New training and funds available for FSI members 😄

The Foundation for Social Improvement's
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Dear <<First Name>>

If you haven’t heard about Local Charities Day, it’s an initiative from the Office for Civil Society within Department for Culture, Media and Sport and is taking place on 16 December this year. It aims to raise awareness of small, local charities to make sure they get the recognition they deserve.

Workshops and Webinars
We are delighted to tell you that in partnership with the Office for Civil Society, we will be delivering 28 workshops with 560 delegate places in eight different cities across the UK. On Local Charities Day, we will also deliver 20 online webinars with 400 places on offer! This is aimed at small, local charities and is free to attend.

Click here to book on to a workshop.

Click here to book on to a webinar.

Have a read about the initiative which was featured on Civil Society and UK Fundraising

Book now

Check out our latest blogs and guest blogs!

For Trustees' Week this week, one of the FSI's very own Trustees, Graham Precey discusses a day in the life of a FSI Trustee and what being a Trustee means to him. Also, our friends over at #IWill have written a guest blog all about #IWill week, 21-25 November where they are asking small charities to open up more youth-friendly social action opportunities in the work that they do.

Trustee training in London

Places at our London Training Event, 22-24th November, have booked up in record time and we are very much looking forward to seeing you all there. We wanted to let you know that we still have a few places left on our course: Trustee role in Risk Management, aimed at Trustees, CEOs and charity managers. If you would like to book on to this course, please click here to find out more.

Saw this and thought of you!
Next week is UK Parliament Week - a programme of events and activities aiming to empower people to get involved with the UK Parliament, and make their voices heard. We’ve put together a few toolkits to help boost your small charity’s engagement with Parliament; Let’s Engage, The Public Policy Toolkit and How to use parliamentary questions to boost your campaign.

Small Charity Trends results are out
The Small Charity Index Trends data is out and we'd like to thank everyone who has taken part in our surveys over the past three years. To read the full report, click here.

The main findings of the Small Charity Trends data include:

→ Small charities have seen demand for their services rise by 64% over the three years.
→ Therefore unsurprisingly, in each quarterly Small Charity Index workload is reported as the greatest concern to small charity leaders.
→ The trends over the past three years see statutory income dropping by 8%, voluntary income increasing by 2% and earned income increasing by 9%.
→ In reality income to small charities remains static, which might account for an increasing number of charities, between 27% and 48% (over the three year period), using reserves. This is a problem when only three quarters of the small charity sector report to holding reserves.

Free membership with Localgiving
You may already know about Grow Your Tenner, an online match fund campaign run by Localgiving that supports local charities and community groups in the UK. The Office for Civil Society is contributing £245,000 to the pot, bringing the current total amount of match funding available to £345,000.

To participate, charities just need an active Localgiving membership and as an FSI member, you have the chance to claim a free first year membership of Localgiving, usually worth £72!

To access your free membership, click here: join.localgiving.org/fsi

The FSI's Member of the Month!

Each month we have decided to reward a small charity member who we think is doing exceptional work for their beneficiaries, as well as being a superb member of our organisation.

This month, we are delighted to announce that our November Member of the Month is Joey Owen from Freedom to Learn. Read Joey's Member of the Month blog here if you'd like to find out more about Freedom to Learn and our Member of the Month initiative.

Funds to keep an eye on..
We want our members to be the first to know about the latest funds and opportunities for funding. Keep an eye on these funds that have recently launched:

UK Aid Match Programme
Galaxy Hot Chocolate Fund
Epic Awards for Arts Groups

Dates for your diary
7th-11th November → Trustee Week
14th-19th November → UK Parliament Week
21st-25th November → #IWill Week
29th November → Giving Tuesday
16th December → Local Charities Day

About The FSI
Our aim is to support charities to become more efficient, effective, accountable and self sustaining. We do this by delivering expert knowledge, strategy and support to charities so their futures are secure and their users protected.