NPC’s YouTube channel launch!

At NPC we’re always looking for new ways to engage with charities and funders to help them think more about effectiveness and impact. That’s why we’ve launched our new YouTube channel to share some of the great discussions we’re having.

We’ll be making videos that outline the thinking behind NPC’s approach and uploading videos of the events we organise. But above all, we want YOU to get involved.

Tell us what you think. What videos do you want to see? Tell us if you think what we’re saying is spot-on or in need of revision. What events do you want us to organise? Post us video replies. Leave comments. Say hello.

There’s been a lot of talk of the Big Society lately, so we’ve decided to put our recent paper, Scaling Up for the Big Society, into video form. It features our very own Head of Strategy, Tris Lumley, talking about what funders and charities can do to make the government’s big dream a reality.

You can also find videos of our recent breakfast seminar Intervening early for the Big Society, featuring presentations from NPC’s Martin Brookes, Catherine Roche from The Place2Be, Sue Gwaspari from CSV, and Gracia McGrath from ChanceUK.

You can visit our site here, and remember to rate, comment and subscribe!

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Donate to this charity award winner

A great charity won the overall prize at the charity awards I attended and judged two weeks ago. The charity, Community Service Volunteers (CSV) won the award for its project Volunteers in Child Protection (ViCP). This does something very simple but very effective. It takes volunteers and pairs them with chaotic and dysfunctional families where children are at risk of harm.

ViCP epitomises the spirit of the Big Society—using voluntary action to tackle entrenched problems, alleviating pressure on public services, and reducing the budget deficit. A volunteer for ViCP costs £2,400 a year to train and support. If a child needs to be placed on the child protection register and a plan drawn up by social services, this alone can cost up to £40,000. If a child needs to be placed into foster care, that costs almost £500 a week. The economics of child protection are horrific, let alone the impact on the child. None of the 400 children helped by ViCP across five local authorities have returned to the child protection register. Scaling up this approach makes eminent sense, as NPC argued in a recent report.

Collecting the award, project head, Sue Gwaspari, called on government to support and grow their work. This is consistent with NPC’s call to Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd. Government should indeed grow this work. Private donors should too. Anyone who wants to help children at risk of harm, to curb abuse and support purposeful volunteering which makes a real difference should donate to Volunteers in Child Protection. You can be confident the money will be used well and help a great organisation. What more could you ask.

A to-do list for Nick Hurd, Part 5, scaling up charities

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts outlining a to-do list for the new British Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd. Previous posts covered the potential for shared measurement projects to improve impact measurement, the idea of an impact fund to encourage more measurement, and the need for more open data among and about charities.

All have a unifying theme—improving the quality of information about measurement of charities’ impact, and the flow of such information. This post continues in that spirit.

Last week NPC published a report, Scaling up for the Big Society. This outlined a framework for ministers and civil servants to use when considering whether to scale up the work of individual charities. Direct evidence of the effectiveness of an organisation or project is essential here. For the minister, the goal should be both to promote the collection of such evidence and to encourage his colleagues to think more carefully and systematically about which charities to support and grow.

As the report notes, if the framework is “applied properly, it could help to reduce the [government budget] deficit, tackle deeply entrenched social problems, and help the most disadvantaged people in our society. That is not a modest set of aims, but the work of charities that test, measure, evidence and prove their work will make them possible.”

With that in mind, the Minister should think how he can spread this approach among fellow ministers and their senior civil servants.

We will publish a post in the future about how the government might do more to promote charitable giving and philanthropy. For now, keep reading our blogs and sharing your comments.

Bigging up charities for the Big Society

Politicians are big fans of charismatic charity chief execs and inspiring social entrepreneurs but these individuals can’t be scaled up. And scaling up is exactly what’s needed if the government is going to achieve its twin goals of encouraging charities to tackle challenging social issues as part of the Big Society and cutting the deficit.

Today we publish Scaling up for the Big Society, the first of our ‘NPC perspectives’ series, which offers guidance on deciding what approaches and interventions to scale up and how to do it. We’re not saying it’s sexy or exciting, but we are saying it can help create maximum impact.