Digital round-up – May 2019

Highlights this month: mental health awareness, campaigns about talking, animals (dogs, cats, ravens) and lots of great digital charity reads.

Not sure where the summer has gone! Pop the kettle on, turn off the news and catch up with some of the things you might have missed in May.

How to use: Pick and choose links to read, or open in new tabs for later. Or bookmark this post. Even better, subscribe and get future round-ups direct to your inbox.

Content

This month, it was #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek so there was some great content around. For example, have a look at:

• conversation starters – 20 questions to use to open conversations with your child about mental health from YoungMinds (the website has more detail about starting the conversation)
• animation from Time to Change with over 2000 RTs and this text message one
• video about body image from The Children’s Society which had 29k views
• a simple reminder about sources of help from Combat Stress.

Also this month:

• Great video from the Campaign to End Loneliness – #LetsTalkMore!
• See also #AskUsAnything from Alzheimer’s Society.
• Talking to children about lymphoma – YouTube playlist of five videos from Lymphoma Action.
• Action Deafness produced these powerful posters showing how not to talk to deaf people for Deaf Awareness Week.
• Diabetes UK launched their #ItsMissing campaign about the lack of emotional support available for people with diabetes. These stories help to show the relentless pressure on people like Kaja with diabetes and mum Sue caring for her teenage son.
• A simple, positive, enriching tweet from Dogs Trust with 900 likes.
• What would your funeral song be? LOROS Hospice shared theirs for #DyingMattersWeek with this great video!
• There was some nice content for #WorldBeeDay.
• It was hashtag-tastic for #MuseumWeek – one for each day.
• Nice post from the Science Museum about expanding their collection of menstrual products – (NB snazzy way of displaying their blog tags too.)
• Game of ‘would you rather…?’ as part of Crisis’ Cover the Cost campaign.
• Lovely video of a community shop in Oxfordshire from Plunkett Foundation.
• Raven chicks at the Tower of London. Proud dad.
• Did you see The Cats Protection new campaign – #CatMenDo? Go to the website for more men and cats pictures plus Father’s Day card downloads.

Twitter takeover of the month: Ceri and Krissie’s Twitter takeover of the Scope account showing how Scope have developed their digital experiences to make them easy to use and accessible.

What are you doing for #SmallCharityWeek next week (17-22 June)? If you don’t work for a small charity, why not find a local one to support. Keep an eye out for the #BigSupportSmall campaign too.

Comms

• More than words – report exploring how voluntary sector organisations in the UK are developing, embedding and sharing their communications strategies – Ariadne Network. Here’s a short thread about the report from Neil Crowther.
• How to communicate: a tip from Sir Terry – Sarah Browning.
• Working with storytellers: ‘It’s never our story to tell, it’s theirs’ – Hayley Tomkinson, stories manager, Anthony Nolan for CharityComms.
• A guide to low-cost social media content creation – Seb Baird of Time to Change. He also wrote this for Media Trust – Four ways to boost your social media content.
• Nice an example of how to use a Moment as part of an awards evening, showcasing the winners and sharing a bit of the atmosphere from the event – The King’s Fund’s GSK Impact Awards. It was released next day giving all involved something to share. See more in my post How to use a Twitter Moment.
• FACE TIPS: Facebook have just posted a ‘how to’ guide to make videos that will get seen and it’s really handy – Dan Slee
• Increasing impact through cause-specific dates – Deborah Alsina CEO of Bowel Cancer UK shared five reasons to take full advantage of awareness periods.
• New global logo for Water Aid – more info from Water Aid Australia.
• Five essential steps for a low-cost, high-impact rebrand – CharityComms.
• What strategies do you use to share your impact report? Here’s a Mailchimp summary from the #IWill campaign, twitter thread showing some highlights and their news story.
• If you are a medical charity, how often do you tweet about symptoms to raise awareness? Here are some nice examples from Fight Bladder Cancer and Ovarian Cancer Action this month.
• 5 outlets for positive news – curated by UK Fundraising.
• Love this! Top 10 most irritating phrases as voted by comms people and curated by Dan Slee. How many do you recognise?

Don’t miss CharityComms’ Getting ahead in your comms career conference next week (20 June). Follow #CommsCareer if you are not there.

Digital – strategy, design, culture

NCVO have updated the Digital Maturity Matrix to include service design, data protection and security. Have you used this tool to assess the digital maturity of your organisation? In today’s Charity Digital Report, it was cited (question4)  by just 23% of respondents. Do take a look if you haven’t seen it already.

Once you have done that, read Digital transformation is a leadership problem about team culture and blockages by Mike Bracken. Here’s his definition as he says the term has got lost in all the noise: “digital transformation is the act of radically changing how your organisation works, so that it can survive and thrive in the internet era.”

• The Service Transformation team at Parkinson’s UK have started blogging. Here is the first post sharing their team principles – The Challenge Ahead.
• What is Service Design and what does it mean for charities? Kirsty Marrins talks with Giulia Merlo of CRUK in this Lightful article.
• Charities, young people and digital mental health services – new report from NPC looking at the capacity level in charities needed to develop these services and suggesting strategies how funders can support charities to do more in this area.
• Monthly accessibility tip: How to write more accessible social media posts – Australian Network on Disability.
• Accessibility update: sample accessibility statement, monitoring and enforcement – GDS blog post about the new regulations covering public sector websites (not charities) from September.
• Did you know that there is an accessibility checker in Word?
• Glasgow Women’s Library have a policy to not RT tweets that don’t use image descriptions. Does anyone else have similar accessibility rules about sharing content?
• Scope launched The Big Hack – a reporting tool where disabled people can share experiences with digital technology and help to make things better.
• Auto pop-up chat windows, a bit like Marmite – Lizzie Bruce
• About Culture 24’s Let’s get real 7 project: developing deeper human connection across digital channels.
• Research about the digital skills needed amongst museum staff and volunteers – One by One project phase 2 findings.
• Seven not-for-profit websites with great UX – eConsultancy.
• Making the case for investment — turning data and insight into a compelling strategy – Megan Griffith Gray’s latest post about the development of NCVO’s digital strategy.
• 146 responses to Matt Collins’ question, what is strategy?
• How to keep technostress at bay – Don’t end up as digital roadkill by Caroline Rook.

Fundraising

• The sustainability of large-scale challenge events – research and recommendations in this thread from Russell Benson.
• Who do you view as your competition? Might not just be your direct peers. Take a look at this list of binary decisions. Taken from How donors choose charities (2013) by Beth Breeze.
• The golden rule of fundraising – the single identifiable beneficiary – Craig Linton.
• Why fewer people are giving to charity and what we can do about it – Daniel Fluskey.
• Animal welfare charity doubles text giving total – Charity Digital News.
• 11 Facebook fundraising myths demystified – Nick Burne.
• Why it’s not a good idea to message your Facebook fundraisers on Messenger – Kirsty Marrins on givepanel.
• Motor Neurone Disease Association launches VR tour in legacy drive – UK Fundraising.
• Legacy stewardship gaining more prominence, Legacy Foresight research reveals – UK Fundraising
• Samaritans launched Samarathon fundraiser.
• Macmillan Cancer launched Milestone Moments.
• As a funder, what three questions would you ask to make a decision? Interesting discussion started by Tom Steinberg.
• Useful thread from James Heywood about online donations.
• Nice reminder why it counts to include personality in your asks – email from Link Dementia.

Don’t miss the free online conference from Resource Alliance – 12 & 13 June: Fundraising Online including an international line-up of speakers.

People and organisations

• Future of advice: our strategic framework 2019-22 – Citizens Advice share their three-year plan. Here’s a tweet sharing the five elements of the vision too.
• The Co-op Foundation’s Impact Report 2018 has a nice section about their values in action.
• CoppaFeel’s Impact Report gif tweet (and link to more information).
• ACEVO’s leadership competencies – six skillsets every active leader needs.
• Making diversity count in the charity sector – ACEVO.
• Who is sitting round your board table? – Janet Thorne for Association of Chairs.
• Andy Haldane: ‘We have allowed the voluntary sector to wither’ – Civil society will be crucial in the technological age, says the Bank of England’s chief economist. We must rebuild it reports Patrick Butler in The Guardian.
• Managing staff on social media – good read from Zoe Amar.

And finally….

• How Orkney Library became involved with getting copies of The Lost Words to all schools in Orkney.
• Lessons from a secret library worker about digital literacy and the importance of libraries.
• TfL are rolling out wifi tracking across the network – geeky thread about data and surveillance.
• Very cool stuff in this year’s RSA Student Design Awards.
• Fab thread about JoAnn Morgan, the only woman inside the control room at the launch of Apollo 11.
• Knitted representation of gender mix of speakers at a council meeting.
• Sir David Attenborough was 93 – this 93 second video shares many joyful clips.
• Video of the pendulum motion. [AD: brightly-coloured balls hanging on strings all the same length are released at once in a line. Initially they swinging backwards and forwards, then move in changing sequences including at one point like a caterpillar].

Your recommendations

What did you read, watch or launch this month? Please add your links in the comments.

Can I help you?

Get in touch if I can help you with content planning, training or strategy. I work with charities of all shapes and sizes. I can help give your comms or digital processes a healthcheck and ideas injection.

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Did you miss April’s round-up? Catch up with more good reads!