PQASSO rebranded as Trusted Charity
With immediate effect NCVO has renamed PQASSO to Trusted Charity with the PQASSO Quality Mark becoming known as the Trusted Charity Mark. It is probably true that the public’s trust in charities is much lower than it has been, and NCVO believes that achieving a recognisable quality mark that demonstrates that Trusted Charities are well […]
NLP Practitioner Status
I am very pleased to announce that after nine months of training, under the exellent guidance of Kim Phillips (Integral NLP), the International NLP Trainers Assocation (INLPTA) have awarded me certified practitioner status. I was amused to note from the certificate that this status is in “the art and Science of NLP”. It is interesting […]
Cautious Optimism in latest NCVO Charity Poll Forecast
The recent NCVO charity poll have just been published. The highlights, provided by NCVO are: Here’s a quick snapshot from the results:Do you expect your organisation to increase or decrease expenditure over the next 12 months? (results are sorted by organisational annual income) As a whole the results tell much the same story as […]
PQASSO Mentor License Renewed
I am very pleased to announce that following three days if intensive NCVO training in Nottingham and taking the examination, NCVO have renewed my PQASSO Mentor license. This means that I can continue offering support to charities with their PQASSO self assessments.
New services – monitoring and evaluation
nVision Consulting is pleased to annouce the introduction of two new services. Independent Assessments Following the successful completion of an independent assessment of two Ethiopian NGOs for CRED, the UK charity administering a Comic Relief grant, and an independent self assessment of Allsorts, who received a Big Lottery grant, we are now offering this service […]
Re-envisioning the future
Many of us in the VCS are concerned about the future; where will we get our funding from, will we be able to continue delivering services to our clients, will we survive? When the future seems bleak, it can help to re-envision the future; to me this is really about adapting to changing circumstances, seeing […]
2014 Charity Pulse Survey
The 2014 Charity Pulse staff survey, “Reasons to be cheerful”, carried out by Birdsong Charity Consulting for Third Sector, shows clear indications of improvement over the past 12 months. The annual Charity Pulse survey seeks to measure staff satisfaction across the VCS with a dual aim of building up over time a picture of working […]
Collaboration
To collaborate or compete: that is the question. An African proverb goes something like If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. It’s a competitive world when it comes to ever decreasing funding, short term contracts and the need for immediate and usually measurable results / impact. […]
Assess your Impact Practice
At an event today, attended by Nick Hurd (the Minister for Civil Society), two new impact measurement tools were launched by the Inspiring Impact coalition. The first is called Measuring up and is an on-line self assessment tool. It is intended to be used by organisations in the Voluntary and Community Sector to review their […]
10 Top Tips for an effective Board
I delivered a training course for GAVCA on Wednesday this week entitled “10 Top Tips for an effective Board”. I identified the 10 tips from my experience as a trustee and from talking to CEOs. The Charity Commission, identify an effective board as one of their Six Hallmarks that delivers quality outcomes for its beneficiaries. […]
Using PQASSO as a Quick Healthcheck
How healthy is your charity? And equally important – how do you know? I talk to some CEOs and staff members of local charities who sincerely believe they run or are working for well run ‘healthy’ charities. But when pressed, they find it hard to given good reasons why. I talk to others who have […]
What is ‘success’ to you?
What does success look like to you? How will you know whether you have achieved it? I grew up in Peterborough and when I was not playing rugby I used to watch the local football team – Peterborough United. Having left Peterborough many years ago I was able to go to Old Trafford a couple […]