December 2009
December 2009
Director of IVAR - Ben Cairns
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the first issue of IVAR’s monthly newsletter – i-think.
The last year has been a very busy time for IVAR as we have expanded our research team and taken on a number of people to key roles within the organisation as well as some significant new research projects – one of which is featured below.
Another innovation has been the recent development of the IVAR website. We have moved on to a more dynamic and informative site that we hope you enjoy exploring. IVAR is committed to sharing its knowledge and experience and we believe that the new site will encourage you to read and make use of our research findings as well as add comments of your own and share your own ideas with us.
i-think is intended to signpost you to some key parts of the site such as publications and events. It also introduces bloghead, a regularly updated blog written by IVAR staff and associates that considers topical issues in a more creative way and allows readers to enter the debate online.
If you don’t want to receive any further issues of i-think you can easily unsubscribe. If you would like to send it on to colleagues then please do or ask them to sign up on the new site here.
Events
November 26th 2009
Partnership Improvement Programme Conference
The IDe&A hosted a diverse gathering of 70 in York last week at the second Partnership Improvement Programme (PIP) conference. Ben Cairns was among a number of speakers who shared their experiences of the PIP programme.
Read more
Latest publication
September 2009
Assuming the spirit of the whole: Small and large organisations engaged in merger.
There has been very little dedicated research on mergers that "span" organisational differences, in particular merger between large and small organisations. In order to contribute to this gap in the literature, this paper explores two research questions: "what challenges do organisations face when merger takes place between small and large organisation?" and "how can these challenges be addressed?"
Read more
Current research project
The Impact of Community Anchors
This new piece of research is a collaboration between IVAR, New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) and nine multi-purpose community organisations (also described here as ‘community anchors’). This exploratory research runs from Autumn 2009 to Autumn 2010.
Read more
Introducing bloghead
bloghead documents the ideas, concerns and pre-occupations of IVAR staff
The times they are 'a changing says bloghead - and Bob Dylan.
Read more
A word from our Chair - Julian Ashby
There are two main drivers behind IVAR. The first is a conviction that the voluntary sector has distinctive characteristics that deserve special attention. While government and others may wish to impose ‘lessons’ from the private or public sectors, we believe that the sector benefits most from research that recognises these key differences. The second driver is the view that action research is a methodology that is ideally suited to a sector that is constantly growing, changing and renewing itself. It secures the highest levels of engagement with practitioners, generates mutual learning and encourages the maximum ‘ownership’ and use of research findings.