Acevo has guaranteed its commitment to the sustainability of the Impact Coalition and promised to allocate time to pursuing its objectives from within its policy and communications teams once a new strategy is set.

Members of the Coalition steering group held a meeting yesterday to discuss the future of the initiative in the wake of Acevo’s decision to scrap the post of coalition co-ordinator earlier this year.  

Liam Cranley had held the job for the past year, appointed after responsibility for the Coalition moved out of the Institute of Fundraising and into Acevo. But funding for his role ran out and the organisations that had stumped up grants for the Coalition in 2009 - the Institute, Charities Aid Foundation, CFDG and the PFRA – did not continue their financial support.

At yesterday’s meeting, Acevo’s director of strategy Seb Elsworth emphasised Acevo’s commitment to continue hosting the Impact agenda and said that its principles and objectives would be integrated into Acevo’s general work. The two main objectives of the Coalition are to make the public better informed about charities, and make the sector more transparent and accountable.

Elsworth told civilsociety.co.uk that the Coalition now needed to set a new strategy for its work, relevant to the current challenges facing the sector.  Another meeting is to be held within the next six weeks to kick off this process, facilitated by New Philanthropy Capital’s Tris Lumley and using NPC’s ‘theory of change’ methodology.  This will identify the Coalition’s next priorities and examine how Coalition members might go about achieving them.