kevin baughen's blog

Like many people I was saddened at the news this week that Bmycharity is withdrawing from the online giving market. Any loss of options for raising money cost effectively and providing greater 'consumer' choice gives us as a sector pause for thought.

I've been completing application forms for volunteer opportunities and aside from the fact that they are very long, it struck me that they are almost indistinguishable from job application forms.  It appears charities are becomming fussier about who they will accept as volunteers; and I think this is a good thing.  But that's for another blog.  What I liked were the thought-provoking questions around successful teams and team dynamcis.

I will never stop believing, or probably saying that, whichever audience(s) we serve as organisations, their needs should underpin our thinking and actions.  That's not to say that we shouldn't seek to achieve our own objectives - of course we should.  The customer / supporter / volunteer is not always right and we have our own targets to meet.

I’ve been working on a few events with a well-known charity recently and it made me realise what a specific science event planning and hosting is.  Having organised event for years, I almost take for granted the various stages which are critical to ensuring success but meeting with less experienced folks was a wake up call. We often invest significant sums of money and time in events programmes so getting it right is crucial.

Following discussions with a charity team last week, I wanted to suggest a few tips on how to integrate e-marketing and social media.  Then, I found an article by the very prolific team at Marketing Sherpa which talked about how a business in the USA had successfully integrated their email and social media activity.  On the grounds of not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I think there is a lot of learning here for NFP organisations as well as businesses.

In his latest blog, fundraising guru Ken Burnett has created his fundraising dream team for UK charities.  Whilst he has named a few of the great and good names we may already know, of most interest to me was the actually roles he describes which constitute a great team.

It's an old and often-debated question and the answer varies depending on what kind of organisation is doing the asking and the target audience's wants and needs.

For a while, I have been talking about how brand credibility not only gives charities the right to ask for donations but also how it can protect them when things go awry.  This month I personally experienced a great example of the latter.

According to Wikipedia, social capital is:

"a sociological concept used in business, economics, organizational behaviour, political science, public health and the social sciences in general to refer to connections within and between social networks.... variety of definitions share the core idea "that social networks have value. Just as a screwdriver (physical capital) or a college education (human capital)
can increase productivity (both individual and collective), so do
social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups"

For all those amongst you who can’t quite see how social media can help short-term fundraising efforts, I present the following tale.

A recent issue of PR week from across the Atlantic (thanks to Andrew Ballenthin for the tip) covered the story of a record-breaking fundraising campaign which used twitter and other social media as it’s starting focus.