Coffee and celebrations

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National Trustees’ Week, which ran from 13 – 17 November, recognises the hard work and commitment of volunteers throughout the UK.

Latest figues show that volunteers contribute some 15.6 billion to the UK economy.

Trustees from all over the County came together at one of one of Cambridgeshire ACRE’s regular village hall trustee coffee mornings. This event was held at Newton village hall, and are a great opportunity for trustees to network, share knowledge and experiences of running village halls and community centres.

The theme of this morning was the challenge of running small village halls and recruiting and retaining volunteers.

Trustees work so hard for their charities and it is really important that we celebrate and recognise their achievements. So many of Cambridgeshire’s village halls rely on dedicated volunteers who put in many unpaid hours, ensuring the general public are safe in using their local facilities.

Picture: Cambridgeshire Trustees at National Trustees Week – Newton.

Drug, alcohol and mental health commissioning

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Cambridgeshire County Council is looking to re-tender its adult drug and alcohol treatment services ready for 1st October 2018.

As part of this process the council are considering commissioning a community recovery service for people with drug, alcohol and or mental health issues. This is in response to both market and stakeholder feedback highlighting the need for strategic joint commissioning around substance misuse and mental health.

The council have produced a Market-Sounding document which can be viewed here:

The purpose of this market sounding document is to:

  1. Explore the feasibility, risks and benefits of this approach.
  2. Help us understand the level of market interest and ability to deliver such a service.
  3. Inform our commissioning intentions in respect of both substance misuse and mental health services.

Participants are invited to respond to the questions in Part 2 of the Market Sounding document (Nov 2017).

Responses should be submitted via ProContract by 12:00noon on Wednesday 22nd November 2017.

Please note, this is available at the below link:

https://procontract.due-north.com/Advert?advertId=f36685b6-25c6-e711-80e6-005056b64545&p=4d8cb5a5-74dc-e511-810e-000c29c9ba21

 

Community Organising

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Community organising has been around for many years, but is slowly regaining momentum amongst communities across the UK.

If you want to know what Community Organising is, take a look at our simple Factsheet.

Support Cambridgeshire is working with Community Organising Limited, the membership body for Community Organisers across England, and the home of the National Community Organising Academy.

Support Cambridgeshire is looking to run a taster day on the subject in January 2018, venue and location yet to be agreed.

The day will be packed full of facts about Community Organising, how it works and what the benefits could be.

If anybody is interested in joining us in principle, please let Russell Rolph know at russell@huntsforum.org.uk.

Russell will then keep you informed of an exact date, location and venue.

The day is likely to follow a sample agenda.

  • To start to understand the community organising process.
  • To understand the importance of listening to build relationships.
  • To begin to explore power and power dynamics in communities.
  • To appreciate how to motivate people to take action.
  • To plan your next steps and actions in community organising.
Introductions and an Exploration of Community Organising

learning about the process

what community organising is and isn’t
Break
The Power of Listening – why and how we do it

what do we mean by listening?

how does listen inspire action?

 
Lunch
Building Power through People

types of power in communities

how to build and use collective power
Break
Taking Action – the Community Organising Way

what sort of action does community organising lead to?

how does action happen and what is it for?
Reflections – Your Next Steps in Community Organising

your learning today and what you will do with it

 

 

 

Calls to cultivate!

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Cambridgeshire County Councils’s cultivate fund is still open, with deadlines dates being set at the 15th December 2017 and the 1st May 2018.

The cultivate fund provides small grants of between £2,000 and £10,000, and is specifically aimed at encouraging local networks where people help themselves and each other.

The fund is open to all voluntary, community, social enterprises or public bodies which benefit the residents of Cambridgeshire. The application is a one-stage process, and is administered through the Cambridgeshire Community Foundation: Click here for more details.

The Council are particularly interested in schemes which bring and benefit communities, such as Time-banks, community car schemes, befriending or good neighbour schemes.

The key funding priorities are vulnerable adults and older people, children and families, and waste management.

Some documentation is required with the application, such as a governing document or a set of rules, an equality policy and a policy on safeguarding. These can be developed through Support Cambridgeshire: simply contact info@supportcambridgeshire.org.uk

Cultivate grants should seek to show in some way how a reduction on council services can be achieved. For more advice and guidance how to do this simply contact Cambridgeshire Community Foundation or Support Cambridgeshire.

The cultivate fund is the smaller of two grants available from the County Council. The larger grant is called Innovate, with grant levels of between £10,000 and £50,000.

Cyber-Crime and Charities

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Over the past 24 months, 5.8 million incidents of cyber-crime have been reported across the UK.

Of these, 2.4 million relate to bank account or credit card fraud: 1.3 million to computer virus attacks and 650,000 related to the hacking of E-Mail, social media or other forms of account.

The cost to the UK economy is widely estimated as 195 billion per year, with 1 in 10 adults having been targeted.

Charities are seen as particularly vulnerable. Like most other nationals, they can hold vast amounts of supporter and donor information.

So what can charities do to protect themselves?

Top tips for preventing cyber-crime:

To reduce risk, Charity financials suggest that charities charities should review their technology systems and ensure they have current software, firewalls and security systems installed. As the Charity Commission[iv] suggests, they should always install software updates as soon as they become available, as they will often include fixes for critical security vulnerabilities.

Charities should also make regular backups of important files, using an external hard drive, memory stick or online storage provider, ensuring no device is left connected to the network, thereby preventing the spread of malware infections. Should they experience an attack they will have retained most of their data. While charities operate on tight budgets it’s important their technology is kept as up-to-date as possible. The older the technology, the more open charities are to security risks, so this must be weighed up against the costs. The costs aren’t just financial either. The loss of trust if donor and stakeholder details are compromised could take a long time to recover.

Education and awareness:

Charity financials argue that Education is paramount in the fight against cyber-crime. While many high profile cyber-crimes come from hackers breaching security systems, many organisations find their own employees are often at the root causes of security breaches. Employees must be given advice about not clicking on emails or links they are unsure about.

This is one of the main ways computer viruses spread, so making sure everyone understands this is essential.

Raising awareness amongst staff of the common cons used to commit cyber-crime is one of the most important preventative measures and something all charities should be doing.

Other things charities should include in their controls to minimise risk is regular requirements for password changes, as well as monitoring and reviewing which staff have access to data, ensuring access to sensitive data is only given to those whose job requires it.

Developing a policy about the use of personal devices at work is also necessary. With employees increasingly using smart phones and tablets in the workplace to access company data this can compromise data security. This needs to be managed and perhaps restricted if it’s felt to be too much of a risk.

When it comes to managing fraud specifically, charities must ensure they verify all changes to key contacts and that important instructions, including changes to payments, bank details and addresses are made in writing, and followed up by a phone call to the contact. Again, this is something all employees need to be made aware of and ensure they follow.

Whilst no charity can ensure they will be 100% safe, these are just some of the ways charities can protect themselves and prevent themselves being targets of fraud and cyber-crime. Mitigating the risks from cyber-crime within a well-thought out risk framework is crucial in today’s technology-led world and something that must be fully embedded into the workplace culture.

Take a look at the Little Book of Cyber-Scams here:

 

Snippets from the GDPR

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The General Data Protection Regulation replaces the Data Protection Act with effect from 25th May 2018.

The Information Commissioners Office (the ICO) are still  preparing their detailed guidance, even though the bill has now been passed to ensure the GDPR becomes law by its due date.

Support Cambridgeshire attended a Charity forum recently held by Hewitsons, solicitors, and here are some interesting and important snippets from the discussions.

Historic database contacts:

It was widely felt that organisations which hold a historic database of contacts will not need to retrospectively gain consent. Let’s take a simple example:

An organisation has been sending newsletters to a data base of 300 contacts for the past 4 years. This organisation will not need to gain new consents for this existing 300 as it can claim legitimate interest – That is that this 300 have been receiving your newsletters for years and are clearly interested in receiving them (organisations should however have an unsubscribe in place).

New contacts would need to provide explicit consent to be supplied with the newsletter.

Children:

The GDPR is clear that for those organisations providing services or projects to children, parental or guardian consent MUST be obtained. Based upon the recent forum discussion, it was also felt that given the higher scrutiny levels applying to children, retrospective consents should be obtained prior to the 25th May 2018 if they are NOT already in place or have been missed.

Cloud based servers:

For those organisations operating cloud based services the best advice given was to contact your particular supplier to see what protocols they have in place to ensure that data is held securely on their particular cloud based system. If a data sharing agreement is not in force, then one should be devised which suits both parties. It would appear that under the GDPR both the supplier of the cloud based system and the organisation are equally liable for data breaches, and as such breaches have to be reported to the ICO within 72 hours it is probably best to avoid them at all costs.

Fines:

The forum examined some of the fines that have been levied recently, mainly to larger Charities: Cancer Support UK at 16K, The Royal British Legion at 12K and the NSPCC at 12K. The forum noted that most of these fines were given due to data swapping and the selling of contact lists, not for minor breaches of the current Data Protection Act. Always remember that the ICO is here to advise and guide, not to penalise.

Document retention:

The forum felt it was important that each and every organisation had a document retention policy (DRP) in place. Contact info@supportcambridgeshire.org.uk if you require a template DRP to alter and amend to fit your own organisational circumstances.

The ICO 12 step Model:

The forum felt that this was a useful document which should be read by all organisations as preperation for the GDPR.

The 12 step Model can be viewed here:

For those organisations with good Data Protection principles in place already the new GDPR should not be a concern. The first stage is to analyse what data you have, why you use it and how you store and retrieve it. Organisations then need to think about how they obtain consents: These now need to be clear, transparent and explicit.

Support Cambridgeshire is hoping to arrange a further Charity forum with Hewitsons in early 2018: Any organisation interested in attending should contact russell@huntsforum.org.uk.

 

How hard is it to find funding?

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The answer is probably very.

The State of the Sector Survey for 2017 showed that obtaining and maintaining funding is a critical issue for community organisations across Cambridgeshire.

We all know that the nature of the voluntary sector is changing. It’s becoming ever more crowded and competitive, at a time when resources are harder to find.

Take a look at our self-service funding portal: Register and search for funding opportunities free of charge.

Simply click here:

There is no limit on the number of funding searches, and you can search based upon the type of organisation you think you are, and the type of funding you wish to obtain.

Take a look at our ever developing Resources page. This could help you with your funding submissions, and how you can demonstrate the difference you make.

Simply click here: 

Support Cambridgeshire is here to help with building your application submission. We can advise you on what makes for a good application, what supporting evidence you may need, and how to demonstrate the impact you are making: Simply contact 01480 420603.

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