NICVA Annual Report - Enhancing engagement

The NICVA Annual Report highlights the work for NICVA over the course of the year and gives a flavour of where energies and resources are placed. Much of this focus is providing support to the near 1,000 members and also other organisations within the voluntary and community sector, in order to help them achieve their own goals and priorities.

A key element of this work is the representational role as the voice of the voluntary and community sector within Northern Ireland, through policy work including training, fora, networks, consultations and also communication via Assembly Monitor.

NICVA also continues to gain an understanding of the sector via their Research Unit, which has worked on projects such as Supporting People, monitoring the progress of Positive Steps as well as Research training sessions in conjunction with ARK (the Northern Ireland Political Archive).

As a main part of information sharing, the Governance team and the Training team reported an outstanding year for attendance at courses and events, as well as consultancy services, with over 4,000 governance enquiries, and over 1,200 attendees at training events. NICVA also launched the Code of Good Governance Guide.

The report notes that the NICVA web sites, nicva.org, communityni.org, grant-tracker.org and communitybuyer.org continue to show phenomenal growth in visitor numbers. Grant-tracker in particular, which is aimed at helping improve the knowledge and capacity of fundraising, reached a staggering 142,000 page views within the year.

Finally, the report reminisces about the NICVA Link Awards which celebrated its 21st Birthday with over 500 guests, and was launched by the NICVA President Kenneth Branagh.