We will be launching the Good Fundraising Code on 12th February 2009 through www.practicalfundraising.com

42 organisations have already signed up pre-launch and we have attracted a little attention in the trade press. The code is a direct response to members of the Practical Fundraising Association asking for a free code... although you do not have to be a member to join and sign up to these standards.

We have naturally attracted criticism from the paid-for code, but then that is not a great surprise... just sad that some people respond in this way rather than seeing this as a contribution to better standards and a request from charities who do not want to pay fees to be seen to be of high standards.

Thank you to all the charities signing up... we will continue to provide services asked for by charities as the need arises.

2009 will pose many challenges for all of us in fundraising and the voluntary sector. We will need to be more creative, more innovative and develop new ideas more quickly to survive. The training and direction we take will help you in this, I hope.

To give everyone the chance to attend courses closer to their organisations, we are moving a number of training locations in 2009.

We will be adding in the following venues -

Exeter in March
Leeds, Liverpool and Birmingham in April to June

Other venues will also be changing for 2009 - do let me have any suggestions you may have for new venues.

The initial tests on unrestricted income asks to trusts continue to grow and our new trusts application service will be the focus for the business over the summer as a result, before the new training season starts in the autumn. It is encouraging that many charitable trusts are now seeing the need in charities is for revenue and unrestricted income more than anything. These enlightened trusts are not in the majority of the larger funders, but are a growing group which will really help the sector, especially as the credit crunch is likely to affect many individual givers.

We have looked at a number of different advertising options from websites and opted for Oxado. The flexibility of banners is as good as Google and you can choose individual domain names you do not wish to be displayed so if you notice any that would conflict with your ethical policy, you can block them immeditately from being served on your websites. They also do not have a block on you serving their ads alongside others, so there is no restriction on your freedom to advertise other services or use other providers in the future. Also, you can earn 10% referral income for any other website that you persuade to sign up, which could be particularly valuable in the case of large corporate supporters... although individuals can also sign up too with Oxado. Visit www.oxado.com/?origin=pub183935 to sign up at any time.

As even getting supporters to put a stamp on a FREEPOST envelope AND crossing through the FREEPOST line will not ensure we are not still charged for the service, we have launched a Boycott Freepost campaign until Royal Mail find a simple way to resolve this issue with charities and other good causes.

Welcome to the new Company Solutions website. We hope you like the new format and style and some of the new services this brings... do feedback at any time and also let us know if there is anything not quite working right at launch. This revolutionary content management system enables us to edit multiple sites of different types from one simple affordable management system - and we can heartily recommend Centurion Computers if you need such a system yourself. Just visit www.centurioncomputers.co.uk if you need a quote at any time.