South African charity to target expats in the UK with blog

Howard Lake | 17 October 2006 | News

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Small South African charity Thusanani has started publishing a blog to communicate and inform the world about the plight of HIV/Aids orphans in South Africa. One of its main objectives is to target the large South African community settled in the UK and recruit them as donors.

To date very few UK charities have embraced blogging as a way of establishing a dialogue with supporters and potential supporters, and the charity believes it is the first South African charity to do so.

The blog will encourage both readers and users of Thusanani to voice their opinions and to allow others to learn from the charity’s experiences. “Thusanani” is an African word that means “helping each other”.

Fiona, Thusanani’s South African-based volunteer blog writer, explains how the blog can make a difference: “I am not an occupational therapist but I am a good writer and keen to get their message across to others. So I felt that I could help Thusanani as a volunteer and raise its profile through blogging.”

Hayden Hamlet, trustee, said: “We are hoping that the large South African community in the UK will read the blog and give their support.”

Unlike the USA, many UK charities have not taken up the opportunity to blog and thereby communicate to their donors, supporters, volunteers and the wider audience. Blogging allows Thusanani to converse openly, which involves being prepared to handle criticism, answer questions, and receive positive feedback.

The world’s “Blogosphere” is now 60 times larger than it was 3 years ago, according to Technorati.com, and there are around 1.2 million legitimate postings a day. The blog-reading audience is about 20% of the size of the newspaper-reading population, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.