Professor Fred Robinson was a keynote speaker at a national conference on university-community relationships which took place at the University of the West of England, Bristol on 23^rd January 2014. His presentation looked at what a university can offer disadvantaged communities – especially those communities close to their campus. He said that universities should be regarded as community assets and should recognise their wider roles and responsibilities. They need to do more to ensure that disadvantaged groups have fair access to educational opportunities; and they need to do more to open up their social and cultural facilities to local people.

Universities should also seek to maximise the beneficial impacts they can have on the local economy as big employers and as purchasers of goods and services. And Fred stressed that it has to be a two-way partnership: universities can gain a lot from their involvement with local communities. The educational experience of students is enhanced by community placements and volunteering, and research is enriched and developed through co-production and collaboration.

The presentation drew on a major research study produced by Fred, Ian Zass-Ogilvie and Ray Hudson for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2012 (see it here). The conference was organised by NIACE and its partner agencies, and the other keynote speakers were the Vice Chancellor of UWE, the Director of the National Centre for Public Engagement and the Director of Fair Access to Higher Education.

Tony Chapman and Emma Dunkerley have recently completed a three year study of the O2 Think Big project. This evaluation research has involved the collection of data from thousands of young people across Europe including Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Slovakia and the United Kingdom. The UK study was the most intensively studied element of the programme involving observation, in-depth interviews and surveys with young people, employee volunteers and community stakeholders. The report focuses on how to develop young people’s resilience in difficult economic climate by encouraging them to undertake positive social action projects.

Read the report published December 2013 (pdf document)

Everyone is saying that charities are in a crisis, it seems, due to the long period of austerity and slow national recovery from recession since 2008. While some charities have seen their income fall substantially over the last two years, many more find that their income is stable or even rising. But what do charities and small voluntary groups feel will happen to them in the future? While the charity press is often somewhat doom-laden, respondents from a survey of over 1700 organisations in the North East and Cumbria seem to be rather more positive. Indeed a report recently published by Professors Tony Chapman and Fred Robinson suggests that many seem to be irrepressible optimists. The question is, are their expectations too high and if so, are they heading for a disappointment of their own making.

Read the report: http://www.nr-foundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/The-Crystal-Ball-Final.pdf

Government is committed to invest in social action programmes for young people. The Cabinet Office funded Centre for Social Action has recently been established to oversee the success of such interventions. A new report by Professor Tony Chapman and Emma Dunkerley explores the success of a national Social Action Fund project run by the National Youth Agency in partnership with O2 Think Big. The project focused on the experiences of young people who were new to volunteering or who had been previously involved in the Government’s flagship National Citizen Service. The research shows that young people who graduated from the NCS become more heavily committed to social action in the future.

Read the report, published December 2013:

For the past three years, Fred Robinson has chaired the North East Policy and Representation Partnership. This important initiative has helped many voluntary sector organisations in the region to get their message across and get much more involved in shaping public policy. The Partnership has been hosted by VONNE (Voluntary Organisations Network North East) and was funded by the BIG Lottery.

The Policy and Representation Partnership has been awarded the 2013 ‘Impact Award’, a prestigious national award from Compact Voice in association with the Government’s Cabinet Office. The awards ceremony took place in London in November, with the Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd MP. See

Read the news story: http://www.compactvoice.org.uk/news/compactawards2013announced

In November 2012, Tomohito Nakajima from Sanno University, Tokyo and Dr Hiroyuki Shimizu from Chiba University visited St Chad’s to discuss the contribution that social enterprise can make to the regeneration of areas which have suffered from economic decline and industrial restructuring. Professor Tony Chapman has been working with his Japanese colleagues in Tokyo and Yamagata for the last eight years comparing the experiences of social enterprise in very different policy and fiscal environments. A recent publication, The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration includes a chapter which is drawn from this long-term study.

Link to the publisher: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415539043/

Professors Tony Chapman and Fred Robinson recently completed the second phase of the Northern Rock Foundation Third Sector Trends Study. One element of the study which has caught the imagination of the sector and its supporters is their recent working paper, On the Money. This paper explains how new finance can do charities harm if they don’t think carefully about why they are taking on new contracts or grants. The paper argues that good organisational governance does not just mean chasing money, but thinking carefully about what the charity wants to achieve for its beneficiaries and to ensure that staff and volunteers are properly resourced, capable and motivated to do new things.

Read the report: http://www.nr-foundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/on-the-money-final.pdf

See the news story: http://m.thirdsector.co.uk/article/1193679/money-become-end-itself-charities-says-new-paper

In June 2013, Involve Yorkshire & Humber launched its Third Sector Trends Study on line. The study, which is being undertaken by Professor Tony Chapman, aimed to reach 1000 charities and groups across the county and this target was reached in early October. The study replicates many of the questions used by Northern Rock Foundation Third Sector Trends study. In coordination with Big Society Capital, a new set of questions was introduced to assess the extent to which charities’ assets affect the way they plan for the future.

Early analysis shows that charity assets (or property or investments) do shape the way charities consider and act upon new opportunities. A strong foundation of assets is certainly beneficial from the point of view of those organisations, such as Big Society Capital, who want to encourage charities to take loans or get involved in social finance initiatives. The problem is that very few charities have any tangible assets and fewer still are currently interested in borrowing money. The research will be published in January 2014.

The headline may have been an eye catcher, but BBC Education picked up on an opinion poll that shows that young men who are from neither the most advantaged nor disadvantaged families were amongst the most fatalistic about their futures in a climate of recession and high levels of youth unemployment. The research was undertaken for O2 based on questions devised by Professor Tony Chapman. Subsequent detailed analysis of these data will be published in the final report of the O2 Think Big evaluation in December 2013.
See the news story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20947604

For the last five years, Professors Tony Chapman and Fred Robinson have been developing methods to examine what makes charities successful. In 2010 a report was published which attempted to categorise organisational practices. Twenty categories were devised, divided equally between four main headings: foresight, enterprise, capability and impact. 50 organisations in the Northern Rock Foundation Third Sector Trends Study were scored against each of the categories.

Read the 2010 report: http://www.charityfinancials.com/caritas-magazine/what-makes-a-third-sector-organisation-tick-648.html

Read a summary of the 2010 report: http://www.nr-foundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/The-Reality-Check-Final.pdf

A second study two years later explored how these 50 organisations had fared in difficult economic circumstances. On the basis of the analysis, Chapman and Robinson identified 10 ‘critical success factors’ and produced a framework for self reflection for charities to try out. The problem is, it is not known whether complying with critical success factors will protect charities from competition in the social market or political and economic turbulence. That is the subject of the final phase of the work in 2014-15.

See the self appraisal framework: http://www.nr-foundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/NRFTST-organisational-self-appraisal-framework.pdf

Read the 2013 report: http://www.nr-foundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Walking-a-Tightrope.pdf