Monday, 30 April 2007

Today I prepared the final e-mail we will shortly send to 2,000-odd charities across Hertfordshire as part of the Value and Volumes study. So many irritating technical problems!

I also spent time preparing for Tuesday's two big meetings: Herts Infrastructure Consortium (HIC) in the morning and Herts CVS in the afternoon.

Both are important generally for the VCS in Hertfordshire, and particularly for Watford CVS.

HIC is a Consortium of all organisations that support voluntary groups in Hertfordshire. It is, I suppose, an umbrella group for umbrella groups and this makes it a dangerous thing. Every county in England has such a Consortium and each has been allocated money to review its operations and write a develop plan. Simple? No.

HIC is pretty well-run, and certainly seems to be healthier and more inclusive than many other Consortia I’ve seen. But there are Big Questions that need to be asked - and to which we must find answers.

Is membership of HIC right? Almost certainly not – some changes seem inevitable. Is the structure of HIC right? Ditto. Do the various members of HIC work effectively together to provide an integrated and thought-through service to voluntary groups? No, not even slightly. Individually or collectively, do we actually do any good? We like to think so. Does anyone else think so? Er, probably not. How do we demonstrate our impact? Er...? Does anyone else even know HIC exists? Ummmm …

Before leaving the office, as Chair of HIC I talked through these issues (again) with Jacquie Hime of North Herts CVS.

Back at home, Jackie and I enjoyed a short programme about H H Munro (better known as Saki). The programme was good, but it also annoyed me by failing to distinguish between fact and supposition - and there’s little that annoys me more.