The Charity Digital Code of Practice has launched a COVID-19 digital checklist to support charity leaders during this difficult time. The checklist aims to help charity trustees and leaders make the right digital decisions, evaluate key decisions, assess progress so far and create a consistent understanding of their charity’s digital goals. The checklist is split into 7 categories which include remote working, fundraising and governance.
A new fund was launched by Essex County Council (ECC) on 1 April 2019 and will be administered by the Essex Association of Local Councils (EALC) over a two year period.
This new fund includes various community grant schemes that have been funded by Essex County Council. This includes:
the existing CIF
Local Service Fund
Local Connections Fund
Cultural Development Grant
For the CIF, grants of up to £10,000 may be awarded for either a Capital or Revenue (not core costs) project. One off grant awards will be made in October 2020.
Micro-grants of up to £500 are also available throughout the year and awarded once a month.
This fund excludes projects that deliver outside the administrative area of Essex County Council.
Please ensure to pass to Individuals, voluntary organisations and community groups.
Please submit your pre application forms to Louise Gambardella at louise.gambardella@ealc.gov.uk by 5pm on Tuesday 30th June 2020
Charity Digital Code have created a checklist to help charity boards and leaders with the decisions they need to make about digital during the coronavirus crisis.
The checklist aims to help charity trustees and leaders do the following during the crisis:
Make the right decisions about digital
Review view digital progress made so far
Create a shared understanding of your charity’s digital goals
As charities increase their use of digital there is a lot to think through. This can be made manageable by:
Choosing only the most relevant topics from the checklist – you don’t have to use the whole resource. Pick one topic that’s most important to your charity right now and discuss at your next board meeting
The executive team, or a working group, could review progress against the checklist and report this to the board
The Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR) are offering a number of Covid-19 peer support webinars for VCSE leaders.
These 90 minute sessions, for up to 10 voluntary sector leaders at a time, will give you the opportunity to explore and discuss the challenges you are currently experiencing, precipitated by the COVID-19 outbreak. We understand that you may be facing huge stress and uncertainty, and hope that these sessions will offer a space to share experiences, dilemmas and worries.
One leader who has already taken part commented that:
“It was really powerful to be part of one of these sessions … incredible to hear about the wide range of experiences and challenges faced by colleagues and to identify together commonality within that diversity.”
As a by-product of this work, IVAR will also feedback to funders the kinds of challenges that voluntary sector organisations are currently facing. This will help funders to think about what kind of support they need to be offering, and how.
If you are unable to attend, but would like to be kept informed about future dates please email vanessa@ivar.org.uk
We have some exciting news to share! Our Volunteer Centre has undergone a rebrand and we are now known as the “‘Basildon, Billericay and Wickford Volunteer Network”, with a brand new logo. We feel this better describes the partnerships we have with our third and public sector organisations and are keen for the Volunteer Network to have its own identifiable brand that can be better known in the community. Behind the scenes we are working on developing our volunteer offer and are developing our new Volunteer Network website which will be our “one stop shop” for all things volunteering – watch this space!
Please get in touch if you’d like to talk about any volunteering opportunities (formal or informal) you might have that we could help you promote – volcentre@bbwcvs.org.uk
Donations will be quarantined for 72 hours and customers required to use hand sanitiser before browsing the clothes rails and handling the bric-a-brac on the shelves, under plans drawn up by the UK’s charity shops as they prepare to reopen their doors in June.
According to the Guardian, Barnardos will be among the first to start trading, with plans to reopen 70 of its 700 UK shops in England from 8 June. Read the full article here.
The Government has freed up £150m of funding raised through dormant bank accounts to support social enterprises and charities working through the Covid-19 crisis.
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden announced he would speed up the release of £71m of new funds and reallocate £79m already released to help charities’ responding to the coronavirus outbreak. The “Coronavirus Community Support Fund” is open for applications, with funds due to be distributed by The National Lottery Community Fund.
Following the positive response to May’s virtual Dementia Friends Information Session, the Billericay Dementia Action Alliance, in association with Anisha Grange Care Home is announcing a number of new dates that have been added to the series!
Over the one hour live-stream session, you will gain a greater understanding of dementia, learn how we can all contribute to make our community more dementia friendly, and get insights into how local businesses can become more accessible to those members of our communities, both living with and caring for loved ones with dementia.
The virtual events will be taking place on:
Basildon, Billericay & Wickford CVS are putting together a peer network for the third sector in their area.
They plan to have a private group initially consisting of the leaders across our borough’s non-profit organisations. Eventually they intend to expand this network to support a broader range of roles and discussions to suit you. If you want to be a part of this development and have your say, answer three questions and register your interest.
Mind in West Essex have collaborated with The Wellness Society to produce a free online course for managing anxiety during the coronavirus outbreak.
“In this course we explore what stress and anxiety are, as well as introducing you to several tools for dealing with anxiety and methods for preventing and reducing physical anxiety symptoms (i.e., autostress).”