Articles & News Items
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
PQASSO Self Assessments – can I help you?
Can I help your charity deliver improved services in this challenging financial climate? A CEO of a local Gloucestershire charity that has just won 3 significant contracts recently said to me When times are tough, the competition is tougher – and PQASSO gives you an...
The Learning Ladder
The Four Steps of Learning – The Learning Ladder I read an excellent book last year Connectome by Sebastian Seung, Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There was, at least for me, an unexpected quote in the...
10 Steps to Change – Step 7 – Rolling out the change
Rolling out the change Previously we have developed ideas to help you roll-out your change. In “Change brings opportunity” we recognised and defined the need for change. This was linked to strategy, and was informed by internal and external surveys, and PESTAL and...
What can you do to embrace quality?
In the previous blogs we have looked at the need for quality standards, the cost and benefits of implementing quality standards and the choice of quality standards available to charities today. In this blog we look in some detail at the PQASSO quality standard, the...
The Choice of Quality Standards available to the Voluntary and Community Sector
Part I and Part II of this series looked at the need for, and the costs and benefits of quality and quality standards. Part III looks at the choice available to organisations in the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS). What quality standards are available to...
The Costs and Benefits of Quality to the Voluntary and Community Sector
Part I of this series on quality in the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) considered the need for quality and quality standards. Now we consider the question of whether they are worthwhile or just a gimmick that consultants use to make money. Do quality standards...
The Need for Quality in the Voluntary and Community Sector
Those of us working in the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) share a desire to deliver quality services to our service users. In that respect we are no different from those working in the private or public sectors. But how do we know when we are delivering quality...
Property rationalistion in the voluntary sector
Before I took early retirement in 2011 I was seconded to the Cabinet Office to lead a project in Bristol with the aim of rationalising the office accommodation of Central Government. It was an interesting challenge, and Bristol (along with London) were the pilots for...
10 Steps to Change – Step 6 – Roles, Responsibilities and Accountabilities
Do you ever hear comments like ... Very few of us like working in chaos. However, organisations are often poor at clarifying what we should do or should expect of each other. Introducing change makes things even worse as with little experience of new working...
Unnecessary worry
Worry can negatively impact our professional, social and private lives. I have been challenged recently to view life more positively and to look for "the wonder" in everyday experiences wherever I find myself. Thinking about this brought back a memory of a little...
The Hedgehog Concept
The idea of categorising the world into hedgehogs and foxes has a long and distinguished past. An ancient Greek poem (possibly written by Archilochus) concluded with: The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In this poem, a cunning fox wants to...
Charities and Overheads – have we got it wrong?
I would encourage any reader of this blog who is working in, or interested in, the Voluntary and Community Sector to spare 18 minutes and watch the following talk by Dan Pallotta on TED. It is compelling viewing and although the facts and figures he quotes are from...
10 Steps to Surviving Change – Step 5 Helping Design & Development
Practice makes Perfect Step 5 – Helping to Design, Develop and Test New Capability You have a plan, so now you need to work through it - easier said than done. Step 5 takes a lot of effort, ability and determination to complete to time, cost and quality. Here’s a...
First say to yourself ‘what would you be?’
In my previous blog, The Acts of the Apostles, I discussed the need to act as what we do is what people will remember about us. This blog takes a different approach and starts from the point of view that we are first and foremost human beings, not human doings, and it...
The acts of the apostles
I recently came across a quote by Og Mandino that went: “I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the apostles, but a good deal about their acts.” It got me thinking why that might be apart from the obvious fact that there is a book in The Bible called the...
Fighting Your Inner Demons – the battle for the mind
I read a promotional article recently that was trying to pursuade me to spend money on a product. It claimed that constantly and in every aspect of my life, there is a fierce battle taking place in my mind as two forces battle for control over my thoughts, actions and...
The Wheel of Life
There are a number of versions of the 'wheel of life' that I want to mention. The first is the bhavacakra, an instructional figure in Buddhism. It is a symbolic representation of the cycle of existand found on the outside walls of Tibetan and Indian temples and...
10 Steps to Surviving Change – Step 4 Planning
Step 4 Planning the Change “If you don’t know where you are going, how can you expect to get there?” - Basil S Walsh In Step 1 you recognised the need for, and defined a specification for change. In Step 2 you base-lined you current capability and identified your...
‘Stretch for life’ – Moving out of your comfort zone – Part II
In Part I of this mini series on 'Moving out of your Comfort Zone' I introduced the concept of the three zones (Comfort, Stretch and Panic) as being three states in which we move between repeatedly during our lives, and suggested that we should be aiming to grow our...
Moving out of your comfort zone – Part I
Mark Twain, Will Rogers and Frank Scully are just three people who have been credited with saying "Why not go out on a limb, that’s where all the fruit is.” Whoever actually said it doesn't really matter; what matters is that it is true. John Dewey suggested that to...
10 Steps to Surviving Change – Step 3 Consensus
Step 3 - How good could it be, if we all pulled in the same direction. Step 3 Gain Consensus for Change In Step 1 and Step 2 we identified what improvement to take forward. In Step 3 we need to share these improvements with key staff and stakeholders who will deliver...
Active Listening
Just like the previous blog about asking questions was applicable beyond the context of coaching, so is this blog on listening. In fact I would suggest that effective listening is one of the most important skills anyone can develop but, in many cases, we learn bad...
Asking the ‘right’ questions
I started my blog A Practical Introduction to Coaching with the thought that coaching is about asking questions. The second blog in this series on coaching (The GROW Model) highlighted the importance of asking the right questions. But what are the 'right' questions?...
10 Steps to Surviving Change – Step 1
“Change brings Opportunity” – Nindo Qubein Significant change is complex, costly, unsettling and difficult to achieve so, how can it be delivered successfully? The trick is to keep change under control using tried and tested techniques. No one programme will be the...
How to help your client GROW
A coach has a number of tools at his disposal. Perhaps one of the most popular is the GROW model, a simple yet powerful framework for structuring a coaching session. GROW is an acronym standing for Goal – Reality – Options – Will. Here are some practical tips for...
Introducing my first guest blogger
I am delighted to announce that Steve Rowbotham has agreed to write a series of guest blogs giving down to earth, practical advice on surviving change. This will initially be a series of ten blogs, but I would not be surprised if it developed into more. Expect Part I...
How do we treat our volunteers?
Working with volunteers I recently came across a helpful blog by Digital Spark Marketing discussing how to keep employees engaged. In it they identify four key elements - motivation, trust, loyalty and engagement - which together give an indication of how engaged...
A Practical Introduction to Coaching
What is coaching? How about these four different ways of looking at coaching for a starter? Asking questions ... a coach helps their client to clarify and refine their goals ... until they have the confidence to achieve them. Empowering others to be the best they can...
ABCD – The name doesn’t matter … the results do
Back in late August I posted 'As easy as ABCD' and used the blog to promote discussion on LinkedIn. Inadvertently I entitled the discussion Activity Based Community Development rather than Asset Based Community Development which was the intended acronym. Read on to...
Without a vision …
Without a vision ... King Solomon once said that "without a vision the people perish". And more recently George Washington Carver observed that "where there is no vision, there is no hope". As someone who has been involved in strategy development for many years these...
As easy as ABCD
ABCD Talking recently with Hazel Lonsdale, CEO of Third Sector Services in Cheltenham, I was reminded of how important acronyms are in any sphere of work. Take ABCD for example. Is it the first four letter of the alphabet or (a bit more than) the lyrics of a very old...
Join in Local Sport
Join in Local Sport Are you being inspired by the Olympics? Do you wish we could do better. Do you think sport has an important role to play in building communities? If so then there is a fantastic opportunity coming up soon. On 18/19 August, Join in Local Sport is...
Quality Research
Quality Research Thanks to Anastasia of the Charities Evaluation Services, I recently came across some research conducted by Ellie Brodie and Georgina Anstey (NCVO) with Tim Vanson (Office of Public Management) and Richard Piper (NCVO) entitled Quality Assurance in...
Barrie is now a licensed PQASSO Mentor
PQASSO Mentor I am very pleased and proud to announce that on 21st June 2012, which co-incidentally is one of my daughters' birthday, the Charities Evaluation Services (CES) informed me that I had passed the PQASSO Mentor exams and have therefore been licensed by CES...