Tuesday, 5 June 2007

I arrived at work early to complete the overhaul of my office. But at 10:00 I joined a meeting of the Watford Learning Partnership. The WLP provides a forum for all those delivering post-16 education in Watford. Today’s meeting was poorly attended but nevertheless there were some helpful discussions: in particular, we explored possible ways of meeting the voluntary sector’s training needs.

Investing in Communities

On Investors in Communities, I learnt that others also think their current year budget allocations are crazy. IiC works with communities to tackle poverty and need. For education and training, they have a fixed sum of money to spend across the county and decided (I assume with the best intentions) to prioritise needs. To be exact, they decided that 100% of their 2007-08 budget will be spent in just three of Hertfordshire’s 200-odd wards. No-one disputes the need to prioritise. But there is serious doubt that these three wards can even host all the events needed to spend the money. And if they can host the events, will anyone actually attend?

This seems to me a classic (and extreme) example of the “hit and run” tactics favoured by many inexperienced and naive funders. Many people, including the potential targets of the training, will probably be far happier if the money is simply flushed straight down the drain - thus saving everyone the embarrassment of pretending that people will actually benefit from any of this.

It is possible that I would be more understanding about this if one or more of the wards were within Watford.

After the WLP meeting I visited the YMCA for lunch with their CEO Phil Willerton. Apart from leading one of Watford's most successful charities, Phil is also the best person to ask about the Children’s Partnerships / Centres / Funds and I am only slowly getting to understand these things.

Later, I met with Anne (our Funding Advisor) who is about to go on leave for two weeks. I then finally finished overhauling my office – which now looks almost "office-like" (is there an appropriate adjective for this context? officious and professional are just not right).

Around 5:00 I was visited by WCVS's auditors Howard Wilson, who collected from us our audit pack. I then hurried home to my grand-daughter’s third birthday party. Later, I noticed that aged Ken was looking more inform that usual; I wonder if anyone markets copper collars for arthritic cats?