VoluntaryNews

Plans to make charity law easier to follow have been shelved for the time being, due to lack of parliamentary time before the general election. A draft bill consolidating most of Charities Acts 2006 and 1993 and the Recreational Charities Act 1958 was issued for consultation in September.

See Third Sector news item at http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/news/980891/.

A reminder that the consultation on "options for the implementation of the Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO)" closes on 26th February.

There is still an event in Glasgow to come (10th February), see http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/People/15300/charities/law/SCIOs for further details.

The Social Enterprise Coalition, working with the Plunkett Foundation, has been commissioned to create an inventory of social enterprises that offer post office and postal services. SEC information.

Greater public access to, and reuse of, government data took a large step forward with the launch of the website at http://www.data.gov.uk (which uses Drupal software). While it is in 'beta', it already contains references to a wide range of almost three thousand data sets which are open for reuse "by any individual or business to create innovative new software tools such as applications about house prices, local amenities and services, or access to local hospitals".

A series of Volunteering and Mentoring Guides to support organisations working with offenders have been published by the Clinks charity.

Titles include 'Setting up a project', 'Managing volunteers', 'Demonstrating effectiveness' and 'Quality standards'. In pdf format, about 1MB each, from http://www.clinks.org/volunteeringguides.aspx.

An outline report on 'Volunteering in the recession', produced for the recent sector Recession Summit, has been put online by Volunteering England. It looks at positive and negative developments and highlights crisis points.

This week saw the major social enterprise conference Voice10 in Cardiff. The top news item there was the launch of the Social Enterprise Mark, originally developed in south west England but now to be spread across Britain. More about the Mark at its website http://www.socialenterprisemark.org.uk - the hope is that the logo will become as well recognised as that for Fairtrade, indicating a genuine social enterprise in this case.

The latest editorial worth a read from sector consultants nfpSynergy is 'Ideas, not money, should drive the world of non-profits' - does cash or individual action make the greatest impact?