Joint Working-New Opportunities to Generate Income

Gareth Coles' presentation at WCVA Third Sector Conference was also another useful one for me. Essentially the session looked at the obstacles and benefits for Thrird Sector Groups-I think I heard Gareth say voluntary and community groups, was that  a slip of the tongue or wishful thinking-to collaborate and possibly even merger.

At the close of the session we did touch on the nuance that appears to be emerging that only those organisations which do collaborate and work far more closely are deserving of financial support and effectively public approval-I guess the same thing. Some of this is to do with perceptions of charities (and Joe Saxton's speech also was useful-though I am dubious about his being billed as a 'driver of ideas', sheesh, not good...).

But Gareth picked up a good few examples such as Marie Cure whose expertise in providing palliative care for cancer patients was brought to use with recuperative British Heart Foundation patients.  How could they do this? By checking their governing document which allowed them to care for cancer patients and those experiencing other serious illnesses.

So, at least, check your governing document-are you doing in any case what it says? Could you in fact be doing something else?

I'll get around to putting the collaborative toolkit resources on Delicious-look for collaboration tag.

But the key message at the end was perhaps the expectation in the future will be why you are not collaborating (or merging) with other third sector groups?

This is an interesting proposition when you think of the sheer number of voluntary organisations active or based in Powys:

• the total number of voluntary organisations active in Powys is 3607 (the largest of any area in Wales)
• the total number of voluntary organisations based in Powys is 2127 (the 3rd largest in Wales after Carmarthenshire and Cardiff)

(see: http://tinyurl.com/yc75nck)



If you're not collaborating closely and you have a good reason then fine. But if you could? And the heading photo is of course from the 'Mad' Hatter's party...