Empower Blog: Offering guidance on issues affecting the Voluntary, Public and Private Sectors
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In the Third Sector, efficiency, focus and accountability are always important. Organisations need to demonstrate the value they deliver to stakeholders, partners, and beneficiaries. And they often need to be wiser with their finances than private or public sector organisations. So making sure staff are working on the right things, and supporting organisational goals is vitally important.
But how do you do this in practical terms?
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Writing can be an immensely pleasurable and rewarding experience but, as with any such hobby, start to make it something that others rely upon and it swiftly loses its lustre. Take Julie for example … (please someone take her) … she loves quilting and has often thought how brilliant it would be if she could sell her quilts for enough money for it to be her source of income. Then someone asked her to make a quilt; not for money but for a favour, this hobby rapidly became a bit onerous. Every stitch now had to be perfect; every fabric choice became agonisingly difficult; suddenly she felt she was to be judged on what had previously been done solely for her enjoyment - and there wasn’t even any cash involved!
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As an enterprise/business advisor, a graduate of two university degrees in business, a member of various professional bodies, and published by peer review on business support, I've had a lot of time to think about business plans.
And there's a lot of stuff about them out there: courses, books, templates, on-line tools and programmes, consultants offering to write yours for you …
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The future is bright for organisations in the third sector, but they have to adapt to a brave new world of funding if they are to remain financially stable.
That was the conclusion of a major debate that we recently held with charities in south Wales. We wanted to identify some of the key issues concerning charities across the country in an era in which reducing public sector expenditure is combining with increasing scrutiny of charity accountancy practices in the wake of some high-prolife scandals.
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Do I really need a website? Wow, now that’s a blast from the past: it wasn’t that long ago when many businesses and organisations were asking themselves that very question. These days it’s expected; after all, everyone’s online these days...
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Sorry for the play on words there…but it’s been a busy month since my last blog piece.
Outside of supporting a range of our clients on the various VAT concerns they’re balancing at the moment I’ve been interspersing my time between speaking engagements on VAT (there’s a surprise!) and out supporting the fantastic work of our Young Enterprise students across the schools of Caerphilly, Torfaen, Blaina Gwent, Newport & Monmouthshire. This culminated in our regional finals for school teams on the 11th April at Caerphilly Council’s very impressive offices in Ystrad Mynach last week.
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You may be starting to think about writing your trustees report and to keep things simple you may well be thinking about rolling it forward, changing some figures, swapping a few things here and there, but essentially churning out the same report as last year.
Could there be a better way? Could you make the document a useful window into the work of your organisation?
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On Monday Natasha and Julie were running the first day of a bespoke Digital Storytelling course. It was the day centred on the story circle, which is the most important day of the training. As we mentioned last time, the story is key to the process. Fantastic pictures and fancy editing will not make a poor story good, but too much in way of effects can spoil even the greatest story.
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There is a school of thought that (social) entrepreneurs are either born or can be 'taught'; either way, they tend to exhibit certain character traits - passion, imagination, seeking to direct their own lives and not be dictated to by others as to how they should work, seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary...
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I appreciate that many of you reading this, especially those who’ve not spent 25 years in VAT(!) may wonder at the pangs of disappointment that we VAT specialists now experience as a Budget Day looms.
Gone are the days when a Budget Day brought with it the excitement of an unexpected change in VAT rates or a widening of the application of the tax to new areas (don’t mention “pastygate”).
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