BSSEC » Useful publications

Looking for key facts and figures about the wider third sector?

June 08, 2015

NCVO has just announced publication of its Civil Society Almanac 2015, now in its 14th edition. The Almanac is the industry-standard source of data regarding virtually every aspect of the voluntary sector and there will be few who haven’t made use of some information from it at

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Vulnerability360

February 18, 2015

Vulnerability360 is a new website and community of practice concerned with vulnerability in its broadest sense — of children, families, young people, marginalised groups or communities. The project is interested in making available unpublished research, guest blogs, opinion piec

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Social value in BVSC’s Update magazine

July 24, 2013

Based on our briefing paper on social value, there is a double-page article on social value in the July/Aug 2013 issue of BVSC’s Update magazine (pp.16/17).

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What’s in and what’s out? Counting social enterprise in the UK

July 23, 2013

In just the past couple of months four extremely important social enterprise-related reports have been published. Anyone wanting seriously up-to-date UK facts and figures for the social enterprise sector needs to have a look at least at the exec summaries of these reports. But there

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New Barrow Cadbury Trust publication on communications for smaller grassroots organisations

April 12, 2013

The Barrow Cadbury Trust has just published a new guide to communications. While written primarily for its own grant recipients, the guide is aimed particularly at smaller grassroots organisations and may therefore be of wider usefulness. Download Introduction to communications.

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Heseltine Review argues for greater devolution of funds, local partnerships and competitive bidding as foundations for economic growth

November 29, 2012

Lord Heseltine’s economic growth plan, No stone unturned in pursuit of growth has just been published. In it he calls for a major rebalancing of responsibilities for economic development between central and local government, and between government and the private sector. Heselti

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Unity Trust Bank publishes “tweeting handbook” for social sector

October 11, 2012

Now this is interesting. Unity Trust Bank has just published About That First Tweet: A Practical Guide to Social Media for Charities and Social Enterprises. You can download it for free. Now those who know me will know that I am something of a Twitter sceptic, or perhaps I mean agnost

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Task force reviews progress towards ‘public service mutuals’

June 26, 2012

The independent Mutual Task Force which is advising government on its plans for wider mutualisation of public services, especially in health, probation services, education, and social care has just published its latest report. This makes the case for public service mutuals based on ev

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New start-up guide for social enterprise

June 25, 2012

Unity Trust Bank has sponsored a new start-up guide for social enterprises. The guide, produced and published by Social Enterprise UK, can be downloaded here. I’ve only had a quick look at this so far but it looks good — extremely useful for anyone who is considering socia

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Green Deal opportunities for social enterprises — new report highlights lessons

May 07, 2012

As mentioned here, Localise West Midlands has recently been working jointly with iSE to deliver a project enabling social enterprises to get involved in Green New Deal business. An evaluation report, Green Deal Opportunities for Social Enterprise, has just been published. The report s

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“Telling Tales” — useful advice about communicating impact

April 26, 2012

brap has recently published Telling Tales: A Practical Toolkit on Measuring & Communicating Your Impact, and has kindly agreed to make it freely available here. Unlike so much that is written about impact measurement, this is short, practical and accessible. It also focuses on wh

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New free publication on social impact reporting

March 16, 2012

Charity Finance Group, ACEVO and New Philanthropy Capital have just jointly published ‘Principles into Practice’, a new guide for charities and social enterprises on measuring and reporting social impact. I haven’t had chance to really look at this yet but it certain

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BIS publishes report on business support for social enterprise

January 23, 2012

Thanks to Steve Walker at ART for this — it had somehow escaped me. In October 2011 BIS published Business Support for Social Enterprise: Findings from a Longitudinal Study, by Gordon Allinson et al from the Policy Research Group at the University of Durham can be downloaded her

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Web-Fuelled Business!

December 12, 2011

Did you know that as part of the replacement services for the old Business Link service the Dept for Business Innovation & Skills has commissioned FREE bootcamps right across the country for businesses that want to get more out of the web? No, until this morning I didn’t eit

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Social Finance issues first report on the Peterborough ‘social impact bond’

November 30, 2011

Further to this post on Social Impact Bonds, Social Finance has today issued the following statement regarding the Peterborough social impact bond which many of you will remember seeks to reduce reoffending amongst a defined cohort of offenders: Today Social Finance publishes a report

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EHRC report reveals elderly home care as the next frontline battle for reform and protection of rights

November 23, 2011

Anyone in the third sector involved in elderly care will doubtless already have been following the investigation that the Equality and Human Rights Commission has been conducting into care for older people delivered in the home. Close to Home, the EHRC’s report, published today,

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Nick Hurd’s open letter to the sector sets current policy announcements in their “strategic framework”

November 15, 2011

And now something for those of you who have not been keeping up. I only just found this — by accident. Maybe everybody else already knows about it… On the 11th October 2011 Nick Hurd published a long open letter to charities and social enterprises seeking to set a welter o

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Evaluations for Birmingham’s WNF programmes now available

November 04, 2011

Social enterprises and third sector organisations involved in delivering programmes under Birmingham’s Working Neighbourhoods Fund may be interested to know that the evaluation documents are now available on the Birmingham City Council website here. Thanks to Judy Tullett at Cas

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POPse! reports

November 03, 2011

I’m indebted to Social Enterprise East of England’s email bulletin for this item. I would have missed it otherwise. Back in May 2011 a bunch of “policy vagabonds, 3rd Sector tarts, social enterprise mercenaries and reformed Marxists” took over a disused Subway

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New book examines history of social enterprise development in the West Mids

September 23, 2011

Now this is interesting. I have just noticed (OK, received a slight nudge) that Lambert Academic Publishing has just released a book called Towards a Paradigm Shift in Social Enterprise, by Chris Newis — who many of you will know, of course. There aren’t many people around

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