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Big Lottery Fund Announces Millennium Now Fund - added 13.05.2011
The Big Lottery Fund (BIG) has revealed it is to launch an £11 million programme to invest in five projects to be chosen by the public. The announcement was made by BIG's Chief Executive, Peter Wanless, as part of a report reviewing the economic and social impact of initiatives funded by the Millennium Commission.
The Commission distributed £2.7 billion of Lottery funding to projects celebrating the new millennium, which include the Eden Project and Tate Modern.
Of the Millennium Now fund, Mr Wanless said: "We want to know what epitomises the needs and desires of this generation and this decade. We will be asking the nation to tell us what really matters to them, which beneficiary groups they feel most deserve our funding and what that funding should be used for."
No further details are available on the fund, a Lottery spokeswoman said:
"The Millennium Now programme will allow the public to decide the themes that best represent their priorities for lottery funding in the current climate and will help to find five inspirational projects across the UK, each to receive a multi-million Big Lottery Fund cash injection."
For more information, interested parties are directed to the Millennium Now website.
Growth Package for Local Enterprise Partnerships Announced - added 13.05.2011
In a drive to stimulate local economic growth, Business Minister Mark Prisk has announced a package of measures to help local enterprise partnerships setting up.
Partnerships are being invited to submit bids for a share of a £5 million Start-up Fund. The Fund is a one-off pot designed to support expenditure such as office equipment and training which will help embryonic LEPs to become established. Partnerships will be expected to demonstrate as part of their bid how they will become self-sustaining in the future.
Additionally, from today, partnerships will have access to an online Toolbox which provides comprehensive information on economic development activity across government departments, and ideas for strong partnership/government working. They will also be able to access information through the new Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) Local network which will be the first point of contact on any issues.
Funding allocations from the first round of the Local Enterprise Partnership Capacity Fund have also been issued today. Each partnership will receive a share of £1 million to help increase their understanding of the barriers to growth facing local businesses. For further information please follow this link http://nds.coi.gov.uk
myDonate - Online Giving
BT is hoping to expand the online giving market via the launch of its web fundraising system myDonate, a launch which sees it compete with established players JustGiving and Virgin Money Giving in the online sponsorship and fundraising arena.
However, unlike JustGiving which charges a £15 monthly fee to charities and takes 5 per cent commission, or Virgin Money Giving which involves a £100 set-up fee and a 2 per cent commission, myDonate will only charge charities credit card processing fees – and that fee is charged at a lower or equal rate to its competitors.
BT is keen to stress that the site was a product developed not just for charities, but “by charities”. For more information follow this link http://www.btplc.com/mydonate/Forcharities/index.aspx
HMRC launches new Gift Aid forms
Following the Gift Aid simplifications in the budget, HMRC has revised its Gift Aid claim forms. The new intelligent forms can be found on the HMRC website.
Government Launches New Solutions for Business Package
The Government has announced a new portfolio of business support products designed to help business development and economic growth.
A new Solutions for Business (SfB) package has been launched. The package has been compiled in a user friendly fashion, making it simple for companies to understand and access. Within the package, there are 13 products, intended to help businesses identify key challenges and deal with them as their enterprise evolves. The package is expected to target activities where a Government lead is required. This might include the provision of strategic advice, exploiting opportunities for innovation and expanding into international markets.
The package supersedes the previous Solutions for Business portfolio which listed 32 products to help businesses at different stages of their development. The new portfolio targets only those areas where a Government lead is required. The 13 products in the portfolio are as follows:
• High Growth Coaching.
• Helping Your Business Grow Internationally.
• Manufacturing Advisory Service.
• Designing Demand.
• Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.
• Networking for Innovation.
• Collaborative Research and Development.
• Grant for Research and Development.
• Work Place Training, including Apprenticeships.
• Improving Your Resource Efficiency.
• Finance for Business.
• Understanding Finance for Business.
• Rural Development Programme for England Business Support.
The Solutions for Business portfolio is part of a wider package of measures that Government is delivering to support business growth. Further details of the portfolio and the specific products can be found at the BIS website.
Regional Growth Fund - Announcement of Second Round
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has announced that a second bidding round of the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) will open on 12 April 2011.
The Government announced in the 2010 Budget, that it would commit itself to create a Regional Growth Fund. Launched as part of the publication of the Coalition Government's Local Growth: Realising Every Place's Potential White Paper, the Fund completed its first round earlier this year.
The RGF is a discretionary £1.4 billion Fund that will operate for three years between 2011 and 2014 to achieve its two main objectives of:
• stimulating enterprise by providing support for projects and programmes with significant potential for creating long-term private sector led economic growth and employment; and
• helping those areas and communities that are currently dependent on the public sector make the transition to sustainable private sector-led growth and prosperity.
The Fund subsequently encourages private sector enterprise, including social enterprise, to create opportunities for people and places to adjust to reductions in public spending, and enable private sector investors, business, the public sector and communities to come together with an overall strategy for their area. Bids for funding from private bodies and public-private partnerships across England on a challenge basis are welcomed; however, the minimum amount of grant that can be applied for is £1 million.
Round two will open to applications on 12 April 2011. Further details will be reported on when available.
Contracts Finder Website
The government has launched a new website aimed at helping charities and small businesses to find public sector contracting opportunities. The site, called Contracts Finder, will list all such opportunities worth more than £10,000.
Organisations can register on the free site to specify what sort of contracts they are interested in and receive emails about them, the Cabinet Office announced. Organisations that bid for contracts worth less than £100,000 will no longer have to fill in pre-qualification questionnaires. Organisations that fill in such questionnaires for larger contracts will be spared filling in further questionnaires for similar opportunities.
View the website at http://contractsfinder.businesslink.gov.uk
BT’s Community Web Kit – free web-hosting and design service
Charities and not-for-profit community groups can access a free web-hosting and design service through the communications company BT.
Its Community Web Kit provides free website hosting, a free address, a choice of layouts and designs and a step-by-step guide. As part of BT Community Web Kit you'll receive:
• Free website hosting
• Free website addresses
• The choice of 8 templates with five or 15 colour themes depending on the template selected
• 1 free format template
• Enough space for unlimited pages and up to 500 pictures
• Templates and colour options for all your content
• An easy-to-use Page Editor or an HTML Editor if you’re technically minded
• Free technical support
If you have any questions the Community Web Kit "Help" page has lots of answers to common queries, and if you really are stuck, its team of helpful people are on hand to provide free technical support. The service is part of BT’s Get IT Together campaign to encourage as many people as possible to get online. More than 3,000 organisations have already registered with the scheme, which has just been re-launched. To register please visit their website at www.btck.co.uk
John Lewis urges charities to take on Golden Jubilee Trust secondees - added 01.02.2011
As the eleventh year of the John Lewis community giving programme gets underway the retail giant is calling on charities to apply for secondees for periods of up to six months.
The Golden Jubilee Trust allows every member of the 70,000 strong John Lewis workforce to take a six month secondment to a charity or voluntary organisation of their choice. The organisation has so far sent employees, who are all partners in the company, off to over 400 charities in the UK.
Last year was particularly successful for the scheme as a record 23,790 hours were donated to charities, which is the highest since the scheme began in 2000. In total, over 200,000 hours have been spent by employees at either community-based organisations or large, international charities.
Chris Jones, manager of the Golden Jubilee Trust, said: “We are thrilled to have been able to donate more hours than ever in 2010 – especially when so many businesses have had to cut back in this area. We want to extend our reach even further in 2011 so I would encourage charities of all sizes to approach us if they’d like to find out more.”
For more information visit www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk
SOURCE; Civil Society
In Kind Direct - added 01.02.2011
Make your budget stretch further with products from In Kind Direct. In Kind Direct redistributes surplus goods (including office equipment, sports equipment clothing and footwear) from manufacturers and retailers to UK charities working at home and abroad. Registration with this organisation is free. For more details visit their website at www.inkinddirect.org
iPhone app to help even more pennies to drop – added 17.01.2011
The Tax-Effective Giving team has launched the first ever iPhone application to support fundraisers and donors in calculating the benefits of tax-effective giving.
The app has brought together the four virtual calculators currently available on the Institute’s Tax-Effective Giving website, which can be used to calculate the cost and benefits of tax-effective gifts through Gift Aid, Payroll Giving, share giving and legacy giving.
The app is available for iPhone users to download, free of charge, through Apple’s iTunes store .
New software to make donations when shoppers buy goods online – added 17.01.2011
Everyclick has launched software which will automatically donate money to charity when online shoppers buy a product, without the buyer having to pay any more themselves. Give as you Live utilises retailers’ affiliate programmes, which pay commission to referrers such as online comparison sites whenever a customer clicks a link to the retailer’s website and goes on to buy a product.
The software has agreements covering around 1,000 retailers and can claim commission of anywhere between 1 and 15 per cent or more. Of the total commission raised each month, between 50 and 90 per cent is donated to charities, depending on how much was raised in total. The proportion of this fund that each charity receives is determined by how much their users use Everyclick's search engine, rather than how much commission that charity raised. Partner retailers include John Lewis, Tesco, Expedia, Lastminute.com and Sainsbury’s.
Everyclick has also partnered with Blackbaud to ensure full integration with The Raiser’s Edge, giving charities access to reporting functionality, donor information such as lifestyle and purchasing preferences and the ability to contact those donors who opt in to further communications.
Polly Gowers, CEO of Everyclick, said: “By putting the supporter’s needs first and foremost in our design process, we have created a product that can raise millions of pounds without the hassle of asking supporters to change their behaviours. I wanted to make raising millions of pounds easy and free. And I think we have.”
Users can only choose one charity to support so the onus is on charities to persuade their supporters to choose them.
Rival product in testing– added 17.01.2011
Meanwhile, another project looking to utilise affiliate schemes to raise money is CharityBox, which has just entered the beta testing stage. Developed by Pizza Powered, CharityBox first came about in September last year when it won Charity Hack, an event designed to create innovative ways of collecting donations online.
Its developers, who say they will take just a 9 per cent cut of the money raised for their own administration costs, have been talking with PayPal and MissionFish to utilise their databases of charities and individuals.
Charity & retail coordinator Dom Hodgson says that CharityBox is simpler to use than Give as you Live. "Our service is a little different to theirs as ours is silent and requires no addition clicks for the user. Everyclick's requires the user goes to a special page, then back to the site, and to then find your product."
SOURCE: Civil Society
Free information source and online community for the nonprofit sector – added 03.09.09
KnowHow NonProfit is a free information source and online community for the nonprofit sector. The website contains sections on:
• the basics
• you and your team
• your organisation
• funding and income
• campaigns and awareness
• leadership
• working together for change
Each section has a wealth of information and resources with links to other tools. 'The basics' section has a free online self-assessment tool, Tools for Success, to work out whether your organisation has got the basics in place to be sustainable. Take the test and receive a report. (You will need to register with KnowHow NonProfit to access the self-assessment tool). www.knowhownonprofit.org
Useful links
www.biglotteryfund.org.uk
www.awardsforall.org.uk
www.culture.gov.uk/national_lottery
www.lotteryfunding.org.uk
www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk
http://www.big-thinking.org.uk
How2fundraise - FREE online resource
It's been a while since we featured this really useful website that give ideas on ways to fundraise along with loads of other information:
How2fundraise is the most comprehensive, FREE online resource for the UK's 16 million volunteer fundraisers
www.how2fundraise.org
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