This week ….
Went to see Sally at Funding Central. Funding Central is such a great website - it combines a funding search with listings of tenders, contracts and loans available to the Third Sector and aims to educate the sector in partnership working, variations in financing and strategic planning as well as making the life of anyone involved in funding that little bit easier. They’ve got lots of interactive tools like this one: http://www.fundingcentral.org.uk/page.aspx?sp=6347
That help you think through your strategy.
Looks like we’ll be making a film for them to make using the site a little less daunting for the many staff in the voluntary and community sector who are intimidated by Internet and IT. That certainly isn’t everyone, many people are great with technology, but the sector does have a large number of smaller groups who may not even have a website. It’s worth spending 15 minutes on your profile though, once it’s done it’s done and then you get weekly updates on grants that meet your criteria – bit like internet dating!
Met with Helen Guiness, chair of The Hunger Project on Friday. The Hunger Project has been delivering empowerment training through local volunteers across several continents for over 30 years, ending persistant hunger by empowering women and communities to better address their needs and solve problems. Very inspiring work. Helen is now taking their Leadership training, Vision for Action, out into the world. The one day training helps transform a vision into an action plan that all staff can commit to. We’ll be having a training session to get to grips with the process here at TLP, but if you’d like one of your own, please contact her on helen@vision4action.co.uk. I’ll report back once we’ve had one!
Inpsiring chitter chatter on the web front with the guys from The House , discussing how we forgive Apple their mistakes but not Microsoft – interesting to reflect on how the personality of an organisation makes you more or less forgiving. Brands are almost like character traits now aren’t they? We see Microsoft as “a bit up itself”, whilst Apple is “ a bit chaotic but so exciting and sexy.”
Note to self, if you can’t be clever, or have the right connections, try being exciting and sexy.
Friday night drinks in Highgate woods café with my dear friends Josef www.uniteddiversity.com and Gloria ( www.kidsfirsttrust.org.uk) Aside from being delighted that the week was over, I got a speed download education in the Industrial Provident Society and Development Trust. I finally understand what these things are and how useful they are. Basically, members buy shares in a local service like a farm or a school or a local shop or pub, but there are restrictions – like it doesn’t matter how many share you have, you still only have one vote. Very interesting - basically a very old school form of crowd funding. Wonder what we can do with this…
Big lecture from Grandma because I don’t document my workshops and she says I need to. My Russian Grandma is a PhD physicist so she is a big believer in an evidence base. She says I could have a publishable report by now if I’d documented the 250 workshops and consultancy projects I’ve done over the last 4 years. She’s right. I am abashed! I’ll start with tomorrow.
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