The Ax descends

Well George Osborne, the butcher of Downing Street, has struck. £100m transistional relief but £7Bn off the local government spend. No prizes for guesses as to how much will come from that spent on discretionery grants and contracts to local community organisations. Interestingly that's just about what local authorities currently spend in that direction. Melt down in April and so much for the Big Society.

Did anyone go to the EAPG meeting last night at CASS which was going to debate the Big Society. That, in my book, ought not to have taken very long!

e-fundraising - a core strategy or a bolt-on gizmo?

Interesting isn't it? The consultants group at the Institue of Fundraising are holding what looks to be a really interesting meeting on 24th November with some really good speakers. We try to do the same at LSBU each year with guest speakers looking at the latest trends and what's working well. As do a number of other organisations. Problem is it all changes so quickly, doesn't it?

Well at the risk of being labelled a ludite I wonder if it does. It goes without saying, (well ought to) that one must consider the changing state of technology and our uptake of it and that must be built into our communications strategies to avoid redundancy and being unnecessarily overtaken. However first into the market rarely triumphs. Remember Betamax and later the video laser disc both technologies that were superior to those that followed and cleaned up. I'm not sure if its the hare and the tortoise or simply following the first entrants and making a better job of it. Either way you have to be well informed but an element of risk aversion and pragmatism makes a compelling argument.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, "The world will beat a path to the door whoever makes a better mousetrap" but not necessarily the person who tries to eradicate mice altogether.