The Office of the Third Sector is a division within the Cabinet Office dedicated to leading and co-ordinating work across government that relates to the sector.
The OTS was created in May 2006 in recognition of the increasingly important role the third sector plays in both society and the economy. It claims that its work helps the sector to campaign for change, deliver public services, promote social enterprise and strengthen communities.
It also dishes out the government’s funding to the sector and during the 2008-9 year is overseeing a £515m funding programme. Some 45 civil society organisations are strategic partners to the OTS and receive an annual grant.
The OTS is led by the minister for the third sector, currently Angela E Smith MP.
The Charity Commission spent nearly more than £445,000 on recruitment advertising and services in the last financial year, and has budgeted to reduce the figure to £200,000 for the current year.
Charities have been given assurances that while calling donors registered on the Telephone Preference Service is a technical breach of the Information Commissioner’s Office regulations, the ICO will not take action against a charity unless a sufficient number of call recipients complain.
The independent expert group on sector expenses says there is no significant evidence of expenses abuse in the sector and so charities should not be required by law to publish their trustees’ and managers’ expenses.
Catholic Care (Diocese of Leeds) will today appeal to the High Court as it seeks exemption from equality laws which require it to allow homosexuals to use its adoption services.
The Charity Commission's implicit approval of charity accounts by virtue of posting them on its website without checking them first, is a threat to public trust in charities, says Dorothy Dalton
Charity Commission staff are set to strike next week after union members from across the civil service voted in favour of industrial action.
From 1st October 2009 every director must provide the registrar of Companies House with both their usual residential address, and for each directorship they hold, a service address.
The Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society in the UK and Ireland will launch its manifesto Making Good Society next month.
An Islamic charity has opted to dissolve itself following a Charity Commission investigation into its poor management and unaccounted-for income.
Phil Crier outlines the implications of the forthcoming removal of charities' exemption from needing a music licence to play copyright music to the public.
Islamic Help, a poverty relief charity in Birmingham, has ditched plans to build the UK’s biggest boarding school after an intervention by its local MP and a visit by the regulator. But an appeal for donations for the school is still on its website today.
HM Treasury has agreed to defer for a year the implementation of the international accounting standard that threatened to see donations to NHS charities lumped in to general NHS balance sheets.
Scotland’s charity regulator has given short shrift to the Accounting Standards Board’s proposals to develop a new accounting standard for public benefit entities.
The Charity Commission board has agreed to add the issue of environmental responsibility to its guidance documents the Hallmarks of an Effective Charity and, when next updated, the Essential Trustee.
Academy schools will not now become exempt charities after the government took heed of lobbying from the Charity Commission.
The Fundraising Standards Board has slashed its marketing budget to £35,000 this financial year in order to ensure it breaks even without any further government funding, according to its chief executive Alistair McLean.
Community Interest Companies will be able to pay dividends of up to 20 per cent of each share under changes outlined by the CIC regulator.
Charities could generate up to an extra £74bn from major donors via two North America-inspired reforms proposed in a new report.
Andrew Malin explains the background to changes in the regulation of exempt charities in England and Wales, and offers an early insight into the approach of the Higher Education Funding Council for England to its new role as a principal regulator.
Thirty-three charities have been caught misapplying funds or acting outside their purpose over the last year, according to the Charity Commission.
The Fundraising Standards Board is urging MPs around the country to encourage their constituents to give to charity this Christmas in a bid to bolster sector coffers depleted by the recession.
The existing model of charity governance that gives non-executive trustee boards authority over executive staff is bust and cannot be sustained, the chair of RNIB told an audience of charity chief executives last week.
This is the full text of RNIB chair Kevin Carey's speech to the Acevo annual conference on Thursday 5 November 2009.
The First-tier Tribunal (Charity) has overturned the Charity Commission’s decision to remove Nagendram Seevaratnam from his trustee position at the South London-based temple Sivayogam. In its second case, the Tribunal (presided over by Alison McKenna, pictured) found that none of the Commission’s seven grounds for dismissing Seevaratnam were sufficient to justify the decision.
So Professor Paul Palmer, a member of the "independent" expert group that will issue guidance to charities on how they should report their expenses, also sits on the board of a company that stands to profit from sales of a new software tool that helps charities report their expenses. And he doesn’t think there is anything wrong in this, because he told the other members of the board of Charity Business that he couldn’t discuss with them anything about his work with the expenses group. Because he declared his conflict of interest at the outset, there is nothing wrong with him holding down both posts, he contends.
Charities that opt to become a Charitable Incorporated Organisation will follow the same accounting requirements as other unincorporated charities, after most respondents to a consultation on the detail of the new legal form supported this approach.
The government has stopped the water regulator Ofwat introducing higher water charges for community groups, including churches, sports clubs, and some charities. The new water charge, dubbed a 'rain tax' by campaigners, saw water companies bill non-domestic properties for surface water drainage on the size of their site area instead of the rateable value of the property, meaning churches, charities and clubs, which often had a zero rateable value, faced huge extra charges on their water bills.
The advertising regulator has banned an advert for The Brooke, finding its claims that the charity is ‘unique’ to be misleading. In an overturning of a decision earlier this year, the Advertising Standards Authority has ordered that a press insert published by The Brooke Hospital for Animals which emphasised that the charity benefited both animals and their owners, and that the charity is ‘unique’, must not appear again in its current form.
The Charity Commission is investigating Prince Charles’ heritage charity following accusations that the organisation has intervened in major building developments. The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment has been accused in the press and by anti-monarchist group Republic of interfering in major building projects, opposing designs and having top architects kicked off builds.
The fact a cold raffle mailing will typically generate 300 per cent more response than a causefocused cash ask makes it almost irresistible, but be sure to observe the law, says Clive Mollet. The widespread belief that a raffle is ‘tacky’, compromises the brand, or generates supporters with very limited lifetime value, has been buckling under the weight of evidence to the contrary.