What it’s like to be a TrusteeMy main motivation, initially, for getting involved in charities, was that I had recently moved to Edinburgh and didn’t know anyone in the City aside from my new work colleagues. I joined a charity as a volunteer and after finding out they were looking for a new treasurer, decided to join their board of trustees. […]

Isn’t it great when things really are learnt from good practice?Isn’t it great when things really are learnt from good practice?  When my colleague Katherine, David (from the Cooncil) and I set off on our 6 hour round train trip on a Friday morning to North Ayrshire I wasn’t absolutely convinced it was great use of more than one third of my working week hours […]

“Doing things right means doing the right things”This tongue twister of a workshop title comes from a Governance Institute paper called “Cultural Markers: Assessing, measuring and Improving Culture in the Charitable Sector”. I think it really captures the essence of good governance and why it’s so important and this was the focus of this workshop at our Conference. We had a discussion […]

Social (in)security?At our Conference, Scottish Government presented an overview of the current landscape in terms of the devolution of £2.8bn of benefits from UK to Scottish Government, the new agency which will be established and the Experience Panels which have been set up to allow those with lived experience of the current benefit system to inform […]

Prevention within the Context of Grants Review and Funding CutsIn light of the forthcoming review of the Health and Social Care grants programme, we facilitated a workshop at our Conference to investigate the merits of a third sector lead Commission on Prevention.  The busy workshop explored issues and voiced opinions on what exactly we mean by ‘prevention’ and how might the third sector effectively […]

Participatory Budgeting an Effective Tool for Community Engagement?Jez Hall from PB Partners lead a workshop on Participatory Budgeting at our Conference, this workshop built on the work of EVOC to: raise awareness of Participatory Budgeting with the third sector continually evaluate PB projects being run across Edinburgh from a third sector viewpoint in order that learning from projects can be shared with […]

Partnership Working with School CommunitiesAt our Conference, Paula Swanston and Lyn Williams from Home Link Family Support presented about systemic change within a school community, drawing on their experience from a pilot project with Lawfield Primary School in Midlothian. This project was a partnership between Play Therapy Base, Home Link Family Support, Children 1st, Midlothian Sure Start and Midlothian […]

Participatory Budgeting in Edinburgh: Where are we now?Everyone is talking about Participatory Budgeting again, well that is how it feels in my world as I get invited to attend meetings to look at and discuss PB ……  So here is my run through of what is happening nationally and locally: The national PB conference funded by the Scottish Government is being held […]