Our weekly round-up of interesting and outlandish information, collected from the corners of the charity sector.

I’m an impact starter

Diary was interested to see that Ignite, the annual conference of think tank New Philanthropy Capital, is looking for a theme song. On Twitter it’s offering a free place if you come up with the best suggestion.

Diary, a sucker for free stuff, immediately got onto the case.

A quick observation on Twitter suggests that if your conference is called Ignite, then only songs about setting fire to things really get a look in. So obviously Diary’s first thought was Eternal Flame, by the Bangles, followed by We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel.

The first was swiftly rejected because it’s a rubbish tune, and the second because it didn’t quite fit with a conference called Ignite. It’s a cracking tune, though, so may we respectfully suggest you name the conference Didn’t Ignite instead, and we’ll be onto a winner.

If that doesn’t fit the bill, though, Diary has a strong second choice: Firestarter, by the Prodigy.

This has two advantages. First, NPC could rewrite the lyrics to talk about metrics and theories of change. Something like: “I’m an impact starter, outcomes instigator”. That sort of thing. It could be really catchy.

And second, they could give out free masks featuring some of the outré hairstyles of Prodigy frontman Keith Flint – pictured left – which would be just the thing to liven up the conference.

Some of the gifted artists here at Society Towers did have a go at imagining what NPC chief executive Dan Corry might look like wearing such a thing, before deciding that he had done nothing to deserve such a fate. These images have been consigned, unseen, to the annals of history, to be recycled if Corry ever does us a grave wrong.

It used to be different in the old days

So not long ago Nick Hurd, the last-but-one minister for civil society, spent a while defending his party’s attitude to charities campaigning (they shouldn’t do any, basically – see here for more details).

It was obvious, though, that Hurd thought his party’s attitude stank, and he was holding his nose and defending it because he’d been told to by his boss.

Hurd’s not the first of his line to take this view on charity campaigning, though. His old man, Douglas Hurd, also had a bit to say on it when he was in government, and it was recounted by the Labour MP for Birkenhead, Frank Field, in an address to the Charity Commission AGM earlier this week.

Field, it seems, was working at the Child Poverty Action Group when it won a grant to help it to campaign. He got a call from Hurd Senior.

“We are trying to deliver to CPAG our first cheque in this programme. But it appears you have no letter box, no bell that works, and a front-door that is permanently locked.”

Field explained there was a drug centre downstairs, which explained the lack of receptiveness. He popped downstairs, collected the cheque, and rang Hurd back.

Thanks for the grant, he said (and we paraphrase a little). We’re going to write a press release giving you a kicking now, just to prove we’re not in your pocket.

Fine, said Hurd, on you go. We’re having a hell of a time getting people to take the money, and if you take the cash and do that, others will be a bit happier to hold their hand out.

Field asked the AGM whether they thought the political culture of Hurd’s time had been “built on or largely destroyed”.

Hard to know why he bothered, though. I think we all know the answer to that.

We don’t really want you on our side, to be honest

It’s safe to say, Diary feels, that the government, and the British public, have a bit of a quixotic attitude to refugees. On the one hand, we want less foreign people coming to the country. On the other hand, we should be doing more to help Syrians who are drowning in the Mediterranean.

We don’t want more asylum seekers, but we do want to offer more people asylum.

Anyway, the latest victim of this confusion is Naccom, an umbrella group for charities supporting refugees, who the government added to a list of charities you could get in touch with if you wanted to help house Syrian refugees arriving in the UK.

Only one problem. They aren’t interested in helping Syrian refugees, and they’re a bit miffed with the whole business.

“The government didn’t even ask us,” Naccom coordinator Dave Smith told Third Force News. “They’re not funding us one penny, and they don’t want us to do what we are doing, in terms of supporting refused asylum seekers, because they want to send them back.”

Who are we? No idea

A survey by SEUK found that 20 per cent of social enterprises were community interest companies, which is good news for the legal model. Of those, three fifths were limited by guarantee, one fifth were limited by shares, and one fifth had no idea what their own legal form was.

Diary may be a stickler for that sort of thing, but surely knowing your own legal form is a useful thing to do. Isn’t this a vaguely worrying statistic?