NICVA research seminars

As our knowledge and understanding of the voluntary and community sector increases it becomes more and more important to make the link between the findings of research and how it translates to the realities of working in the sector today. To that end, NICVA has developed a series of seminars which will attempt to develop this link between research and practice.

The seminars themselves will follow a fairly straight forward format. The findings of the appropriate research will be presented after which an individual working in the sector will respond from the perspective of their own area of expertise. After which we hope, through a wider discussion, to develop further areas for research.

The first set of seminars will be hosted in NICVA but in future the intention is to vary the location. We want to keep the discussions focused so we are going to keep them quite short with each seminar running between 11.00 am and 12.30 pm.

So what can you look forward to over the coming months?

The series begins on 9 September 2005 with a seminar entitled "Is it worth more than small change?" which looks at patterns of charitable giving by the general public. Leeann Brady from NICVA will present the findings of research which asked 1,000 individuals across Northern Ireland how much they gave to charity. Denny Elliott from theNorthern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke Association will help ground this research in terms of his experiences of fundraising and the challenge of maintaining levels of public support.

To register a place for this or any of the other seminars please contact Andrea Burke.

The second in the series of seminars, "Reporting Civil Society" examines how the media reports the activities of civil society. NICVA commissioned Liz Fawcett Consulting and Democratic Dialogue to undertake this research and on 13 October 2005 Liz Fawcett will go through the results of a two month analysis of various media outputs. This research was part of the CIVICUS Civil Society Index programme.

The issue of skills development and training is the topic for the third seminar on 11 November 2005. Entitled"Filling the Skills Gap", Gordon McCullough from NICVA will present the findings of a Task Force on the Resourcing of the Voluntary and Community Sector commissioned piece of research into future skills needs in the voluntary and community sector in Northern Ireland.

On 9 December 2005 the fourth seminar"Stare into my crystal ball" will take a look at how the attitudes of the sector in relation to policy developments, working practices and funding have changed over the years. JJ McCarron and Leeann Brady from NICVA will go examine the findings of State of Sector III, IV and the results of the various NICVA Viewfinder surveys to provide an analysis of past, present and future attitudes.

Moving into 2006, the focus of the fifth research seminar will be on the latest findings from the NICVA Salary Survey. Always a very popular area this seminar entitled "Pay Peanuts …" will be held on 3 February 2006. The seminar will look at remuneration levels in the sector. However, the findings presented by Gordon McCullough of NICVA will not only look at pay levels but also employment practices and pose the question how attractive is the sector as a viable career option?

The final seminar in the 2005/06 schedule takes on a slightly different format. There has been a long running debate about what actually defines a voluntary or community organisation. This seminar entitled "What’s in a name?"examines if there is indeed a difference and can that difference be found in the data NICVA has collected over the years on organsaitions. 10 March 2006 is the date when, what should be a very lively debate, is scheduled to take place. Supporting evidence for the debate will be presented by JJ McCarron of NICVA.

More details on each of these seminars will be circulated nearer the time. In the meantime however if you have any ideas about future seminars which would be of interest to the voluntary and community please contact the Research Team at NICVA.

To register for one or all of these events please contact Andrea Burke, andrea.burke@nicva.org or (028) 9087 7777.