It’s been a year since the government’s new Shared Parental Leave came into force. The change enables eligible men to share up to 52 weeks of parental leave with their partner and has been held up as one of the key contributions of the Lib Dems to the coalition government.
Our new report Past Imperfect, developed over the last 18 months examines data from the fields of Cancer, heart disease, disability, poverty, and the environment to try and see what changes, for better or worse have taken place over the last few decades. This blog is an edited version of our conclusions, as much as anything to encourage people to read the whole report!
At last week’s MRS Conference, Baroness Neuberger mentioned that politicians should take more initiative and leadership and pay less attention to the worst examples of public opinion.
She also talked about how in the past the UK accepted around 70-90k refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1938, when economic conditions were much more dire, and those people served the country extremely well.
We would like to thank our clients and partners for inspiring us to keep researching the topical issues in the sector. As part of our Social Investment programme we regularly produce Free Reports and feed our finding back to the sector so any charity regardless its size or sector can find something useful. Here are the 12 popular reports this year.
Michele Madden reports on the first findings from our online community and wonders whether charities are making the most of raising awareness and donations in December.
There are over 160,000 charities in the UK1, benefiting a wide range of causes from hospices to international development. We explore facts and figures to try and determine which of these causes appeal most to the general public, but find that the outcome depends on the criteria used. When asked, the public name clear favourites such as cancer and animals, but when their donating and volunteering preferences are considered the picture is far from clear.
This week's blog is from P Martin Broad, who has over 30 years experience of working in the wider Community and Voluntary Sector. Martin is a Vice Chair of Bournemouth Council for Voluntary Services, Trustee of Bournemouth 2026, a Development and Community Land Trust, and Chief Executive of the Boscombe Independent Advice Centre.
The season of good will and giving is just around the corner – and many charities will be reaching out to donors with their key appeals and campaigns. We know Christmas is one of the most important and valuable times of the year for charities, yet we think it is going to become increasingly difficult to engage donors during this time.
Earlier this month we released results which showed a marked decline in public trust in the charity sector as a whole between April and October 2015. With charities still reeling from the media attacks of the summer, these results appeared to confirm that the stories in the press were having a very real impact on how the public view charities. What’s more, the results were the continuation of a longer term trend of declining trust in charities that can be tracked back more than two years.
The generational landscape of UK society is being radically transformed. We will see a predicted 2m growth amongst those aged 65 and over by 2020 (Future Foundation), representing a 20% increase on the current proportion of 65+ year olds in this country.