On the face of it, the Cabinet Office plans for a ‘Big Society Bank’ make a lot of sense – particularly in seeking to foster community activism and engagement in deprived areas. Though there have been some notable exceptions, one of the issues with community initiatives to date has been their tendency to be white, [...]
Current funding mechanisms make it very difficult for government, subject as it is to three year spending cycles, elections and ministerial whim, to respond to and support the needs of the third sector in the longer term. If models cannot be found to secure significant funding to support core services and sustainable growth within established [...]
As Jon discussed in his blog on community portals back in September of last year, it can be tricky to get a sense of all the work that is going on in the community sector and identify the organisations delivering projects on the ground. His entry looked at wiserearth.org, which encourages the sharing of knowledge within the community [...]
We generally don’t bother commenting on misleading reporting of environmental issues. Journalists (and I speak as someone who used to be one) have been putting a sensationalist spin on stories (and non-stories) since newspapers began. Moreover, anecdotal evidence from discussion groups we’ve run suggests that much of the sceptical coverage on environmental issues has very [...]
Measuring behaviour change is no easy feat, but this new(ish) tool could help
Earlier this week I went to the launch of the Change! Tool held at NESTA. CAG consultants and WWF have been developing the tool over the past six years and it has existed in various forms before now, but its live online launch happened this week thanks to NESTA support – you can check it [...]