News

Funding Support
Over the last 12 months, funding (advice) has been one of the main areas of support delivered by the CVS development team, accounting for 62% of enquiries dealt with and they already account for 67% of the enquiries for the first quarter of 2018. This may help to explain the continued popularity of our Funding Events, which we hold across the county throughout the year and which provide a great opportunity for local groups and organisations to liaise with local and national funders and access much needed funding advice and information. We were very pleased to see so many of you at the funding event at Kendal Rugby Club in late June and look forward to welcoming many more of you to Whitehaven next week.

Volunteers’ Week 1-7 June is an annual event and celebrates the fantastic contribution that millions of volunteers make across the UK. The week plays a huge part in raising the profile of the millions of volunteers who regularly contribute to society while inspiring others to get involved too.

Cumbria CVS is running Volunteering Fairs across Cumbria during Volunteers’ Week to help local organisations recruit new volunteers. Please see the above details for our Volunteer Fairs during this week.

It’s hard to believe that we are almost half way through 2018. When did the New Year become June? The last five months have truly flown – and in that time we have witnessed a period of more exciting developments.

For Cumbria CVS, our staff team has grown in response to funding: we are pleased to welcome Clare Edwards as the new Health Partnership Officer for North Cumbria (see next article); we have successfully recruited to the new Community Resilience Co-ordinator post and are also strengthening our Building Better Opportunities team with the appointment of a new Project Manager and Lead Key Worker.  We have also been delighted to welcome a new volunteer to our team at Shaddongate who is helping us look after our fabulous building.

Building relationships with the Third Sector as health and care services become more integrated will be a priority for the new health partnerships officer.
Clare Edwards, who has a long history of representing Third Sector organisations, has taken up the new role which is funded by the NHS, but based with Cumbria CVS.

Clare said, “I know from first-hand experience just how tough it can be to get a meaningful dialogue going with staff from the health sector but I also know how exciting it can be when relationships work and great new services are developed.

As many of you will be aware Sustainability is one of the four key themes in our new Strategic Plan – along with Our People, Working Together and Local Leadership. Sustainability can mean different things to different people/organisations, and to many in this current climate, it is often understandably financial. Naturally, Cumbria CVS aspires to be financially sustainable and has been working towards this goal over the past few years – but recently our sustainability focus has taken us down a more environmental route.

As part of our work on the project, Cumbria CVS has produced a video on Business Continuity Planning which is available to view: https://youtu.be/GcntctjWo8A

We have also run a number of Business Continuity Planning sessions around the county which have been very well received:
“I found the course very interesting .  Will be very useful as we do not have a Business Continuity Plan in place”.