Delegates at workshop

On 30th April 2009, Ben Cairns (Director of the Institute for Voluntary Action Research) and I (Ravinol Chambers) made a presentation at seminar 4 in the Birkbeck/IVAR seminar series on ‘New thinking about the Third Sector,’ entitled….

CHARITABLE TRUSTS AND ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: LESSONS FROM AN EMERGING FIELD.

We discussed the findings from our current research on high engagement funding both from a ‘Grants plus’ approach with small voluntary organisations and from a ‘venture philanthropy’ approach with larger charities ready to scale up. We finished by suggesting critical success factors for high engagement funding in general under the headings, ‘Design, Delivery and Dynamic.’

Also presenting was Chris Cornforth (Professor of Organisational Governance and Management at the Open University) who spoke about building organisational capacity and understanding the challenges of intervening in small to medium sized charities.

The event was chaired by Prof. Jenny Harrow, Co-Director for the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy and invoked lively discussion amongst the 40 plus attendees from Charitable Foundations and other Third Sector organisations.  This is a very exciting field and an area foundations are very interested in.

David Emerson, CEO of the Association of Charitable Foundations said, ‘This has been one of the most enlivening seminars I have been to for a long time, thank you very much for your excellent work.’