Useful information – w/c 16/06/25
June 16, 2025
Events, training, charity news, surveys, research, feedback, reports, services and much more – in one handy place!
This page will be updated with new information as we receive it during the week. Please check back regularly. (Last update: 16/06/25 – items added on this date are marked as [NEW])
You’ll also find the latest Health and Wellbeing news, events and opportunities in the current post on our News page here.
You can view previous Useful Information posts here to catch up on our archive of information.
For useful resources, information, news and events, updates on our climate commitment, blog posts from colleagues about what they’re doing (in a work capacity and privately) to minimise environmental impact and more take a look at Cumbria CVS Green
If you’ve seen something you think we should be sharing, let us know! Email us: info@cumbriacvs.org.uk
Looking for funding information? Check out the latest edition of Focus on Funding here
Training and Events
Learning Disability Week: creating Easy Reads for accessible communication
Monday 16th June, online. Discover the principles of Easy Read, why it matters and how to create clear, inclusive documents that improve access to information for people with learning disabilities and beyond.
Ideal for anyone working with people with a learning disability in any capacity.
£50 per person, Fully-funded places for the first five people to book on each webinar, A 50% discount for the next five people to book.
Celebrate the Month of Community with Lunch and Learn Series
Various dates 16th-27th June, online. Westmorland and Furness Community Cohesion Group would like to invite you, your colleagues, and communities to a series of free online lunch and learn sessions in June to mark The Month of Community.
A variety of sessions will held, including:
- What is Anti-Racism?
- Restorative Justice
- Volunteering – Reducing Loneliness & Supporting Cohesion
- Asylum Seekers & Refugees – Myths V Reality
- Victim Support
- Meet an Iman
- Hate Crime Awareness & Reporting
- Connecting People Through Festivals
For descriptions of these sessions, as well as their dates, times and login details please see the attached flyer.
Board Leadership Stage 1: High-Performance Boards
16–17 June, online. A course on governance for both experienced and new chairs and chief executives.
The course is for both experienced and new chairs and chief executives (ideally attending together). Taking place over two mornings, it will help you in your role of building a high-performance board, delivering valuable insights into the key areas of responsibility for chairs and CEOs and providing you with ideas to keep your board moving forward.
Introduction to Engaging with Businesses: Five Things I Wish I’d Known
Tuesday 17 June, online. A basic introduction to engaging and connecting with your local business community.
This session is aimed at small charities and voluntary groups, whether they are at the beginning of their journey in engaging with businesses or wish to develop stronger contacts.
Introducing the Charity Digital Code of Practice 2025
17th June, online. The updated Charity Digital Code of Practice launched on 6th June 2025. The Code has been completely overhauled to meet the needs of an increasingly digital sector.
This webinar will explain what’s changed and why, including:
- The incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) across all principles
- A brand new principle: Data
- Greater focus on tech integration and procurement
And much more!
How to Recruit and Retain a Diverse Board
18 June 2025, online. Join this online training course to better understand the importance of diversity and lived-experience on charity boards.
Over the course of the morning you will learn about the common challenges involved in recruiting and retaining diverse board members and gain practical solutions for tackling these challenges.
This will be an interactive session with plenty of opportunities to discuss experiences and key topics with fellow charity delegates.
Opportunities and Challenges Report Launch
18th June, online. Opportunities and Challenges is the fourth in a series of localised reports by Cumbria Community Foundation based on Cumbrian communities.
Their analysis explores Carlisle’s social needs and community issues, highlighting existing efforts to tackle disadvantage while identifying new opportunities to support thriving communities both within urban Carlisle and the rural communities that surround it.
Community Fundraising Conference 2025
19th June 2025, online. Join the UK’s only Community Fundraising Conference and get practical tools to prioritise relationships, manage volunteers, measure impact and make confident fundraising decisions.
Learn from peers, hear inspiring stories and gain fresh confidence in the role you play at the heart of your charity.
Data Management – One small step to get you ahead
20th June 2025, online. Join TechSoup’s upcoming interactive event to get clear, practical answers to your biggest data challenges.
Learn how to confidently collect, store and share data, and take practical next steps that lead to real, measurable results.
Cumbria Diversity Carnival
Saturday 21st June, Carlisle. Celebrating Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Free event.
Parade starts at 11.30, followed by The Big Lunch in Bitts Park.
Click on the thumbnail image to view the event flyer.
Camp Jojo – showcase open weekend
21st & 22nd June, Hoff. Camp Jojo offer camping experiences for families of children with complex needs & disabilities, and are excitingly establishing their first site in the north of England.
CampJojo are holding a showcase Open Weekend to show people around what they can offer. If you would like to attend or know of any organisations that it would be relevant to, please let Alex know which session you would like to attend.
Contact: Alex Chalmers Alex@campjojo.org.uk
Cyber Essentials Training: Mastering the Five Key Controls for Digital Security
24th June, online. This three-hour workshop offers an accessible introduction to Cyber Essentials, a government-backed framework designed to help organisations protect themselves from the most common cyber threats.
Over two engaging sessions, we’ll break down the scheme’s five critical controls and run a live hack, including reconnaissance and initial access, where you will play a lead role in the operation. By the end of the training, you’ll be equipped with actionable strategies to strengthen your organisation’s digital defences.
Unconscious bias in recruitment: you don’t know what you don’t know
Tuesday 24th June, online. Understand how unconscious bias shapes recruitment decisions, learn strategies to interrupt bias at every stage of the hiring process and build a fairer pathway to inclusive hiring.
Ideal for anyone working in recruitment and hiring managers.
£50 per person, Fully-funded places for the first five people to book on each webinar, A 50% discount for the next five people to book.
[NEW] In-house content creation: Making the most of your resources
Tuesday 24th June, online. Join HdK for this free webinar.
Time and money can be scarce resources for arts, culture and heritage marketers. This session is to help you review how you’re spending yours on content creation – and to equip you with some tips and tools for in-house content creation on a budget.
Understanding Governance Stage 2: Governance in Practice
24–25 June 2025, online. Improve the overall effectiveness of your board.
Designed for experienced trustees, secure in their knowledge of the governance processes and what being a trustee entails, ‘Governance in Practice’ builds on the expertise gained from the stage 1 course ‘Understanding Governance: The Trustee Role,’ focusing on practical solutions to the challenges you face.
This course covers a wide range of governance issues and aims to help you improve the overall effectiveness of your board.
Getting set up with Microsoft 365
25th June, online. The course, the first of three parts, uncovers everything you need to know about Microsoft 365.
The first half of the first session looks at the functionality 365 includes, helps charities to make sense of registration process and domain authentication, explores eligibility, and so much more.
Dementia and digital adjustments that can help
Wednesday 2 July 2025, online. Do you or someone you know live with dementia? Aimed at older people and some of the issues they may commonly face, join AbilityNet’s free lunchtime learning session Dementia and digital adjustments that can help on Wednesday 2 July at 1pm.
In the webinar, you’ll learn from our special guest Phil Joddrell from Dementia UK, about touchscreen apps for people living with dementia and guidance on adaptations to make apps more user friendly, to enhance engagement and enjoyment.
AbilityNet BT Digital Skills trainer Anna Dolphin will also share practical ideas for digital tools that can help you manage daily life with dementia and how AbilityNet and BT Group can help you and those you know with dementia with their tech, for free.
Crafting your perfect team: Strategies for requirements gathering and partner selection
3rd July, online. Join Hart Square for this webinar, where we’ll cover how to effectively gather your business and technical requirements to ensure your project is well defined and set up for success from the start.
We’ll share proven techniques for identifying, capturing, and documenting your requirements and how best to align stakeholders, prioritise needs, and avoid the common pitfalls at this stage of a project.
Introduction to Digital Accessibility
Thursday 3rd July, online. Get the lowdown on the basics of digital accessibility to see what changes you need to make
Digital accessibility is a crucial aspect of modern-day digital products and services. It not only ensures equal access for disabled people, but it improves the overall user experience for everyone.
This beginner-friendly course will teach you the basics to get you started on your accessibility journey.
Reserves – What They Are and How to Calculate Them
Tuesday 8 July, online. Reserves are a critical element when building small charity resilience. However, they are often, for very valid reasons, miscalculated.
The session will look at Why we hold reserves, how to calculate reserves, what a good reserves policy looks like and how to report on reserves.
Supercharge your use of social media
8th July, online. This course aims, in just three hours, to supercharge your use of social media. We’ll explore how you can pick the right platforms for your charity and how to know whether you should invest, or divest, in other platforms.
We’ll show you how to increase social media engagement, how to extend your reach, and how to ensure you target the most rewarding demographics.
How to build a disability inclusive workplace
Thursday 17th July, online. At the end of this course you will be able to:
- Recognise the advantages of proactively designing inclusivity into your working practices
- Describe where your organisation currently sits on our disability inclusion gap analysis scale overall and at each stage in the employee lifecycle
- Identify barriers that could stand in the way of implementing cultural change and how technology can act as an enabler
- Make a plan to move forward
This training is suitable for anyone interested in building high performing teams, EDI and disability inclusion.
Getting started with Google for Nonprofits
22nd July, online. This course provides an introduction to the Google for Nonprofits program, which offers eligible UK charities free access to a suite of Google tools, including Google Workspace, Google Ad Grants, the YouTube Nonprofit Program, and Google Earth and Maps.
We will explore these tools and highlight how UK charities are already using them to enhance their operations and impact.
Get Grants free Virtual Conference 2025
7th-8th October, online. The Conference will provide two days of expert fundraising advice, top tips, Q&As, networking, peer-support, and lots of chat, bringing together thousands of Fundraisers from across the UK for a programme led by Get Grants Experts, funders, and other experts from across the sector.
VCFSE News and Information
[NEW] Inspiring Communicator Awards
Celebrate charity communicators with your Inspiring Communicator Award nominations. The nomination portal is now open for the CharityComms Inspiring Communicators Awards 2025!
Whether you’re marking your milestones, recognising the commitment of a peer or championing collaborations, celebrate the comms talent working in and with the sector.
[NEW] Fundraising Regulator to change how it collects complaints data
The Fundraising Regulator has revealed plans to start collecting data from charities of all sizes for its annual complaints report (ACR).
Until 2023, the regulator collected data from a small number of large charities and reported the types of fundraising complaints they had received as part two of the ACR.
However, in response to a survey that received over 450 responses, the regulator announced plans to review how it collects data from the charities in 2023.
[NEW] Forgotten assets to help families and young people thrive
The Government has announced its first ever Dormant Assets Scheme Strategy, which will unlock £440 million funding for people and communities who need it most, redirecting money from long-unused accounts to important social causes. Local charities and community groups will also get extra funding to run projects like food banks, youth clubs, and community events to help bring people together, tackle loneliness, and make neighbourhoods safer and friendlier for everyone.
The £440 million package announced this week represents a significant uplift, with an estimated £90 million over previously announced figures set to become available through the Scheme in England by 2028.
[NEW] How can you make your board of trustees more adaptive and systemic?
It’s easy to say ‘we should be more flexible’ or ‘we should be more collaborative’. But how do you actually make it happen as a trustee with infrequent meetings and fixed legal responsibilities?
NPC recently held a discussion on how trustees can be more adaptive and systemic. In this blog, they share 3 top tips from the event on practical steps you can take to create a more strategic board: expect change, make sure trustees are getting a range of information, and work to create an open culture.
Surveys, Research, Feedback and Reports
[NEW] Civil society sets out priorities for new Covenant
A newly published report by NCVO and ACEVO has set out recommendations to help make the government’s forthcoming Civil Society Covenant meaningful and effective.
Building a Covenant for Civil Society and Government is based on input from more than 1,000 charities and voluntary organisations that took part in an engagement exercise in autumn 2024. The process was supported by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The goal is to create a Civil Society Covenant that recognises the value of our sector and makes it easier for charities to collaborate with government to create lasting positive change.
Read the full recommendations and download the report here
Disclaimer
The information above is provided in good faith. Whilst every care is taken to ensure that it is correct, Cumbria CVS cannot accept liability for any omissions or inaccuracies and does not take responsibility for the quality for any services or products mentioned.
