The Prince Update - November 16th 2020

Our writer Richard Prince shares his regular horizon scan of the sector news, flagging up developments, new funding and opportunities in the social sector for portfolio careerists and others to be aware of.

Coronavirus Community Support Fund awarded to 8,250 charities

More than 8,000 small and medium charities across England have been awarded a share of £200 million to help them continue their vital work with vulnerable people during the pandemic.  Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden confirmed that the Coronavirus Community Support Fund (CCSF) has been fully allocated, with 8,250 small and medium organisations receiving grants.  The money has helped a wide range of causes working on the front line of the pandemic, from FC United’s project to help vulnerable families in Manchester, to Re-engage, a charity supporting older people at risk of social isolation across the country.

As high street giants fall, community shares help businesses thrive

The coronavirus pandemic has changed the face of business in the UK, with scores of shops, restaurants and other companies closing down during the crisis. According to new research from Co-operatives UK, community ownership models are helping to create a new generation of UK businesses that are better equipped to withstand the Covid-19 crisis.

The organisation’s biggest ever study of the community shares market finds that of those businesses who have raised finance with community shares to date, a remarkable 92% are still trading.  Community shares has become a popular approach to raising finance for co-operatives and community benefit societies – businesses owned and run by local communities across the UK. This finance model has helped to save local community spaces from closure, such as pubs, shops and football clubs.

Comment:  Community shares have not had the publicity of conventional social finance (ie repayable loans) but can make a big contribution to the right organisation

Community groups struggling to survive

Six out of ten community groups have been forced to close or reduce their support services due to Covid-19.  The findings have been published by community charity Groundwork into the impact of the pandemic on community groups this year.  Groups looked at include voluntary led services, sports clubs, community choirs and specialist support services.

Goundwork’s report Community groups in a crisis: insights from the first six months of the Covid-19 pandemic found that eight out of ten groups have lost income and only around half feel confident about their long term viability.  Among those surveyed 84% are confident they can help communities as long as they are supported through partnerships with councils and the private sector.

Civil Society News: very few charities can operate on reserves for long

Many charities went into the Covid-19 pandemic with a low level of reserves, according to new research: Assessing the Financial Reserves of English and Welsh Charities on the Eve of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

They analysed over 12,000 sets of accounts filed with the Charity Commission for charities with incomes over £500,000, the level at which reporting on reserves becomes a requirement.  Overall the median level of reserves was 3.92 months of expenditure.  Some 21% of charities in the sample had less than one month of expenditure in reserve; a third had less than two months, and 43% had less than three months. One tenth had just a few days’ expenditure in reserves. 

Brexit guidance for the civil society sector from January 2021

The UK has left the EU, and the transition period will end on 31 December 2020. For civil society organisations in the charity and social enterprises sectors, links to general guidance on the actions needed by December 31 are available at the link below.

Comment:  Dom says it’s all going well, but he’s off before it all kicks off!                                                          

Charity Commission News – November 2020

CC News is emailed to all charity contacts, with instruction to forward to their trustees. It contains essential regulatory information that charities need to be aware of.  This issue includes articles about:

·       new user-friendly guides for charity trustees

·       coronavirus (COVID-19) guidance for charities

·       our Annual Public Meeting

·       charity fraud awareness

·       new register of charities

·       the UK and EU transition

·       how to get help to revitalise your charity funds

Charity Commission: new “5-minute guides” to support charity trustees

The Charity Commission has launched a new set of simple, easy to understand guides, designed to help trustees run their charities in line with the law.  The new guides cover five key aspects of charity management - a ‘core syllabus’ covering the basics that the regulator expects all trustees to be aware of.  They explain the basics of:

·       financial oversight

·       achieving a charity’s purposes

·       good decision making

·       addressing conflicts of interest

·       what to file with the Commission and what support is available 

Simon Jenkins, The Guardian: The office block has had its day. But what will replace it?

Simon Jenkins in The Guardian.  After the first lockdown, surveys suggested that the office’s days were numbered. Since the 1990s, the internet has supposedly liberated white-collar workers from their desks, but it has taken a pandemic to truly break the ritual.  YouGov published a survey carried out in October, before the new lockdown was announced, which found support for the office had collapsed. A mere 7% of workers want to return to five-day office hubs rather than new hybrid arrangements. Fifty percent dislike commuting.  The chief opposition was from bosses, with only 13% believing they can “manage or train teams as effectively when working remotely”.

The solitude of lockdown is relieved by the sense of community. Such living is strangely like a return to a pre-industrial age, when people did not have to travel far from home to find work. The merchant delivers to the door. Services are essentially local. These benefits are real. They mean people have more time to take on community responsibilities, as has been noted during the pandemic. Life might even return to declining institutions, to local shops, pubs, churches and sports.

Comment:  if you’re interested in the future of work and communities – and most of us are – this is a good read