• VCS Funding Support & Covid 19

    Posted in Blog on Mar 18, 2020

    The government has announced a raft of support for businesses and organisations. This information is correct at 18/3/20 but things are changing quickly.

    • a statutory sick pay relief package for SMEs

    Charities and not for profits are eligible for this. It covers up to 2 weeks of SSP for staff who are sick with Covid 19 or have to self-isolate. The system to claim this has not been announced yet.

    • small business grant funding of £10,000 for all business in receipt of small business rate relief or rural rate relief

    Currently our reading of the legislation suggests registered charities will not...

  • Covid 19 and Childcare

    Posted in Blog on Mar 18, 2020

    This information is current at 23/3/20, although it is changing rapidly.

    Funding Support

    Free Entitlement funding (FEE)

    Yesterday the Government confirmed that settings receiving FEE would continue to receive this during any periods of nursery, preschool or childminder closures, or where children cannot attend due to coronavirus (COVID-19).  It was also confirmed that Ofsted would be temporarily suspending routine inspections.

    The government also has announced some additional support

    • a statutory sick pay relief package for SMEs
    • small business grant funding of £10,000 for all business in recei...

  • Charity CEO's are overpaid or are they?

    Posted in Blog on Jan 07, 2020

    New Year, new announcement from the Charity Commission about how they will be doing research into Charity pay.  “We understand why the public care about how charities pay their staff.  That's why we're using the data we hold to make a study of pay in charities.  We will publish our findings this year.”  So where to start on this?  Of course, let’s not let the facts get in the way of a good headline.  The only data that the Commission holds is charities accounts.  In these accounts, staff pay only relates to people earning in excess of £60,000 and is reported as the number of people within pay ...

  • Some thoughts on Collaboration

    Posted in Blog on Aug 05, 2019

    Collaboration is something I have been working with for a number of years, ever since I was involved in the Capacity Builders’ (remember them?) collaboration benefits project. The idea was great - a 3 year project to support collaboration managed by Bassac in collaboration with ACRE, Community Foundation Network and IVAR. It had a training programme delivered in two halves: one rural delivered by ACRE, and another by Bassac. It also included some direct support for organisations, and finally some policy and research delivered by IVAR. The idea was to train a large number of organisations in th...

  • Is competition bad?

    Posted in Blog on Jul 24, 2019

    I have just been reading the new strategy document for NAVCA.  Firstly I must say that it’s good to see this document clearly articulate the organisation’s view for the future.  Although like most of these types of document it’s big in bold statements but less clear on the details.  Now as an organisation we are in an odd position.  We have been considering membership for some time but this new document makes it very difficult to progress those thoughts.

    The document lays out a set of principles for members, and I have difficulty with two of these:

    • Committed not to operate in the territory of...

  • Is your governing document still fit for purpose?

    Posted in Blog on Jun 25, 2019

    We have recently been contacted by a charity that has been in existence for over 10 years.  They have over time changed direction due to many factors, not least the loss of access to the place that generated most of their income.  Looking around their community at what the needs were, they hit on a project that would have been very close to their founder’s wishes.  The idea was to create a community hub.  A suitable property was identified, as well as a wide range of community support.  The organisation submitted a number of grant applications, and one looked very promising until the grant mak...

  • Charity Digital Skills Report

    Posted in Blog on Jun 13, 2019

    So once again the Charity Digital Skills Report has the potential to be an important document to shape the needs of the not for profit sector, but there are some issues.

    • The sample is reasonable this year. 540 responses up from 526, although given the number of registered charities and the unknown number of unregistered ones this is a very small percentage.
    • Once again all the government regions are included in the survey except Yorkshire and Humber which was omitted – irritating as this was pointed out to the people behind the report in 2018, and they failed to fix the issue.
    • 47.7% of respond...

Our Vision

The Community Matters vision is to provide a sustainable and effective "hub" of learning, support, advice and guidance, enabling local communities and organisations to grow and achieve through the provision of a high quality service.

We do this in a number of ways through our various projects which at the moment concentrate on working with children, young people and families. But not exclusively. We are able to provide training, learning opportunities and business related advice, guidance and information to individuals and organisations.