February 2012

The government is calling on voluntary, business and public sector organisations to play their part in running National Citizen Service schemes across the country creating a market it says could be worth up to £110m by 2014.

Rebecca Symington, executive director of Mlinda, a private foundation based in Paris that works to inspire and enable custodianship of our planet, reports on the 4th annual Environmental Funder's Network retreat. The 4th annual Environmental Funder's Network retreat  that took place on the 19th and 20th of January at Trafford Hall near Chester,  was the largest ever, with 54 participants, including representatives from Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland a

The Cabinet Office and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) have made the first 15 investments to be funded from the £10m Innovation in Giving Fund which aims to find and back innovative ideas for increasing volunteering and charitable giving.

Government grants awarded to scale up successful projects Over £9m has been awarded to social action projects in England in the first tranche of funding from the Cabinet Office’s Social Action Fund. Minister for civil society Nick Hurd said: “The Social Action Fund exists to scale up projects that have proven their ability to inspire people and get them involved. These matched investments will create opportunities for many more people to make a difference to the things they care about.”