Our 2011 ‘Different Journeys’ programme is now complete.  It was our most ambitious programme of visits to date, taking the public to see 20 of our borrowers during National Ethical Investment Week.

These visits have enabled us to share directly with our customers and the public the difference that money saved and invested in Charity Bank is making to charities, social enterprises and communities across the UK.

Our stakeholders were offered the opportunity to meet borrowers and the people they work within their local area.  In doing so they have cemented a three-way bond among savers and investors; borrowers; and the Charity Bank team, reinforcing the values that the bank has developed.

They evidence how everyone can choose to use their savings to make a difference whilst earning a financial return.  And as one commentator put it, the visits are ‘bringing trust and responsibility back to banking’.

Charity Bank remains committed to showing that everyone can be a ‘Social Investor’, or ‘Social Saver’ – and we believe there is no better way to convince people than to show them the projects their money could be supporting.

To learn more about Charity Bank visit our website, to catch a flavour of the visits you can view our photo album, or to receive details of future visits please sign up for the Charity Bank news bulletin.

Charity Bank – Ethical Bank is an active member of Ethical Junction, learn more

Will Aid solicitors all over the UK are ready to use their professional expertise to write basic Wills in November to raise vital funds for charity. To locate a participating solicitor go to: http://www.willaid.org.uk/find

The campaign provides the perfect opportunity for people to put their affairs in order by writing a basic Will with a qualified solicitor and, instead of paying the solicitor’s usual fee, making a donation to Will Aid. The donation income is shared by the nine participating charities, including ActionAid, Age UK, British Red Cross, Christian Aid, NSPCC, Save the Children, SCIAF (Scotland) Sightsavers and Trocaire (Northern Ireland).

Last November, seventeen thousand clients wrote their Will with a Will Aid solicitor and each Will raised nearly £100. As a result, the nine partner charities shared over £1.3 million in donations and in future are likely to receive millions more in legacy income. The campaign hopes to raise even more this November.

As an additional benefit to Will-makers, Will Aid is offering free Will registration with Certainty National Will Register. This service usually costs £28.75 and is an important step to take for those who want to ensure that their Last Will and Testament can be located by legitimate beneficiaries when the time comes.

Find a convenient Will Aid solicitor and make an appointment for November and then donate generously to help Will Aid beat last year’s total. Participating solicitors can be found at http://www.willaid.org.uk/find or by calling the hotline 0300 0300 013.

Will Aid is an active member of Ethical Junction, learn more

Comedy, live music, retro beats and dance…..

……a spicy mix for a Christmas celebration with an Indian twist!

On Thursday 10^th  Vibe Bar is hosting a night of comedy from Miles Jupp (BBC 2’s “The Thick of It” and Radio 4’s “The News Quiz”)  and Gareth Richards; a live performance blending hip hop beats with classical Indian and jazz melodies from Nathan ‘Flutebox’ Lee; Bollywood dancing from Shreya Dance Arts and an eclectic mix of swing and retro beats from DJ Spencer Mac.

There will also be amazing prizes including Christmas hampers from Divine Chocolate, Suma Wholefoods, Australian Bodycare and Cafe Direct.

The proceeds of the event will go to Find Your Feet, a UK based charity that works in rural India and Malawi, supporting people to improve their day-to-day lives by improving their harvests, setting up small businesses and accessing vital services such as clean water, healthcare and education. Visit http://www.fyf.org.uk/ for more information.

Tickets are £12 from Chilli Tickets http://www.chillitickets.com/AsianEvents/Events/Product/6804/FYF101209/FindYourFeet-ComedyMusicandRetroBeats-CharityEvent.aspx, £15 on the door.

Find Your Feet (FYF) is an active member of Ethical Junction, learn more

But charity financial advisers could do more to help ensure charities invest in line with their mission, survey finds.  
 
Latest research from the EIRIS Foundation Charity Project and the Charity Finance Directors Group (CFDG) finds that 87% of UK charities with an ethical investment policy said that their financial adviser has asked them about incorporating ethical issues within their investments. However, for those charities without an ethical investment policy, only 43% of charities said their adviser has asked about ethical investment.
 
Socially responsible investment (SRI) enables charities to invest in line with their mission, avoiding conflicts with their work and risks to their reputation. Over 90% of the general public believe that charities should invest ethically, but practice still falls a long way short of this.

Investment advisers and consultants can play a crucial role in the
decisions that charities make about their investments and whether to
consider social, environmental, ethical or governance factors. However,
some advisers have been criticised for discouraging charities from
considering ethical or socially responsible investment (SRI) and
linking their investments with mission.

Are Charity Consultants
Helping or Hindering the Development of SRI probes charity advisers’
current thinking on SRI, how they see their role in the evolving SRI
market and what would increase the take up of SRI by charity investors.
It compares the views of charities and evidence from the wider SRI
sector to explore the real and perceived barriers to change.

Key findings

§        
15% of charities without an ethical policy said that advisers were
discouraging or very discouraging. This compares to 4% of charities
with an ethical policy.
§         Some advisers do not see it as
their role to ask charity investors about SRI particularly if it is a
charity with broad aims and objectives.
§         Advisers are less
likely to ask charities about SRI if they don’t already have an ethical
investment policy – and may be more likely to be discouraging where no
such policy is in place.
§         Advisers agree that the
consideration of social and environmental risks should not harm returns
in the long-term, and could improve them. But many focus charity
clients’ attention more on short-term potential risks of
under-performance and volatility, even though studies repeatedly show
that investing ethically does not mean that financial performance has
to be sacrificed.  
§         Advisers identified a lack of
appropriate products as a key limiting factor to the promotion and
take-up of SRI.       

Advisers also feel that some trustees
are uncertain about their role in ‘imposing ethical considerations’.
But as one adviser commented, ‘Trustees need to change their view of
their obligations – they are not in a moral vacuum and they can go
beyond their governing documents.’

Report author Sam Collin
said ‘Many of the challenges raised by advisers could be easily
overcome. The intermediary role of advisers means that they could be
doing more to breakdown the perceived barriers, provide clear and up to
date information to trustees and communicate gaps in unmet demand to
service providers.’

‘Issues such as corporate governance and
climate change are more high profile than ever before in the investment
community. As the significance of ESG issues is increasingly recognised
by mainstream investors the market for advice on responsible investment
is also set to grow. Being at the forefront of new developments could
help advisers take advantage of this growth’ she concluded. 

The report recommends that advisers could do more to:

§         Raise SRI issues with all charities
§         Provide information and training to trustees
§         Include environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in standard reviews of investment managers
§         Keep informed of the latest developments
§         Communicate market gaps to fund managers

Click here (http://www.charitysri.org/homearea/documents/charityadviserdiscussionpaper.pdf) to download a copy of the research.

A revolutionary approach to delivering humanitarian aid to disaster areas introduced by Advance Aid can boost local economies in developing countries, cut costs threefold and reduce carbon emissions by 58 times.

Research by Cardiff Business School (CBS) published today reveals how delivering aid to disaster areas could become more sustainable.

Currently, up to 60% of the estimated $12bn annual budget of disaster relief is spent in Africa. But less than 10% of the products supplied are made there, with the rest being delivered from outside Africa – largely from China and India, but also from Europe and even North America – after a disaster has occurred.

The CBS research shows that Advance Aid’s model of the emergency relief supply chain is more efficient and cost effective than conventional methods.

Advance Aid, a new non-governmental organisation, introduces a proactive model for disaster relief supply. It focuses on the sustainable development of high-risk regions, such as Africa. Advance Aid advocates producing emergency relief goods in the areas where disasters are most likely to happen and storing them locally at all times. This will create local jobs, cut spending on aid and significantly reduce the carbon footprint currently generated by aid agencies that have to fly in relief aid from overseas.

Using four key performance indicators – lead times, supply chain vulnerability, total costs and carbon footprint – CBS focused on one essential emergency relief item, tarpaulin, and analysed the way it is currently being supplied to disaster areas. CBS then compared the standard method of supplying aid against Advance Aid’s model and found the latter to be more efficient.

Betty Maina, chief executive of the Kenya Manufacturers Assocation said: “As the body tasked with promoting competitive local manufacturing, we did not need to be convinced that manufacturing emergency relief materials for Africa in Africa was a good idea. It is very encouraging to see that academic research supports this. I am delighted that Advance Aid’s is planning to establish its first hub in Kenya.”

George Fenton, Chairman of the Humanitarian Logistics Association, said: “I strongly believe that the humanitarian sector has a lot to learn from the highly sophisticated approach taken to logistics by the commercial world. I think the lessons that can be learned from the Cardiff Business School report will be taken to heart by the humanitarian sector – indeed, in many cases they are already being acted upon.”

David Dickie, Director of Advance Aid, said: “I was not surprised by the results of the Cardiff work, as they confirmed all of the anecdotal stories that I have heard over the past two years. But it is still striking to see these results in black and white. Their methodology exposed many of the flaws in the current supply chains which we can fix with local production.”

David Taylor, Senior Research Fellow at Cardiff Business School, said: “Value Chain Analysis (VCA), which is based on the Lean principles developed by Toyota, has been employed here to provide a systematic and quantified evaluation of existing models of supplying aid into Africa compared to the alternative of local manufacture and pre-positioned stock holding. VCA techniques are now widely used by leading edge organisations in the commercial sector, but to the best of my knowledge this project is the first application of these techniques in the humanitarian sector.”

www.advanceaid.org 

Thirty-five charities have been shortlisted for the Guardian Charity Awards 2009, which aim to highlight the achievements of small and medium-sized voluntary groups.

(Sarah Brown at last year’s Guardian Charity Awards. Photograph: Linda Nylind/Guardian)

Six winners will be chosen from the shortlist by a panel of judges including Sarah Brown, Jane Asher and Dame Suzi Leather. The winners will be announced in December.

The awards, now in their 17th year, are open to registered charities with an annual income of less than £1m. Recent research by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) has suggested that medium-sized charities are those most at risk from the recession and the coming public spending squeeze.

There were 489 valid entries for the awards this year. Winners will each receive £1,000, a new PC provided by Jigsaw Systems, advice from NCVO’s consultancy service and a package of media services from the Media Trust.

David Brindle, chair of the judging panel, said: “Yet again we have been overwhelmed by the number and quality of entries for the Guardian charity awards. To select just six winners will be a hugely difficult task.”

The judges are: Jane Asher, president of the National Autistic Society; Lynne Berry, chief executive of WRVS; David Brindle, public services editor of the Guardian; Sarah Brown, president of PiggyBankKids; Caroline Diehl, chief executive of the Media Trust; Stuart Etherington, chief executive of NCVO; Dame Suzi Leather, chair of the Charity Commission; and Lady Howarth, chair and president of Liveability.

The Shortlist in Full

58i, Nottingham runs community projects in the UK serving the homeless, those battling drug and alcohol addiction, young people, families, those in debt and women involved in street prostitution, as well as an innovative international development project in northern Ghana.

Aik Saath – Together As One, Slough, Berkshire, was established in response to gang violence between young people from Asian backgrounds in Slough and trains young people in conflict resolution and anti-racism skills in a variety of settings, including schools and youth centres.

The Anchor Project, London, works with London-based unaccompanied asylum-seeking children aged 10 to 17, providing a safe space in which they can develop confidence and self-esteem, and make friends.

Arts Care, Belfast, works across health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland, bringing visual art, dance, music and creative writing to people in hospitals or healthcare settings.

The Douglas Bader Foundation, Hertfordshire, seeks to advance and promote the physical, mental and spiritual welfare of people who are without one or more limbs, or otherwise physically disabled, using the personal achievements and fighting spirit of its namesake as an inspiration.

Bonny Downs Community Association, East Ham, London, works to promote wellbeing and healthy living, especially among elderly people and their carers, and among children, young people and their families.

Caithness Deaf Care works with hard-of-hearing and profoundly deaf people and those with visual impairment and dual impairment of sight and hearing loss in north Scotland.

clouddog, London, works with economically underprivileged inner-city students, helping them to get into the world of conservation, wildlife and environment care, and aiming to help them develop self-esteem, focus and direction.

The Comfrey Project, Newcastle upon Tyne, works with around 80 project users on three allotment sites across Tyneside, with the aim of promoting health and wellbeing among refugees and asylum seekers.

Community Action Malvern & District, Worcestershire, provides a community minibus service to help the elderly, housebound and those with impaired mobility to travel to social and medical appointments.

Cowpen Quay Community Association, Northumberland, aims to provide social, recreational and educational activities for the residents of the deprived Croft ward and Cowpen Quay areas of Blyth.

The Laura Crane Trust, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, a youth cancer charity, funds medical research – specifically into cancer in 13- to 24-year-olds – and supports the 23 UK hospitals admitting youth cancer patients.

Daventry Information and Counselling Service operating as Time2Talk, Daventry, Northamptonshire, aims to promote the physical and emotional welfare of young people aged 13-25 in Northamptonshire.

Edinburgh Women’s Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, Scotland, provides a support and advocacy service for women, girls and transgender people aged 12 years and over who have experienced sexual violence.

Faith and Football (part of the Abijah Trust), Portsmouth, Hampshire, organises and runs community youth football programmes in deprived inner-city areas of Portsmouth, Birmingham and Plymouth for disadvantaged young people aged seven to 13.

Gairloch & Loch Ewe Action Forum, Wester Ross, Scotland, which aims to improve the environment, social life and economy of the Gairloch and Loch Ewe area of Wester Ross in the Highlands of Scotland.

Get Connected Helpline, London, is a free helpline for children and young people up to the age of 25 who know they want help, but don’t know where to find it.

Home-Start Causeway, Coleraine, Northern Ireland, encourages community support of vulnerable young families through volunteering by parents of all ages and backgrounds.

Home-Start Rochdale borough, Lancashire, works towards the increased confidence and independence of the family by offering friendship, emotional support and practical assistance.

Hope Against Cancer, Leicester, aims to promote and research the causes, property, biology, detection, prevention and treatment of cancer and to publish and disseminate the results.

Hoxton Hall, London, has been serving the community since 1863, providing entertainment and education for local people. In December 2004, it became the only youth arts centre in Hackney.

InterAct Reading Service, London, provides a live one-to-one reading service to people who have had a stroke.

Kidscape, London, works to improve children’s safety, developing common-sense approaches to teaching children how to navigate their world.

Konnect9, Leicester, redistributes new, surplus goods that are about to be landfilled – free of charge – from UK businesses to marginalised people in the UK and around the world.

Maytree Respite Centre, London is a sanctuary for people in suicidal crisis that offers a one-off, four-night stay in a homely, non-medical setting with plenty of time to talk and be heard, without judgment, in a safe place.

NeuroMusuclar Centre, West Winsford, Cheshire, provides services for people with muscular dystrophy, a progressive muscle-wasting disease affecting more than 60,000 people nationally.

One North East London (1ne), Woodford Green, Essex, aims to reduce the harm caused by addiction within families by providing a full-time abstinence-based programme for addicts based on group therapy and individual counselling.

Positively Women, London, is the only national charity for women and families living with HIV in the UK. The organisation provides practical and emotional support, enables women to make informed decisions about health and personal matters and challenges stigma and discrimination.

Read International, London, aims to advance the education of young people in Africa, particularly Tanzania, by providing books and other teaching materials, and also to educate young people in the UK about poverty in Africa.

Shannon Trust, London, aims to engage every non-reading prisoner early in their sentence, support prison staff to run a reading plan in every prison and young offenders’ institution in the UK, and promote the benefits of peer-mentoring in prisons.

The Shine Project, Bournemouth, Dorset, works with some of the most deprived young women in the country, helping them to break the cycle of poverty, achieve their potential, make informed choices and value themselves and those around them.

Spadework, West Malling, Kent, provides training in horticulture, gardening, woodwork, computers, catering, retail and life skills for adults with learning difficulties aged 18 to 65.

Spitalfields City Farm, London, is a volunteer-led organisation that promotes a holistic approach to food, environmental and animal issues.

Voluntary Arts England, Newcastle upon Tyne, promotes participation in the arts and crafts by supporting the development of the voluntary arts sector.

Wirral Community Narrowboat Trust, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, offers day trips, short breaks and week-long holidays to mainly disadvantaged people on two specially adapted narrowboats, manned by volunteers.

This
year sees the first ever Business
Mum Week,
a week of activities and meet ups across the UK. This week is
dedicated to women who balance business with family life on a daily
basis to ensure a better future for their families. Mum
of two Tabitha Potts, 39, from Stepney, is ensuring the mums of East
London are
included.

Tabitha
herself
will be hosting a Mumpreneurs Networking Lunch
on
Wednesday 7^th
October from 12 noon till 2pm in the Private Dining Room at
Ping Pong Dim Sum, 3 Appold Street London EC2A 2AF tel: 020 7422
0780. The event is free although lunch is not complimentary. Free
copies of the latest Business
Mum’s Journal and
the Book
of Green
eco-directory will
be available and any mum who has ever wanted to run her own business
from home will have the opportunity to meet (and question!) other
‘mumpreneurs’ like Tabitha, in a friendly and relaxed
environment. Antonia Chitty, author of The
Mumpreneur’s Guide,
is attending the event and will give a short talk with her top tips
for mumpreneurs.

In
the lead-up to Business
Mum Week,

Tabitha,
as East London
co-ordinator,
is also looking for mums across the county to hold their own events.
Full support is available and it promises to be a great week for
uniting local women in business.

Tabitha
Potts, of Mimimyne
(www.mimimyne.com)
and
organiser of East London
Business
Mum Week says: “Business
Mum Week
is a great initiative and I’m happy to do everything I can to unite
the business mums of East London and ensure more local women with
children are aware of the family friendly working options out there.
This is a great way to both highlight the work of our mum owned
businesses in and around East London
and
support the growth of more.”

MumsClub
founder, Jane Hopkins, says: “This
is the perfect time for Business
Mum Week.
With so many redundancies and the future potential for job losses, it
is an important time for families to have options. Being self
employed is the perfect way to combine family life with generating a
second income. Women now have the freedom to get paid to do something
they love. Great for household finances, great for self esteem, great
for work-life balance.  Starting up from home is low cost, low
risk and incredibly rewarding. The dedication of our local mums has
been astounding. Credit crunch? What credit crunch?”

Find
out more:

Contact
Local organiser Tabitha Potts on 07984 291 409 email
tabitha@mimimyne.com
Updates
of activities taking place throughout the week will appear at
www.businessmumweek.com
and www.mumsclub.co.uk
##ENDS##

Media
notes:

For
media enquiries about business mum week, please contact:

Jane
Hopkins, Founder, MumsClub 01675 465863

Antonia
Chitty, 01424 810 272

About
Business Mum Week
Business
Mum Week will take place from Saturday
the 3^rd
– 10^th
October.
It is run by Jane Hopkins of MumsClub,
the online business club for mums, and supported by PR expert and
author Antonia Chitty of Family Friendly Working.

The
aims of the week are to:

inspire
more entrepreneurial mums to start a business from home,

encourage
business growth by providing business mums access to information and
ideas,

develop
online and offline support through a national network of home-working
Mumpreneurs.

Business
Mum Week recognises
the challenges such women face and the achievements they have already
made by dedicating a corner of their busy family home to turn their
business ideas into reality. Other confirmed activities include,
regional Mumpreneur meet-up’s, a personal branding evening at
Harvey Nicholls in Birmingham, a networking workshop day in Dorset,
and the inaugural Mumpreneur
Annual Conference and Awards
in the Midlands. 

A
few facts & figures on home business

• Over
  two million businesses
  already operate mainly from home. *1

• 61%
  of new businesses were
  launched from home in 2008 *2

• Home based
  business is intrinsically low
  carbon.
  Operating from one property instead of a separate home and workspace
  cuts commuting. It also reduces the carbon emissions generated by
  constructing and fuelling separate premises. *3

• Home based
  businesses face lower
  costs,
  spending significantly less on their workspace and travel than those
  using separate premises. Not commuting also saves time, increasing
  potential productivity. *4

Sources:

*1
ONS Labour Force Survey

*2
UK Global Entrepreneurship Monitor

*3
& 4 ‘Can Homeworking Save the Planet’, The Smith Institute

Will Aid is delighted to announce that its 2008 campaign was the most successful ever. Over £950,000 was raised from donations. The NSPCC has also received £54,000 from a legacy left by a Will Aid Will-maker, bringing the total to a fantastic £1 million. In addition, over £5.4 million has been pledged to the Will Aid charities and many Will-makers will have left legacies to their other favourite charities and causes.

The scheme will be running again this November and provides a fantastic opportunity for other charities to overcome one of the main barriers to achieving legacies – motivating supporters to actually make a Will. The Will Aid partnership would urge as many charities as possible to promote the scheme to their supporters as a way of generating legacy income.

Shirley Marsland, Will Aid campaign Manager, says:
“Whilst Will Aid
donations are shared by the Will Aid charities, people are free to make
a legacy to any charity they choose. So any charity can benefit from
the scheme. If you are a legacy manager wondering how to turn your
supporters’ good intentions to leave a legacy into a reality, then Will
Aid is a really effective prompt to encourage people to actually get on
a make that Will or add an all important codicil to an existing one.
The Will Aid partnership charities are pleased to be able to spread the
benefits of the campaign as widely as possible by offering this
opportunity to other charities. Will Aid can provide leaflets free of
charge for inclusion in supporter mailings and press releases for
inclusion in newsletters and magazines.”

Will Aid is run by a partnership of nine leading charities* and
recruits solicitors all over the UK who give their time for free to
draw up basic Wills. In return, the Will-maker is invited to make a
minimum donation to Will Aid (£75 for a single Will, £110 for a pair of
mirror Wills and £40 for a codicil).

Charities wanting
to promote Will Aid to their supporters and members should contact
Shirley@willaid.org.uk or phone 01460 271178 to order leaflets or
request a press release.

Susie Hewson, winner of
the 2008 Women in Ethical Business Award from ethical bank, Triodos,
and founder of Natracare, the organic and natural range of feminine
hygiene products, is embarking on a new adventure, this time to raise
funds to improve the health of women and babies around the world.

Susie (56) will be
joining other inspirational women on a gruelling 300km cycle ride
through the Jordan Valley to the shores of the Red Sea to raise funds
for the ‘Women for Women’ charity challenge.

The 5-day challenge takes
place in October this year and TV presenter, Fern Britton, will also
be taking part – her fourth ‘Women for Women’ challenge.
  The popular women-only cycling challenges have seen
thousands of women raising money over the past nine years. 

‘Women for Women’
is part of an international charity chaired by Professor Robert
Winston, registration number 292518, which finances medical research
into the causes, and therefore the cures to many conditions that
effect the health of mother and baby.

Funds raised from the
‘Women for Women’ cycle rides are specifically used to
train women scientists and clinicians to specialise in this area of
medicine – thereby empowering more women to lead in this field.

Susie says: “Natracare’s
ethos is one of care and consideration for the wellbeing of women and
the environment, and the development of our organic and sustainable
feminine hygiene products reflects that concern. The giving of my
time and energy to help raise funds for the charity is one of my
biggest challenges but I am really looking forward to the adventure
and meeting all the other charity bikers”.

To celebrate Myakka’s 10th Birthday, our biggest ever summer sale from Friday 7th August, with between 10% and 60% off absolutely everything!   In addition, our warehouse clearance starts on Saturday 8th August.  We’ve got some amazing prices on customer returns and clearance furniture, available exclusively at our Warehouse Outlet in Wincanton, Somerset.  Doors open at 10am and it’s strictly first come, first served so arrive early for the best bargains!

Over the past ten years we have proved that doing business
ethically pays, especially in the last twelve months with the tougher
economic environment.  Myakka has grown into one of the UK’s leading
furniture and home accessories retailers. We follow Fair Trade
principles as a member of BAFTS the British Association of Fair Trade
Shops.

“We created Myakka 10 years ago and it has been an
exciting journey to where we are today. We are proud of what Myakka has
become and what it stands for.  Here’s to the next decade, Happy
Birthday Myakka!” commented Georgie Hopkins, Director.

Read more about the good work Myakka has done during their 10th Birthday year by selecting this link:  Myakka’s 10th Birthday Year