NPC Blog - Page 129 of 130

Last week Prime Minister Gordon Brown admitted something that everyone already knew: that there will be cuts in public expenditure. If the last decade in government was about what to spend money on, the next ten years is about what not to spend it on.

Last week, the Boston Foundation, one of the oldest and largest community foundations in America, announced significant changes to the way that it is giving grants.

Next week NPC publishes the findings of a year-long pilot project carrying out research in to charities in India.

For the Tories [the official Opposition and, it is widely assumed, the government-in-waiting], charities are an important part of mending ‘broken Britain’, a crucial element of democracy, and a place where people can help themselves out of poverty. Nothing new in this you might say.

Was anyone else depressed to hear children’s charities supporting the Vetting and Barring scheme on the radio this morning, England, Wales and Northern Ireland's new compulsory register for everyone who wants to work with children or vulnerable adults?

This week, NPC was out in force at the NCVO VSSN conference, the conference in the UK dedicated to research about the voluntary sector.

Since 2007 - New York City has been testing, Opportunity NYC, that experiments with so-called Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs). CCTs are cash payments made to people on low incomes in return for specific behaviour—be it opening a bank account, or ensuring that children attend school.

Where they share the same charitable purpose, big charities should recognise where small charities are doing a good job, including where they are doing the job better than they could.

Last year, some colleagues and I wrote a report on homelessness. One of its observations was that both the problem and the activities that charities undertake to tackle it are disconnected from public perceptions.

Warren Buffett’s gift to the Gates Foundation raised the profile of giving to established foundations as an option for individual donors.

We are delighted to see this week’s launch of a new advisory service in the US for high net worth donors (with more than $1m of philanthropic assets) – Tactical Philanthropy Advisors.

I like an analogy that Elizabeth Pisani used in her excellent book, The Wisdom of Whores, about HIV/AIDS and the role of NGOs and the UN (among others) in tackling the epidemic.