Third Sector

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...

Lucinda and Andy are joined by Matt Corbishley, deputy chief executive of Ashgate Hospice, to discuss the charity’s use of new tech solutions in its operations and service delivery. Matt explains why Ashgate Hospice encourages staff to experiment with new forms of IT and artificial intelligence, and outlines the benefits of a digital apprenticeship programme to train existing team members. He prov...

When The Times newspaper’s chief reporter Sean O’Neill broke the story that senior Oxfam aid workers had committed sexual abuse while working in the disaster zone of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, it sent shockwaves around the charity sector and wider society. O’Neill reflects on his memories of uncovering the scandal, while experts including Chilande Kuloba-Warria and Martha Awojobi discuss how the v...

Lucinda and Emily are joined by the author and mental health consultant Dimple Dhabalia.  Dimple warns of the dangers facing organisations that focus on their charitable mission at the expense of staff wellbeing. She notes the sense of guilt often felt by humanitarian workers suffering the effects of workplace trauma. She provides pointers for how organisations can make staff wellbeing a corn...

In May 2018, three climate activists called time on lukewarm campaigning over the climate crisis. They wanted a different and radical approach. The plan: mass civil disobedience. The name: Extinction Rebellion.  And the first major act of the movement? Stage an occupation – of the Greenpeace offices in London.  Why is it that charities are so often perceived to be “the opposite of disrup...

Lucinda and Andy are joined by Philippa Cornish, head of client experience at the Charities Aid Foundation.  They discuss the implications of CAF’s report into individual giving, which found a smaller pool of donors giving more led to a total uplift in 2023 in spite of the median monthly figure remaining stagnant at £20 since 2017.  Philippa provides suggestions for how charities ca...

Why donate to a charity if you can just help out a fellow human yourself – or buy a piece of premium fashion that promises to generate a similar result? In episode three of The End of Charity, Lucinda Rouse explores two very different alternatives to the charity model: mutual aid theory, and the rise of buzzy “for good” business. The activist and founder of Mutual Aid UK, Eshe Kiama Zuri, discusse...

Lucinda and Emily Burt are joined by Dhivya O’Connor, chief executive of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women. Dhivya provides insight into her previous experiences as an interim chief executive, describing the pros and cons of holding a short-term leadership role, and stresses the importance of cultivating a healthy organisational culture from the outset. She talks about the foundation’s recent...

Meet Jimmy Donaldson, perhaps better known as MrBeast – the 25-year-old YouTuber who some say is on the verge of sparking a revolution in online philanthropy.  With more than 236 million YouTube subscribers and an estimated net worth of $500m, MrBeast has turned his focus from filling houses with Lego bricks to curing blind people and building wells.  Lucinda asks Darren Margolias,...

Lucinda and Andy are joined by the fundraising historian Marina Jones to track the development of the fundraising profession and perceptions of charity fundraisers through the ages. Marina, who is leading a history project for the think tank Rogare, traces the roots of fundraising back to the time of Moses. She draws parallels between contemporary fundraising methods and instances of their use cen...

Last year the UK food bank network the Trussell Trust distributed almost 3 million emergency food parcels, 1 million of which were for children, up from 50,000 a decade ago. How has the UK landed in such a severe hunger crisis – and can food banks ever be the solution? In episode one of The End of Charity, journalist Lucinda Rouse hears from the Trussell Trust’s chief executive, Emma Revie, about...