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As the recession tightens its grip, the prospect of £350m in charitable funding going unclaimed or eluding its most deserving targets is unsettling. That was the prospect which has led to a small Leeds charity putting one of Britain’s most highly-focused search engines for grantseekers online.

Thousands of pilgrims seeking help are familiar with PIN – People in Need – which has functioned as a CD with regular updates for a decade. It has been a handy way of combing 4,000 trusts, not simply by offering a list of possible funders but, more importantly, by eliminating all but the most exactly suited; something which no other grant-tracing programme manages to do.

Painstaking programming at FunderFinder, which developed PIN and its counterpart GIN – Groups in Need – at a small terraced house in the shadow of Leeds University, accounts for the “smart” pinpointing. PIN will take a discharged psychiatric patient in Aberdeen straight to the Aberdeen Indigent Mental Patients’ Fund without faffing about with general psychiatric or Scottish charities. It zeroes a young woman student at Brighton or Hove in on the Soames Educational Trust without wasting time on more general charities.

The CD world, however, has started to look clunky as broadband and Wi-Fi sweep the world. Who’s going to trek to the library when they have grown used to Googling at home? Hence the new online PIN, which has just gone on the market to institutions – for access by any library remote user or university intranets – and individuals who can buy access at £5.50 for 24 hours of searching.

The system isn’t free, but many people use it at local resource centres, libraries, colleges and other agencies that have bought it as a resource. Social workers, advice workers and others who are trying to support people in the economic crisis can download information for clients.

The system will mean significant economies for “helper” agencies such as the Royal British Legion, which can rationalise its 42 separate licences for CDs of PIN by taking out just one for the online service. Money made from the service is already going into the development of an online version of the group service.

funderfinder.org.uk

http://www.sustainablecities.org.uk/

A changed third sector can help ease recession, says Stephen Bubb

This recession will place a huge burden on society, and the third sector has a vital role to play in easing that burden. Unlike in previous recessions we have a sector that is immeasurably stronger, more resilient, with a more effective voice and a greater ability to influence government. We must use that strength to support victims of this recession and to be a vehicle for economic recovery.

But doing so, particularly given the tough economic context in which the sector is operating, will pose great challenges for third sector organisations themselves. And if we are to meet those challenges, we will need to change.

Charity Tax Group lobbies for combined ‘back-office’ resources

The Charity Tax Group is lobbying the Government to remove a VAT charge that it says prevents charities from cutting costs by sharing back-office functions.

Sharing finance, IT and human resources staff could help sector organisations reduce their spending, but the CTG believes that an “artificial” VAT charge makes this too costly.

The Government’s third sector action plan, launched last month, also urged charities to enhance efficiency through collaboration and set up a £16.5m modernisation fund to help them.

Sharing arrangements typically require a lead charity or services company to be set up. This charges charities for its services – and is required to add VAT.

Helen Donoghue, director of the CTG, said it was lobbying the Government to adopt an EU directive that she said would allow inter-charity charges to be made without VAT.

“The charge creates an artificial VAT hit,” she said. “This is a real obstacle to charities being more efficient.

“In the current climate, many charities are looking for ways to keep their overheads down. Sharing back-office functions could be a very effective way to do so.”

A spokesman for HM Revenue & Customs said: “We have considered a number of cases in which it has been claimed that the VAT exemption provided in EU law should apply to charities wishing to share certain services.

“In each case, exemption was already available under other provisions in UK law, or the transactions did not meet the conditions.”

Charles Nall, corporate services director at the Children’s Society, which has a stake in IT-sharing venture Charityshare, said it was already possible for charities to avoid the VAT charge when sharing functions.

He said that Charityshare was treated as a separate body for VAT purposes because it was a joint venture between the three stakeholders – his charity, the NSPCC and the Alzheimer’s Society.

But Donoghue said setting up such systems to avoid the VAT charge was costly and complicated, and many charities lacked the resources to do so.

The organisations behind the world’s three leading environmental assessment tools are combining forces to come up with a common way to measure carbon emissions from new buildings.

BREEAM – which is owned and run by BRE – and the US and Australian equivalents LEED and Green Star at present use differing methods to measure the environmental impact of buildings.

However, a memorandum of understanding will be signed today between the UK Green Building Council, BRE, the US Green Building Council and the Green Building Council Australia to develop common metrics to measure emissions of CO2 equivalents from new homes and buildings.

A working group formed of representatives from each of the rating tools will develop the metrics, and seek to align the tools and provide consistency in measurement and reporting.

Paul King, chief executive of the UK Green Building Council, said: “Rating tools like BREEAM, LEED and Green Star have a proven track record in driving significant improvements in performance, and I’m delighted they are now coming together to help create an international language that will enable us to talk with one voice about the vital role green buildings can play in creating a low-carbon future.”

Rating tools are a key component in the market for green building around the world, but there has been a growing demand for consistency and comparability between the tools, particularly in how they account for carbon emissions.

Planning minister Margaret Beckett gave a cautious welcome last week to the UK Green Building Council’s (UK-GBC) proposed Code for Sustainable Buildings.

In a speech to environmental conference Ecobuild, the minister said she thought the industry was travelling in the right direction.

“I am very willing to listen to people coming forward with ideas to reduce carbon emissions. The industry has understood and accepted the basic arrangements needed for further investigation.”

Officials from the Department for Communities and Local Government oversaw the consultation, to which more than 80 companies responded.

As reported in Building, the UK-GBC’s “code” is actually more of a framework, which makes use of existing legislation to help make all buildings sustainable – including existing ones. Buildings would undergo a periodic “building MOT” across a range of requirements, including water, waste and emissions, and standards would be raised over time.

In a summary of its code, the UK-GBC said: “The code should ensure consistency of approach between all policies, tools, guidance and initiatives. It should set the standards, metrics and targets that all sustainability tools should be aligned to and compliant with.”

UK-GBC chief executive Paul King explained: “At the moment the practical delivery and management of sustainable buildings is being held up by a confusing myriad of different policies, regulations, tools and standards.

The government is set to consult on the Code for Sustainable Buildings in the summer. The UK-GBC is understood to have approached the government to set up the government-industry working group recommended in the report.

Joint venture could cut costs by up to 50 per cent, charity claims

The Children’s Society is to invite charities to set up a shared property management service as a money-saving measure.

Charles Nall, corporate services director at the Children’s Society, told Third Sector that he would raise the idea at a property conference next month. The proposed service would see a group of charities setting up a joint venture employing estate surveyors, building surveyors, facilities staff and a property helpdesk as a way of reducing costs for those involved.
Nall said he would look to charities with large or dispersed networks of offices or project buildings to take part in the scheme. It would operate in a similar way to IT-sharing service Charityshare, which is a joint venture between the Children’s Society, the NSPCC and the Alzheimer’s Society.

He added that using property management services through a joint venture would be between 20 and 50 per cent cheaper than using a medium-sized surveying firm.

Multidisciplinary consultant Arup has launched a guide to upgrading existing buildings to improve energy efficiency.

Although the guide is generally available, the firm hopes it will win work implementing the principles in the guide as it believes that businesses will need to improve their buildings to survive in the present economic climate.

Arup’s refurbishment strategy is divided into five steps:

• The first is to understand how the building is performing and what level of refurbishment is required.
• Then building owners need to understand how efficiently they are running their buildings.
• The third stage is to set business goals, and from that set targets for building refurbishment.
• The fourth stage is to decide which elements of the building will be upgraded and how.
• The final stage is to implement the previous stage.