Bullwhip optional

Charities minister Nick Hurd makes a habit of brief appearances when he speaks, but he trimmed an extra minute or two off for the Govtoday conference in London earlier this week.

The compere, Karl Wilding of the NCVO, got up to announce that Hurd – due to speak next – had not yet arrived. But as he uttered the words “the minister is delayed”, Hurd himself burst through the door, a bit like an Old Etonian Indiana Jones, lacking only a triumphal theme tune and a bullwhip.

“No he’s not,” he said brightly.

Hurd has a bit less puff than Harrison Ford, and had evidently dashed a bit. So he had to sink down into the front row of the Mermaid Theatre to have a blow.

Would the minister care for a minute or two to catch his breath, Wilding inquired?

No, said Hurd, he had to go and vote in half an hour on shared services.

“Which is not a subject I actually know much about,” he added, after a moment’s reflection.

Ask me almost anything

After delivering a short speech, Hurd announced he was ready for questions. “Ask me anything,” he said. Then he thought for a moment. “Almost anything,” he added.

After he’d fielded a couple of questions on sector issues with his normal genial aplomb, a guy at the back ambushed him with a question about whether MPs should really be able to make their own rules on expenses.

Hurd thought for about three seconds and arrived at a conclusion.

“I’m going to duck that,” he said, smiling. “I only agreed to answer questions on almost anything.”

And what was he wearing, ma’am?

The hazards of working for charity are not, it appears, to be underestimated. Even if you work at a Cancer Research UK shop in Malmesbury.

The local rag reports that a member of staff walked around a clothes rail and came upon a customer who was trying on shoes. He had taken off his own shoes and socks to do so, which is not unreasonable, but had then proceeded to take off everything else as well. Which is.

The man was described as “flabby and rounded”, and was wearing a pink T-shirt, grey jogging bottoms and dark shoes. Some of the time, anyway.

Sorry folks, she was right

A year ago Caron Bradshaw, chief executive of the Charity Finance Group, stood up at the launch of Managing in the New Normal, a joint publication from her organisation, the Institute of Fundraising, and PwC.

More charities were developing a fundraising ask, she said, and this could be a problem. Charities needed to develop measures to ensure they didn’t just end up with more of them pursuing the same donors - “dipping their rods in the same pool”.

Bradshaw didn’t actually say this would happen, just warned fundraisers to be wary of the possibility. But this was lost on many, and she took some flak for doubting fundraisers’ innovative expertise. She was, it appears, being pessimistic, which Society Diary believes is the worst insult it is possible to utter in a fundraising department.

A year later, the CFG, IoF and PwC revealed the next edition of the same publication. In it fundraisers reported that more competition from other charities for the same donors “is now the biggest fundraising challenge”.