Charities Evaluation Services' new report calls for a greater match between third sector accountability requirements and the information needs for developing learning in the sector.

Charities Evaluation Services has published a new report, Accountability and Learning: Developing Monitoring and Evaluation in the Third Sector, the first comprehensive research on monitoring and evaluation in the third sector since Mog Ball's overview 20 years ago highlighted the lack of monitoring and evaluation in the voluntary sector. This is the largest study yet undertaken, involving over 700 third sector organisations and over 100 funders and commissioners.

Helping out: a national survey of volunteering and charitable giving is a new household survey of adults (aged 16 and over) in England which asks for details of people's views and experiences of participation in voluntary activity and charitable giving.

The survey explores how and why people engage in formal volunteering, and what they think of their experiences; and how and why they give money to charity. It also looks at what stops people from giving to charity or volunteering. It builds on the Institute for Volunteering Research's National Survey of Volunteering, and provides insights into changes over the last ten years.

The survey interviewed over 2,700 adults (aged 16 and over) in households in England, who had previously been interviewed for the Citizenship Survey, including 549 people from ethnic minority groups.

The results of the survey provide a wealth of data that will enable the Office of the Third Sector, practitioners and funders to target and manage programmes in support of volunteering and giving, and to help overcome the barriers people face in taking part, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Civil society organisations hold the only remaining key to averting catastrophic climate change and must seize the opportunity now to mobilise their supporters and beneficiaries, according to an influential new report from Green Alliance. Environmental issues are the more and more connected to human rights topics and they mix up with other volunteering fields.