Third Sector

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Manny Amadi, chief executive of C&E Advisory, to discuss the company’s latest Corporate-Non-Profit Partnerships Barometer . Manny talks about how the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which affects how companies report on their social and environmental impact, will have an impact on new corporate partnerships. He flags the gap between comp...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Burt are joined by Alicia Nagar, head of people, wellbeing and equity at Mental Health First Aid England, and Samantha Stapley, chief operations and people officer at Trussell. Alicia describes the complex mental health challenges faced by people working in the voluntary sector. She outlines the need for a holistic approach to organisational support, with Mental Health Firs...

Lucinda Rouse travels to the Donkey Sanctuary in Sidmouth, Devon, to meet the charity’s senior statistician, Stuart Norris, and find out about his pathway to a career in data science. Stuart describes how he combined a background in ecology with his long-standing interest in computers to find his niche in the voluntary sector. He explains how his team combines open source data with internal inform...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Burt are joined by Ndidi Okezie, chief executive of UK Youth, to discuss the need for the voluntary sector to overcome its siloed approach to solving systemic problems. Ndidi explains how UK Youth is pushing for a more integrated approach to delivering youth services through a new initiative called the Joined Up Institute.  She shares her views on the role funders can...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Burt are joined by Collette Philip, founder of the anti-racist brand agency Brand by Me, to discuss the findings of its recent audit of anti-racism work by the top 30 charities listed in Third Sector’s Charity Brand Index . Collette explains why adopting a non-racist organisational approach and focusing primarily on diversity and the representation of racialised communities...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Burt are joined by Gemma Peters, chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support, to discuss the charity’s ‘year of transformation’. Gemma explains how its new strategy will enable Macmillan to better meet the needs of people living with cancer and describes the challenges of managing the accompanying organisational turbulence. She shares her views on the responsibility of larg...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Clare Mills, deputy chief executive of the Charity Finance Group, and Mike Conroy, director of commercial finance at the banking trade association UK Finance. They start by listening to an account of contrasting experiences with two high street banks by Cat Ross, chief executive of Baby Basics and volunteer director of Rwanda Child. Clare describes recen...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Nathan Coyle, senior peace tech adviser at the Austrian Centre for Peace and author of the book Open Data for Everybody: Using Open Data for Social Good . Nathan explains how open data can be used by the voluntary sector to support work in areas including campaigning and influencing, completing grant applications and demonstrating charities’ expertise...

Andy Ricketts and Dami Adewale are joined by Abi Long, executive team manager, and Yusuf Ciftci, head of refugee involvement at the Refugee Council. Abi presents the findings of research conducted by the Refugee Council into barriers encountered by refugees navigating the UK job market. She describes the intersectionality of challenges facing people with different types of lived experience, from h...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Bekki Wilkins, special events manager at the Willow Foundation, and Sam Dimond, director of the event production company Spotlight Sound.  Bekki recounts the challenges of organising events such as the Willow Ball and the London Football Awards in the face of inflated costs and lower corporate ticket sales. She suggests ways of reducing costs thro...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Robyn Mountain Wade, director of income generation at Martin House Children’s Hospice, to find out how the charity recruited major donors for the first time to meet a £21.9m fundraising target. Robyn explains how Martin House engaged local philanthropists by inviting them to events co-hosted by their ambassador and the former England football manager,...

Senior reporters Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Berenice Levenez, director of strategy, technology and transformation at Girlguiding, and Liz Gadd, environmental lead at the think tank NPC. Berenice describes how feedback from members that Girlguiding should be doing more to address the environmental crisis prompted the charity to develop a new environmental strategy. She explains how...

Lucinda and Emily are joined by Rebecca Linford, senior legal adviser, and Mark Ellis, head of communications, at the whistleblowing support charity Protect. Rebecca describes Protect’s role in the development of a storyline about whistleblowing for the BBC medical drama Casualty. She outlines the scripting process and stresses the need to be clear on timelines to help manage workloads. Mark expla...

Lucinda and Emily are joined by James Dunbar, chief executive of the poverty reduction charity New Start Highland.  James describes how the charity was able to move from being a predominantly grant-receiving organisation to generating three-quarters of its income through trading and contracts. He explains how he identified income-generating opportunities for New Start Highland, from furniture...

Lucinda and Emily reflect on a recent visit to the RNLI headquarters in Poole, Dorset, where Lucinda met the charity’s outgoing chief executive, Mark Dowie. Mark identifies the principal challenges of his five-year tenure as having been the Covid-19 pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis and small boats crossing the Channel. He explains how his corporate background helped him to implement operational...

In a session recorded at the Third Sector Conference, Lucinda and Emily are joined by Rhodri Davies, director of Why Philanthropy Matters, to reflect on some of the themes covered in Third Sector’s recent podcast documentary,  The End of Charity . These include the rise of influencer philanthropists, such as the YouTube megastar MrBeast, and their potential role in attracting a new, younger s...

Lucinda and Emily are joined by David Welch, chief executive of the Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance, to consider how charities can effectively build trust with their staff, service users and donors.  David describes the role trust played in enabling KSS to raise almost double its £1m fundraising target during a six-week emergency campaign. He stresses the importance of open communicatio...

Lucinda and Andy are joined by Liz Cooke, chief executive of The Hive Avon, and Kevin Barker-Lee, a people partner at Lloyds Banking Group and chair of the charity. Liz outlines the broad range of skilled volunteer support provided to The Hive, from fundraising planning to an annual visit from a florist. She notes that the most valuable skilled support is often short term and requires careful adva...

Lucinda and Andy are joined by Denise Hayward, chief executive of Volunteer Now, which supports and promotes volunteering across Northern Ireland, and Margaret Starkie, partnership and communications manager at Volunteer Scotland. In a conversation recorded before the general election announcement, they discuss the trajectory for volunteering in their respective nations, including the impact...

Lucinda and Andy discuss the road ahead for charities following Wednesday’s general election announcement. Later in the episode, Lucinda and Emily are joined by the strategy specialist Sharath Jeevan and Hannah Stevens, chief executive of Elect Her. They discuss the importance of inflection moments in planning an organisation’s strategic direction. Then Lucinda travels to the RHS Chelsea Flower Sh...

Lucinda and Emily are joined by Paul Streets, chief executive of the Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales, to reflect on more than a decade of working with small charities as he prepares to step down. Paul celebrates the resilience of small charities, likening them to cockroaches for their ability to endure challenging environments, and suggests ways in which funders can step up to better...

Lucinda and Emily are joined by Fola Komolafe, chief executive of World Vision UK, to discuss the charity’s role in a wider drive to integrate African philanthropists into the established global charitable landscape. Fola also provides her views on the merits of child sponsorship and the growing recognition of the importance of faith-based charities in delivering programmes in the UK and abroad.&n...

Lucinda and Emily are joined by Mary Rose Gunn, founder and chief executive of the small charity funder The Fore, to discuss the challenging funding environment facing small charities. They start by listening to an account by Jane Evans, chief executive of West Norfolk Carers, about the growing difficulty of securing enough funding to keep the charity afloat. Mary Rose explains why trusts and foun...

Lucinda and Emily are joined by Holly Penalver, founder of Indigo Volunteers and volunteer development manager at ShelterBox, and Karolina Praskova, a volunteer at the education charity Climate Ed. Holly provides pointers for effectively managing the volunteer recruitment stage and stresses the importance of an induction to motivate new volunteers and make them feel appreciated. She also outlines...

In November 2023, the finance officer of West Norfolk Carers came to a devastating realisation: after more than a year of rejected funding applications, the charity wouldn’t be able to stay afloat for longer than four months. Several months earlier, the Lankelly Chase Foundation, a grantmaker tackling severe social disadvantage and extreme marginalisation, had reached a similarly terminal conclusi...