There’s a lot of talk at the moment about the purpose of grant making, the role of endowed foundations and the relationship between what goes on in broader civil society and the organisations that support and fuel it. There have been critiques from the USA – from Anand Giridharadas arguing that philanthropy is another tool for the […]
There’s a new report out today from Onward, the organisation which describes itself as a ‘new future-facing and campaigning thinktank with a mission to build a powerful ideas factory for centre-right thinkers and leaders.’ With the catchy (but long) hashtag #PoliticsofBelonging, the report The Politics of Belonging, is a data rich survey of attitudes and […]
When Sir Bert Massie – who was a member of the Civil Society Futures Panel – died in October 2017 I described him as a giant of the voluntary sector. Someone who had made an enormous contribution, always reminding us that we were about rights and resistance, just as much as we were about service […]
Every few years a minor argument breaks out in civil society about whether or not we should allow trustees to be paid. Every few years, someone laments the fact that it’s hard to attract people to trustee roles and every few years someone else says that public trust is helped by voluntary trusteeship, that the […]
From a talk and conversation at Northern PlaceShapers, April 10th 2019 A large part of public policy is concerned with where people live: are there enough houses? Are we maintaining them well enough? Are they secure, affordable and decent? And whose living in them? We know that housing matters enormously. It’s a huge source of […]
In the last two years I have been privileged to have a Fellowship with Carnegie UK Trust. This has allowed me to explore a long-held interest of one in kindness and emotional intelligence – and how this fits into public policy. This short blog, written for the publication date, was first published on the Carnegie […]
This has been quite an extraordinary week in the UK, even in a couple of years that have had more than their fair shares of surprises and shocks. I’ve spent a lot of the last year going around the country listening to people interested in Civil Society Futures and the more I do that, the […]
When I first heard about framing I heard spin. I thought that it was all about identifying the prejudice of the public and then pandering to it. I thought it was better suited to advertising and the dark arts of politics than the much more complex world of policy development and communication. I thought it was […]
Over the last decade our institutions and industries have been rocked by accusations of sexual abuse and harm. From the Church through the BBC to Hollywood and to some of our most precious charities we have heard stories about behaviour that has no place in the 21st century. And we’ve heard about harm done, […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about civil society and its future over the last year because of my role chairing the Independent Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society Yesterday we published a range of content – all well worth looking at. The long report marshals the evidence, the animation stimulates thinking, the map shows […]