Here is January’s Sector News Digest. The new year is often seen as a time to reflect on accomplishments, experiences and learning individually and collectively. As we look to the year ahead and how we lead our organisations and deliver our services, many of us are thinking about questions such as how to meet the challenge of becoming greener, or how we can use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help us. Hopefully some of this month’s top picks will guide you in thinking about these.

This Month’s Top Picks

You can share your feedback on the Fundraising Regulator’s plans to increase the yearly levy for charities by up to 50% here. You have until Friday 9th February to feed back. New levy rates will be confirmed in April 2024 and come into effect in September 2024.

From artificial intelligence to climate-conscious websites, here is an article by Third Sector on the key things for charity leaders to be aware of in the digital landscape. With an article from Charity Digital providing an overview of the fundraising trends set to define the charity sector in 2024 and the fundraising challenges and obstacles that charities might face.

Climate Change is an urgent and serious threat to our communities. Charities and funders have a critical role to play in supporting and empowering different social groups to be part of the solutions. New Philanthropy Capital as part of its Everyone’s Environment Programme have published a series of briefings. These focus on how the climate and nature crises and related policy will impact young people, ethnic minority communities, disabled and older people, those living with health conditions and low-income households. Find out more here.

From 6th April 2024, employees will have a statutory right to a week’s unpaid leave to care for a dependent. The Carer’s Leave Regulations 2024 have been published in draft form and provide the details on how this new right will work in practice. Employers should therefore start to consider taking actions. The following things would be useful:

• updating or creating policies to inform employees of the new right.
• letting staff know about the logistics of requesting and taking it.
• Setting a system of record-keeping to track the number of days taken.

Find out more here or on Carers UK website.

In case you missed it, in December 2023 New Philanthropy Capital published ‘Centring Lived Experience: A strategic approach for leaders’. This contains step-by-step guidance on how to effectively incorporate insight from lived experience throughout your organisation. You can watch a recording of their launch event here.

Keeping up to date…

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