients and from communities.

Rising costs ( VAT and national insurance for example) will go hand in hand with rising demand. More will be expected of us in delivering services and less will be provided Io support that role.

So the leaders of third sector organisations will need support and advice , help and assistance in tbheir leadership role . So for 2010 ACEVO will be redoubling efortsd to provide individual support to each of our members that need that support . We are reviewing our professional development offering to ensure it provides the type of leadership support needed in challenging and difficult times. We have already seen that in 2009 we had a doubling of demand for our legal and crisis support services . So we will ensure that these one-to-one services are tailored and available to all our CEOs facing difficult times.

I guess it is a truism that the Chief Executive role is a lonely one , but only those who have actually had that role know exactly what that can mean when you are faced with making cuts , sacking staff or confronting trustees with the reality of impending deficits . At those times a CEO needs the support of their professional association so i want to ensure ACEVO has that blend of personal advice and support and professional development ready for that task.

In a time of challenge communications are important ; is our sector good at grasping the opportunities of new technologies ? This is another area where I want ACEVO to be ahead of the curve. We have been reviewing our technology , recently updating a somewhat tired website. but we need to do more .

Then finally our advocacy role will be at a premium in an election year . ACEVO has had a brilliant year ,often leading the debate and ensuring our sector voice is heard nationally. But that task will be more difficult when every lobbyist in the land will want their views and demands reflected in party manifestos. the Third Sector and its role in delivering change and uniting communities is as important as ever . Marginalised communities and excluded citizens need the strength or our campaigning for them . Our task , with our friends and supporters across the sector , is to ensure we have a prominent role in what will clearly be a pivotal election .

I'm looking forward to getting stuck in!

Great Dames and absurd Knights

Blogging after a satisfying romp on Clapham Common with the Hound., now gently dozing at my feet. I'm in London rather than Charlbury as yesterday the family celebrated my mother's 80th birthday ( photos to follow ).

Great to see Clare Tickell being Honoured in the New Year list. A Dame . And well deserved. I have known Clare for many years and she is one of the sector's finest chief executives ( and a former acevo trustee), and it is a crowded field ! Good also for Action for Children , the charity she leads so brilliantly. (Amusing to see dear Robin Bogg getting his plaudits in early ). Various other great sector leaders are honoured at differ net levels. It is good to see this as an antidote to the usual suspects . important the Honours recognise all sections of society .

I am also delighted to see a range of letters in the Times in support of our stance on the Hospital charity budget and accounts issue . I think the most telling was the letter which rather pithily stated , " If , as the DH asserts, this will make no difference , then why do it ? ". Indeed . I have had a very helpful email from one of the top firms of accountants in the sector which is clear that there is no actual justification for the proposal to consolidate budgets and accounts of the Hospitals and their charities as the charities cannot be properly said to be " controlled" by the parent hospital and so subject to this new accounting regulation . . We are now considering how to take this further . There may be steps we can take to frustrate this move if we cannot get the DH to rescind this advice . But essentially it is down to the Charity Commission to show its metal and instruct all registered hospital charities not to allow their accounts to be consolidated . And if any accounts are consolidated then an immediate review of the charity and its Independence must follow. Time for robust action Dame Suzi! I am sure we can rely on you!

But back to Knights . or one in particular ; a certain Angela Knight who runs the British Bankers Association . She has issued a New Year message to her members in which , I read , she attacks the Government for " irresponsibility ." . Er , sorry , run that one past us again Angela . Did you have a parallel universe Christmas? As we survey the wreckage of our economy at the end of 2009 and reflect on the damage to our communities and to the public purse the issue of irresponsibility rests fairly and squarely with the disgraceful antics of the bankers.

Just how difficult things are is made clear by the report from the great disability charity ,
Leonard Cheshire , which reveals that one in twenty disabled people have lost their jobs in the last 12 months and worst is expected. , with living standards to continue to fall and public spending cuts ( to bail out those banks ) soon to follow. It is a mark of a seemingly deep seated arrogance of the financial sector that , yet again , they fail to acknowledge their mistakes and expect the rest of us to put up with their continued whines about not getting their big fat bonuses. Well done to the Chancellor on his bonus tax say all right minded people. It is good however to see that not all those in the financial sector take the line of the BBA. I see the top financier , Guy Hands criticising the bonus culture and arguing time for change . That has to be the right approach ; we need a strong financial sector , but it must be one based on responsible banking .

Ms Knight might be best advised to suggest to her members that a period of quiet reflection might pay greater dividends than this distasteful public display . I was at Mass this morning at the local RC Church in Brixton , the rather grand Corpus Christi on Brixton Hill. One of the readings seemed a rather apposite New Year Message for all those in the British Bankers Association ,

" And the rich he sent empty away . "