The Howard League say:

These annual awards are a wonderful opportunity to highlight all the outstanding work going on around the country to make our neighbourhoods safer. Community sentences are proven to reduce reoffending and allow people to make amends for what they have done and live law-abiding lives.
The work of the winning schemes will be publicised locally and nationally. The award winners will be invited to a conference and celebratory event to be held on 20 July 2010 at Kings Fund, London. Max Clifford will be our keynote speaker who will address the conference on ‘how to promote community sentencing’.

Do you know of any community programmes, which you think should be considered? Nominations should be received by 4 May 2010. Further information on the awards can be found by visiting http://www.howardleague.org/community-programmes-award.

The conference programme says:

The session will look at the development of the Corston Independent Funders Coalition (CIFC), a unique partnership between 19 independent grant-makers and philanthropists who have come together to support the implementation of the Corston Report: the Government review into vulnerable women in the Criminal Justice System.

Funders, such as grantmaking trusts, foundations and individual philanthropists, know that this collaboration is unusual, to say the least. Although many funders share information and may even co-fund individual projects, there has never been a coalition focussed on achieving sustainable policy change before. At least, not in the UK – this way of working has been tried in the United States, with some success. The Philanthropic Initiative have written an excellent paper on some of the models tried out by funders in US, Donor Collaboration: Power in Numbers, which is available here (registration required). Definitely worth a read – and if that whets your appetite to find out more, do join us at the workshop at the ACF conference!