The #NeverMoreNeeded campaign has emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, with several charities and infrastructure organisations giving their backing to raising awareness of all the wonderful – and essential – support that the voluntary and community sector has given during this time.
At CVS, we have also been supporting this campaign on our COVID-19 sector impact pages.
If you are a Volunteer Manager or Coordinator for your organisation, have you signed up to be part of our FREE Volunteer Managers Network?
The Volunteer Managers Network meetings are held quarterly throughout the year. They give volunteer managers the opportunity to meet others in similar roles from organisations across Cheshire East to network, create links and partnerships, and share best practice.
The Free Wills Month initiative returns in October and is fast approaching. Following on from Remember a Charity Week, now is a good time to encourage your supporters to think about leaving a legacy to support your work, at the same time as taking advantage of the free wills offer.
People over 55 living in England, Northern Ireland and Wales can take part in the initiative to have simple wills written or updated free of charge.
Leaving money to a charity in a will can be a valuable source of income for charities. Currently 6% of people in the UK leave a gift to charity in their will and over £3 billion is raised annually for charities through legacy giving, with more charities exploring it as a fundraising option each year.
Like many of you, staff at CVS have had to adapt to changes in working in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were lucky that we could continue to deliver our services without interruption when lockdown arrived and we started working from home, as we already had cloud-based software and Microsoft Teams available.
However, we wanted to ensure that we could remotely provide network sessions, training and our highly-valued "Thursday Thoughts" weekly coronavirus updates online. This was where Zoom came in.
Collecting data can feel like a time-consuming occupation, particularly if you would rather be concentrating upon delivering your services rather than evaluating them. However, measuring your outcomes and demonstrating impact can be vitally important, particularly when you need to show funders (current and potential) and stakeholders what you do.
Update 06/12/19
DPS for Skills Providers and Training Provision, Skills For Growth: Cheshire and Warrington: ESF
If your organisation has a training programme which employers do/could use to support the training and development of their staff then this tender may be of interest to you.
Update - October 2019
We have been working with the CCG to look at how we can build better relationships between the health system and the Voluntary sector.
Brexit - Deal or No Deal - how will it affect you?
We have been asked by Cheshire East, who are putting no deal plans in place, how the sector is planning for a no deal Brexit.
My response was, not sure, lets find out.
So I have put together a short survey to find out what you are doing to prepare for a no deal Brexit.
If your instant response is, it doesn't affect my service you might be right but there are some areas I would encourage you to consider:
Update: 07/02/19
Over the last few months, we have been supporting one of our members around a strategic issue relating to commissioning and from this work, there are a few actions that are now going to happen:
· Cheshire East Council wish to be part of a meeting/event with small and rural VCFS organisations to discuss how we can work together more effectively when it comes to service delivery and ensure that the smaller organisations are able to be part of partnerships or have the chance to bid to deliver services.