Third Sector

Lucinda Rouse visits the RHS Chelsea Flower Show as grantmaker Project Giving Back marks its fifth and final year of supporting “gardens for good causes” at the event. She hears from PGB chief executive Hattie Ghaui about how its approach has encouraged participating charities to experiment and take risks in their public engagement and storytelling. She visits four of the PGB-funded gardens and sp...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Andy Glyde, strategy and insight lead at Bowel Cancer UK, and Phillipa Williams, strategy director at the behaviour change and communications agency Claremont. Andy describes the development process for Bowel Cancer UK’s recent campaign to encourage more people to report symptoms of bowel cancer to their GP.  He explains how the campaign sought to b...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Burt are joined by Joy Warmington, chief executive of the equality charity Brap. Joy highlights some of the limitations of standard equity, diversity and inclusion approaches and explains why adopting a flexible and responsive mindset is preferable to following an EDI toolkit.  She shares her optimism that racism will be eliminated in the future and provides tips for c...

Host Lucinda Rouse is joined by Third Sector colleagues Emily Burt, Andy Ricketts and Emily Harle to talk about three significant sector stories from the past month. Emily Harle shares her reflections from an event run by the Women in Charity Network , including the need for female leaders to make space for their more junior counterparts. Emily Burt provides context to Third Sector’s recent findin...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Charmaine Griffiths, chief executive of the British Heart Foundation. Charmaine outlines the BHF’s new commitments on equality, diversity and inclusion and explains why they are important in furthering the charity’s mission to fight heart disease. She talks about changes to the organisation’s recruitment process to encourage more diverse applications and...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle discuss snippets from a recent interview Emily conducted with Carol Homden, chief executive of the children’s charity Coram. Carol explains the rationale behind the Coram Group’s recent amalgamation with four charities while avoiding duplication and competing processes. She shares her views on the merits of chief executives holding senior board positions to gain an ap...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Rebecca Fell, chief executive of the refugee support charity the International Care Network, and the fundraising specialist Atul Kumar. Atul puts forward the case for why project managers should play a part in funding bids. He shares his tips on how to write successful proposals for trusts and foundations funding, including the importance of a strong p...

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Saskia Lightburn-Ritchie, chief executive of the domestic abuse support charity MyCWA. Saskia recounts how a long-standing commitment to partnership and collaboration, which forms one of the charity’s three key missions, strengthened its ability to execute a £500,000 emergency appeal when it lost a significant council contract. She explains why it is so...

Lucinda Rouse is joined by Third Sector colleagues Emily Burt and Emily Harle to reflect on three significant sector stories from the past month. Emily Burt shares her perspective on concerns raised by small charity representatives following the news of a restructure at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. Lucinda considers the findings of the Charities Aid Foundation’s UK Giving Repo...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle discuss snippets from a recent interview Emily conducted with Matt Downie, chief executive of the homelessness charity Crisis. Matt provides insight into Crisis’ plan to buy a thousand homes in the next decade and become a landlord for people experiencing homelessness. He shares his view that the voluntary sector is entering a ‘third wave’, which will require business...

**Content warning: This episode contains references to suicide and sexual abuse** Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by safeguarding specialist Joanna Nicolas and Sebastian Rocca, founder and chief executive of the LGBTQI refugee support organisation Micro Rainbow. Joanna identifies some of the most common safeguarding challenges facing voluntary organisations, which principally stem from t...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Stephen Roberts, chief executive of North Devon Hospice, to discuss the organisation’s response to some of the challenges facing the hospice sector. Stephen explains why the charity is aiming to reduce its dependence on legacies and how it encourages innovation in its fundraising work. He stresses the importance of factoring local need into ideas for new...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Burt  are joined by Emma Turner, chief executive of Mind in Croydon. Emma lays bare the operational realities of meeting soaring service demand in the face of cuts to local authority and integrated care system budgets, which form the bulk of Mind in Croydon’s income. She explains how the charity has formed partnerships with other local organisations at the instigation...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Burt  are joined by Richard Angell, chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust, and Rupert Whitaker, psychiatrist, immunologist and co-founder of the charity.  They discuss the legacy of fellow co-founder Martyn Butler, who died on 21 February, remembering the use of his home telephone number as the charity’s first support line in the early 1980s. Rupert shares...

Host Lucinda Rouse is joined by Third Sector colleagues Emily Burt, Emily Harle and Andy Ricketts to reflect on three significant sector stories from the past month. Emily Burt draws attention to recent cases of charities declining to voluntarily recognise workers’ unions. She questions the likely trajectory for union action in the sector in the face of increasingly challenging working conditions....

Andy Ricketts and Dami Adewale are joined by John Fitzgerald, digital evolution project manager at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. John describes some of the easy-to-use AI tools that can improve efficiency in working life and shares examples of charities that are already employing them effectively. He warns of data privacy issues associated with using free services and the risk...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Burt are joined by Emily Cotter, marketing, PR and communications officer at Leeds Mind, and Col Grist, co-founder and creative director of the digital agency Few and Far. Emily provides insight into Leeds Mind’s experience of livestream fundraising as it prepares to host the fourth edition of its Get Together Through Gaming online event in March. Col explains why he consid...

Lucinda Rouse is joined by Third Sector colleagues Emily Harle, Dami Adewale and Andy Ricketts to reflect on three significant sector stories from the past month. Dami recounts the circumstances surrounding a regulatory inquiry into the sale of City and Guilds’ commercial arm to a Greek-owned certification company. Andy provides his take on the findings of Third Sector’s recent Charity Pay Study ,...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Chloe Hadjimatheou, narrative editor at the Observer, who conducted an award-winning exposé of the main characters in the bestselling memoir The Salt Path. Chloe details the steps she took to interrogate some of the assertions made in the book after receiving a tip-off, including the circumstances of an apparent terminal diagnosis. She suggests ways in w...

Emily Harle and Emily Burt discuss snippets from a recent interview with Hannah Bond and Taahra Ghazi, the new co-chief executives of ActionAid UK. Hannah speaks of the value of a co-chief executive model in supporting feminist leadership and ensuring the best possible decisions are made for an organisation. Taahra acknowledges the loneliness encountered by many single chief executives and describ...

Emily Burt and Emily Harle  are joined by Zia Salik, interim director of Islamic Relief UK, to talk about the rising levels of Islamophobia and racism targeting the charity. Zia describes the measures being taken to support staff in the face of growing online and face-to-face hostility, and the need to plan for an increased risk of attacks during the month of Ramadan. He stresses the need for...

Emily Harle and Dami Adewale are joined by Madeleine Jennings, head of policy and communications at the Local Trust. Madeleine describes how her team has worked to translate lessons learned from the Local Trust’s ‘Big Local’ programme into actionable government policy.  She stresses the importance of forming relationships with civil servants as well as big-name elected representatives, and ex...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Burt are joined by Kate Lee, chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, to discuss some of the issues facing the voluntary sector in 2026. These include ensuring financial sustainability and the role of civil society in a world of uncertainty in the face of some big existential questions. Kate also shares her reasons to be optimistic, including the...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle discuss snippets from a recent interview Emily conducted with Matt Stringer, chief executive of the Royal National Institute of Blind People. Matt provides insight into the RNIB’s transformation programme, which concluded in April, and shares his lessons learned from a significant restructure. He reflects on the differences between charity leadership and his previous...

Lucinda Rouse is joined by Emily Burt, Emily Harle and Andy Ricketts to dissect the leading stories from the voluntary sector in 2025. Lucinda delivers a speedy round-up of the year’s charity news before the four discuss their selected top stories.  These include the launch of the Civil Society Covenant and leadership and governance challenges at Oxfam GB and World Vision UK . They share thei...