Twelve voluntary sector bodies have written a joint letter to the Treasury and the Office for Civil Society to make five proposals for strengthening civil society, prior to next month’s budget.
The proposals include:
- Strategic intervention to ensure that charities and social enterprises can meet increased demand for their services, including training programmes across key strategic areas such as fundraising, financial management, technology, cyber-security and property management.
- More training in key areas such as finance and digital, at larger scale than existing funding for fundraising training, to ensure that resources raised are well spent.
- A specialist infrastructure, at a local and a national level, to ensure VCSEs across the UK can feed into the work of central and local government.
- Investment in programmes that can boost the use of technology in the sector.
- A consultation on the use of dormant assets such as insurance policies and shares, which will be identified and redistributed by government over the next few years.
The letter has been signed by:
- Caron Bradshaw, chief executive, Charity Finance Group
- Mandy Johnson, chief executive, Small Charities Coalition
- Jane Ide, chief executive, NAVCA
- Tony Armstrong, chief executive, Locality
- Vicky Browning, chief executive, ACEVO
- Kunle Olulode, director, Voice4Change England
- Kathy Evans, chief executive, Children England
- Peter Lewis, chief executive, Institute of Fundraising
- Paul Streets, chief executive, Lloyds Bank Foundation
- Antonia Swinson, chief executive, Ethical Property Foundation
- Karl Wilding, director of policy, NCVO
- Peter Holbrook, chief executive, Social Enterprise UK
The full letter and submission are available here.
