Third Sector Podcast

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Louise Harris, chief operating officer of the homelessness charity Crisis, to learn about successful and meaningful approaches to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the voluntary sector.

Louise outlines the importance for organisations working in the social justice space to treat DEI as a strategic issue as well as a people one, with accountability mechanisms included in monitori...

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Claire Gauci, public safety campaigns and programme manager at the Canal and River Trust, and Emily Rayner, senior consultant at the behaviour change and communications agency Claremont.

Claire describes how a video intended to educate teenagers about water safety fell flat, prompting the charity to adopt a co-design approach involving a youth group in Wigan.

She explains how the process l...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Okela Douglas-Norgrove, chief executive of Sister System, which supports young women and girls who have been affected by the care system.

Okela outlines how Sister System has grown since its formation in 2018 in partnership with 17 care leavers. She describes some of the challenges of co-creating the charity’s strategy with its service users, including additional time and resource demand...

Acting editor Andy Ricketts and senior reporter Emily Harle are joined by Emma Guise, director of marketing and communications at Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity.

Emma talks through the reasons behind the charity’s first rebrand since 2017, what it was hoping to achieve and how it will measure its success. 

She discusses how the charity worked to update its brand for a new digital era and reveals her top tips for charities ...

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Keith Wilson, director of income and engagement at the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance.

Keith explains how depressed fundraising revenues during the Covid-19 pandemic prompted a major restructure that saw corporate, community and individual fundraising roles merged into supporter engagement officers.

He describes how removing income targets and scaling back one-off, transactional...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Mark Greer, managing director at the Charities Aid Foundation, and Charlotte Prothero, external affairs manager at Pro Bono Economics.

Mark outlines the growing importance of major donor revenue to the voluntary sector and sets out the cause areas favoured by high-net-worth individuals.

He stresses the need for charities to develop long-term relationships with major donors and to treat them...

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Sohail Hanif, chief executive of the National Zakat Foundation, and Taqwa Sadiq, presenter and producer of the BBC audio series Sacred Money.

Taqwa explains how an individual’s choice of destination for their annual zakat donation can be influenced by the emotions surrounding their sense of belonging and home.

Sohail describes the role of the National Zakat Foundation in collecting and dis...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Elliot Trevithick, principal consultant for charities evaluation and learning at the think tank NPC, and Annie Hinton, senior programme design manager at the youth support charity Right to Succeed.

Elliot explains how being one step removed from a charity’s service users can present difficulties when it comes to evaluating programmes that work to change the systems surrounding social probl...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Toby Porter, chief executive of Hospice UK, to discuss the charity’s function as a membership platform for a particularly financially strained section of the voluntary sector.

Toby explains how a reset in member relationships has led to hospices alerting Hospice UK to financial and staffing challenges at an earlier stage than previously, enabling his organisation to co-ordinate helpful m...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Danny Sriskandarajah, chief executive of the New Economics Foundation, to discuss his views on the need for charities to understand the economic context of the issues they work to address.

Danny explains why a failure to engage with economic issues has contributed to charities often being treated as an afterthought in government-led discussions about economic growth.

The former Oxfam chief ...

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Tamsyn Hanrahan, director of partnerships and philanthropy at Save the Children UK, and Beth Knight, social sustainability director at Lloyds Banking Group and chair of Save the Children UK’s corporate advisory board.

Tamsyn explains why Save the Children UK decided a corporate advisory board would be of benefit to the charity, and how it went about forming one a year ago, including a rig...

Andy Ricketts and Dami Adewale are joined by Kate Lee, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society.

Kate provides insight into the brand work recently undertaken by the charity, with a focus on raising awareness of dementia as well as the charity’s own profile.

She explains how taking a more controversial approach to public messaging, including the charity’s recent ‘Long Goodbye’ advertising campaign, has brought attention to the...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, and Wanda Wyporska, chief executive of Safe Passage International, to discuss some of the issues facing the voluntary sector in 2025.

These include ways of engaging with local and national government, addressing the chief executive churn, and effectively balancing learned and lived experience to deliver on charitable purposes.

They share their view...

Lucinda Rouse, Andy Ricketts and Emily Harle dissect the leading stories from the voluntary sector in 2024.

Lucinda delivers a speedy round-up of the year’s charity news before the three discuss their selected top stories. 

These include the closure of the British Youth Council and the National Citizen Service, the finding that charities are subsidising government service contracts by £2.4bn a year, and the implications of a new...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, to discuss the charity’s approach to fundraising, supporter engagement and advocacy.

Michelle provides insight into the charity’s ongoing data and digital transformation programme: a major investment that aims to personalise supporter engagement and raise the systems surrounding it to the same level as the world-leading research f...

Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Kirsty MacDonald, deputy principal for advancement at the Royal Academy of Music, to discuss the charity’s ongoing campaign to raise £100m.

Kirsty describes how the academy saw annual fundraising revenues grow from £1.5m to £18m in less than a decade, after investing in necessary systems and infrastructure including research, data and due diligence functions.

She stresses the importance of...

Lucinda Rouse is joined by Paul Watkins, fundraising director at Leeds Hospitals Charity, to reflect on the charity’s delivery of a £6.8m appeal for a new motor neurone disease care centre.  

Paul describes the integral role of the late England rugby league player Rob Burrow, who was diagnosed with MND in 2019 and died earlier this year, in mobilising a community of some 17,000 individual supporters, who each donated an av...

Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Fozia Irfan, director of impact and influence at BBC Children in Need, to reflect on the challenges facing charities and grantmakers in the present funding climate.

Fozia describes the role of funders such as Children in Need to convene networks spread across the UK and create communities of practice to provide more holistic and structural solutions to issues such as child poverty.

She stre...

Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Zahra Hedges, chief executive of the youth empowerment charity Winning Scotland, and Helen Rafferty, senior programme manager at the education charity Shine.

Zahra explains how a theory of change has helped Winning Scotland to identify and prioritise its most fruitful activities and reassure its board and donors. She provides insight into how the charity has developed a more streamlined ...