Change is with us, in the form of a new national government, the proposal for a merger of infrastructure organisations and maybe football.

As a development team, we often work from a what’s wrong perspective, we often work with organisations as a problem arises and these are never unique to one organisation – often the problem is – a lack of resources in people or funding.

We can accept that this is the way things are or we can our attitude towards it.

Here are my thoughts about how we can evolve beyond organisations whose survival depends on the current flavour of grant funding:

• Business plans for voluntary sector organisations, don’t read like slick plans but they are open/honest/transparent, they take into account the what ifs, the real resources needed and present the opportunities and the risks.
• Everyone says ‘I want to make a difference’ Let’s collectively show those potential volunteers/supporters/donors how they can do that, and show our potential supporters the richness, diversity, value and community of our sector.
• Be small but mighty organisations- through increased social media engaging the next generation with VSCE – let’s increase our visibility not lose it.
• Actively seek partnerships and mergers that make sense and best use of resources.
• Embrace social enterprise opportunities as a source of income with equal status of grants and donations.
• This is not a place for our egos but somewhere to embrace our collective strength

It is all very well to state a set of attitudes we would like to have when the reality is day-to-day work often falls onto too few people who shoulder the burden of work without looking towards the future. People like you.

Our development team is here to support you, with our summer training sessions (I promise, summer is coming this year) book on, and reap the benefits for you, for your organisation, and for our collective strength:

Look here for our sessions over the next couple of months:

• Writing funding applications
• Increasing social media presence
• Writing strategy
• Income Diversification