Vibeka Mair

It seems that every week I read about yet another celebrity charity art auction in the Metro on my journey into work. It usually involves a popular celeb scrawling on a postcard and signing it, or colouring in flip flops because it's summer.

The Church Commissioners for England has appointed Tom Joy as its first director of investment to manage all of the Church of England’s property and other assets worth a total of £4.4bn. Joy (pictured), who will report to the first church estates commissioner, Andreas Whittam Smith, and the secretary to the commissioners, Andrew Brown, has been hired to advise the assets committee on the strategic development of the Church’s multi-asset investment portfolio in light of the increasing complexity of the financial markets.

The government has allocated £7m to pilot community service for young people, in the first stage of Gordon Brown’s pet policy to make sure all 14 to 19 year olds do 50 hours of community service. The Department for Children, Schools and Families will distribute the funds to five pilot community service projects which will run from January 2010 until March 2011.

Kevin Curley, chief executive of NAVCA, has vowed to fight the prospect of the charity sector running prisons after the Charity Commission refused to rule out the possibility that it could be a charitable purpose. Curley wrote to the Commission twice this year, asking for a review of whether charities could run prisons after the Ministry of Justice decided the third sector and private sector organisations could bid to run new prisons and existing failing prisons. Crime prevention charities Catch 22 and Turning Point were the first charities to win a prison bid this month.