Autumn 2010 Engage

The dark clouds that have hovered over Britain's voluntary sector are threatening to burst this month, as we find out where the Spending Review axe will fall. Many organisations – having squeezed the last drop out of their finances – will have to survive without sizeable chunks of the funding they have relied on in the past, and will struggle to survive, let alone innovate, in terms of the services they provide.

Against this background, e-commerce icon Martha Lane Fox tells us why she is asking the sector to help her to get the entire nation online by 2012, and says she is well aware of the funding challenges that will make it hard for us to be as involved as she would like.

Meanwhile, some organisations exacerbate their financial problems by putting in funding applications they are unsuited to win. We talk to funders about what they are looking for.

One way of keeping the wolves from the door is to form partnerships with private businesses. We look at how to go about doing this, while avoiding some of the pitfalls.

Whatever is revealed in the Spending Review, it is clear that the voluntary sector is going to have to be creative in securing the services on which our users rely. At Engage, we'll do our best to nurture the debates and share the ideas that will help innovation happen, so that the communities we serve are not left out in the rain.