A wave of informal volunteering helped charities and community groups to play a critical role for communities over the pandemic. Now that the cost of living crisis is hitting home, the role for the voluntary sector is once more key, but this time it is not clear that volunteering - or emergency funding - will be able to help.
For the last five years, we have run an annual staff survey that is independently evaluated. We have shared the results with the staff and the trustees of Pilotlight and the survey has been invaluable in steering how we operate as a charity.
As our CEO said earlier this month, rebranding is about more than just a new logo. When setting out on our journey to rebrand at the start of this year, I for one didn’t know where the project would take us.
At Pilotlight, we advocate that a CEO is both supported and challenged by their organisations, and that this combination is crucial to the charity’s smooth running.
A secure and diverse set of income streams can look different for every organisation. As a rule of thumb, it could mean that no one income source accounts for more than 25% of an organisation’s income.
Since the start of September, 50 senior leaders from Barclays have joined forces with 10 charities from across the UK to address some of the key challenges they are facing as a result of the Covid-19 crisis.
As we are approaching the eve of 2021, charitable giving in the UK is down across the board, and the situation in the third sector seems bleak. Many charities are fighting tooth and nail for survival, while others have found ways to endure the pandemic. How did they do it?
The global response to Covid-19 has shown that big change can happen quickly.
Over my time at Pilotlight, I’ve worked with all kinds of charity boards — the good, bad and even the ugly. I’ve also had the delight in seeing many of our Pilotlighters go from working with a charity for the first time, to being inspired enough to become a trustee after participating in one our programmes.
We started a conversation about collaboration two years ago, and have taken some positive steps since then, such as working with other charities in our space, and trialling the Pilotlight 360 with charities which are in the process of merging, or building consortia. We’ve learned that these things take time and have grappled with keeping collaboration, which doesn’t have often tangible, short-term gains, constantly on the agenda.
