Be a good Secret Santa

It’s that time of year again. Rather than spending money on plastic tat / novelty socks, why not use some or all of your Secret Santa in a more impactful way? Here are a few examples of charities running Secret Santa sized fundraising campaigns and other ideas for doing good within your budget.

Christmas campaigns

• Give the gift of reading – make a donation to Beanstalk + give a book you already love to your Secret Santa.
• Surprise a child with a book through Book Trust’s annual campaign.
• Be a Secret Santa with Action for Children. Help light up the map. Don’t festivalFail.
• Order a letter from Santa via NSPCC.

Secret Santa gifts

• The Charity Retail Association is encouraging everyone to be a #GoodCauseSantaClaus and buy gifts from charity shops.
• Oxfam’s online charity shop is an amazing treasure trove of unique items if you are looking for a gift. From used football stamps to vintage knitting patterns, a jigsaw of the Queen Mother, and GoggleBox board game, there’s something for everyone. You can search by price to fit your budget.
• Many charities run virtual gift packages. For example Oxfam Unwrapped gifts start at £5.
• Social Enterprise UK say #BuySocial and get #PresentsWithPurpose. Check out their Christmas catalogue.
• Use the Giving Machine’s Secret Santa generator to pick names and buy gifts.

Christmas cheer

Why not pool your funds and do something bigger as a team?

• Reserve someone a place at Crisis at Christmas for £28.18.
• Is there a Christmas Dinner for care leavers or older people near you? Could you buy something from their wishlist? Here’s Hackney’s Christmas Dinner (part of a programme of 17 Christmas Dinners for care leavers across the country, donate to their crowdfunder) and John Popham’s Connected Christmas campaign for older people.
• Set a place for a child at Mary’s Meals virtual Christmas dinner table for £13.90.
• Buy a safety kit or actual bike for a refugee via The Bike Project.
• Twin your office loo via Toilet Twinning for £60. “Santa can’t give toilets but you can.”
• Is there a local toy collection you could contribute to?

There are countless fundraising appeals, Christmas jumper days and local food bank collections you could instead donate to in the name of your Secret Santa.

Leave Relf on the shelf and give a gift that matters say International Rescue Committee in this fab video.

What are you doing?

• Do you do Secret Santa in your team? Any tips?
• Is your charity doing an interesting appeal?

Please share in the comments.

See also: charity digital advent calendars – tips and examples from 2017

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Digital round-up – October 2018

Highlights this month: big hashtags, user-generated content, AI, voice tech, digital skills and more….

The nights are setting in and seasonal content is upon us. October is a very busy month of awareness days. There was lots of great content launched. Pop the kettle on and catch up.

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

10 October was #WorldMentalHealthDay, #WorldHomelessnessDay and #HousingDay. I have never seen my list of trending topics look like this for an hour, let alone all day. The trending hashtags and topics were consistently related to these issues. Nothing else got a look-in all day.

There was some amazing content including:

• A powerful poem from Crisis for #WorldHomelessnessDay.
• 22 local charities donated their HOMEpages to homelessness charity St Basils in the West Midlands to raise awareness.
• Did you see Time to Change’s new #AskTwice video? And their Moment of user-generated content – these are the reasons people say ‘I am fine’ when they’re not.
• Love these prompt cards from Young Minds.
• Mental Health UK produced beautiful images to illustrate people’s stories in their Let’s Talk series. See Nathaniel’s story.

Also this month:

• Plan International UK launched a video about sexual harassment. It has had 94k likes and over 7 million views.
• Check your breasts video from Breast Cancer Now.
• Love this promo for the Charity Comms podcast.
• Parkinson’s UK launched their list of approved apps and devices for people with Parkinson’s. A charity first.
• It was RNIB’s 150th birthday.
• This is how to promote a new area in a museum. Top video from Eureka! Museum.
• SCVO’s what is modern charity video.
• The warning signs of genocide, powerful video from RightsInfo.
• Choose your own next line for #NationalPoetyDay. Great use of a thread / polls by the Museum of English Rural Life.
• Charities don’t usually tweet on a Sunday night. I liked this moment to paws from RSPCA.
• There was some great halloween content around.

Twitter takeover of the month: CoppaFeel’s Kris Hallenger / @nhs. Kris who has been living with stage 4 breast cancer since 2009, talked about treatments and good health.

Comms

• This excerpt from Clic Sargent’s impact report was widely shared and celebrated as a great example of transparency. Could your charity do something similar to show what didn’t work?
• What if we scrapped the annual report and started again? asks David Ainsworth in Civil Society.
• Why do we ignore digital impact? Matt Haworth asks why the impact of digital services isn’t included in impact reports.
• Go on, go on, go on, go on! What charities can learn from Father Ted’s Mrs Doyle by Anna Pietrowski for Charity Comms. (best URL I have seen for a while!)
• Thread about the future of advertising by Nik Sharma.
• FRIENDS IMPACT: A tongue-in-cheek shoplifting appeal led to 50 per cent of Blackpool people thinking better of their police by Dan Slee.
• Does your search strategy match how people expect content? Think about the Netflix effect say The Royal Academy.
• If you missed Being the Story, here’s my blog post about it and links to others’.
• Will you join in with #YouMadeItHappen on 19 November? Find out about this new day, led by NCVO. >> I’ve written a blog post with some ideas about how to get involved with #YouMadeItHappen.

Digital – strategy, design, culture

• Internet-era ways of working by Tom Loosemore of Public Digital.
• 6 tough questions third sector organisations need to explore in a digital age from SCVO’s digital team. Linking to their ‘what next’ report.
• Digital is growing up, is your charity maturing with it? (Spoiler: probably not!) by Anya Pearson, Contentious.
• Digital strategy: The four fights you have to win from McKinsey.
• 15 principles of good service design by GDS for Digital Leaders.
• Why Amazon, Alexa and #TechforGood can’t be in the same sentence by James Mullarkey.
• Five ways to engage with responsible technology by Sam Brown.
• How Cancer Research UK is exploring AI and voice tech in Charity Digital News.
• Welcome to the Golden Age of Data – examples from a brave new world of personalisation – NSPCC’s Digital Dunk.
• Dealing with digital changes – useful tips about keeping up with platform changes and changing tack if needed, by Montfort.
• Blockchain: the next radical change for charities by Stromi for Digital Dunk.
• How to create a great charity website experience, case study from MS Society on Charity Digital News.
• Digital user tests which are easy, fast and affordable – YoYo Design for CharityComms.
• 4 user research guides from co-op digital.
• Monthly accessibility tip: RNIB shared 10 #DigitalAccessibilityTips including this one about colour contrast.
• And if you have never heard a screen reader, here’s an example of how they read image descriptions from Dr Amit Patel. See more about access tech in this Moment of his Twitter takeover for Scope.

Fundraising

• Did you join in with the first ever Gift Aid Awareness Day?
• Digital fundraising trends for small charities not to miss by Charity Digital News.
• Putting fun into contactless donating at two historic sites in Scotland. Tap the past to preserve the future.
• Hospice fundraisers tend to go the extra mile, like 10-year old Harriet who played her cello at the top of a mountain for Compton Care.
• Are you ready for #GivingTuesday on 27 November? Here’s a guide to using the day to say thank you.

People

• How we teach digital skills at PwC for Harvard Business Review.
• 3 steps to growing a digital culture – Clive Gardiner of NSPCC shares what they are doing.
• Three amazing Ted Talks for charities by Kirsty Marrins for Lightful.
• Critical lessons for charity trustees by Beth Clarke for CAF.
• The Association of Chairs asked Chairs to share their top tips to mark their 5th birthday. Here are the best ones in a Moment: tips for effective chairing.

And finally….

• Feeling helpless about the state of the world? Here’s a thread about the little things we can all do to make things better.
• A thread of perceptual illusions to mess with your brain.
• Have you ever looked for treasure in the Thames (or any other urban river)?
• An otter eating – happy noises!

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.

——

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

Digital round-up – September 18

Highlights this month: AI, ethics, the Human search engine, and hope.

September is a busy month of awareness days and a good time to launch new brands or websites before the noise of seasonal fundraising. Pop the kettle on and catch up with some content and good reads you might have missed.

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

• Love this video of people with dementia using VR headsets by The Wayback.
• Video from Rights Info – do we have a human right to sex?
• Nice behind the scenes / call to action film about Oxfam’s shops.
• 17k likes for this picture of a Barnardo’s shop with the writing round the wrong way, yet only a handful for Barnardo’s Scotland’s response.
• Did you see Mind’s new Mental Health at Work website?
• #WorldAlzheimersDay Moment of tweets from large and small charities supporting people with dementia.
• Lovely copywriting from Toilet Twinning in this tweet.
• Great content from The Blurt Foundation – We’ve Answered 10 Popular Google Searches: Why Does Depression…?
• And from Gingerbread –14 things not to say to a single parent (and seven things you should.
• Time to Change made a Moment of What people want you to know about suicide for #WorldSuicidePreventionDay. Here the tweet where they asked for people’s views.
• Lots of charities joined in with #InternationalSpeakLikeAPrirateDay such as this cheeky tweet from CoppaFeel.
• There was some great content around for Remember a Charity’s Human search engine. For example, take a look at material from Dogs Trust, Scope, and Shelter.

There were new websites from Sue Ryder, and NPC this month. Plus new brands from National Autistic Society and RNIB who created a short video about the change..

Comms

• How content is your content? – nifty quiz from Contentious.
• A reminder about the difference between copywriting and content design by Sarah Richards.
• 4 charity campaigns with stories at their heart – Helena Hastings for Lightful ahead of Being the Story on 19 October. [Don’t miss Being the Story. There might still be a few spaces left. Buy your tickets today.]
• Truly ethical images must tell a complete story by Water Aid.
• 5 doodles that help to make sense of UK poverty – JRF blog.
• 5 secrets to Instagram success by Dawn at Morello Marketing.
• 7 tips for social media advertising success by NSPCC’s Digital Dunk.
• Facebook advertising for charities: A guide to designing your first ad by Lightful.
• Live tweeting at events: seven tips for avoiding the pitfalls – Sarah Myers for Charity Comms. I’d add an extra tip about using threads to tweet from particular sessions. This makes it so much easier to follow what is being said.

Digital

• Five things an NGO learned about Artificial Intelligence – excellent blog post from Friends of the Earth’s Innovation Team. See also Time to trade Ai power for responsibility on Digital Agenda.
• Screw tech ethics says Matt Howarth also for Digital Agenda.
• Great blog post from the outgoing #SocialCEOs overall winner, Matthew Hodson about using social media for social good.
• Designing our design principles – more useful stuff in the CRUK blog.
• NHS’s manual for designing and building digital services.
• A guide to procuring service design by Sarah Drummond.
• Digital = Potential Part 1: The power of an app to help people in crisis by Gillian Murray, CEO of Pilotlight.
• 6 key new trends for charities on digital – CharityDigitalNews coverage of the Salesforce report.
• Why our communications team is going Agile – Citizens Advice blog.
• Data doesn’t have to be scary: why insights should inform your digital projects by Dee Russell for Charity Comms. Includes Google Analytics video tutorials.
• ‘Our sector needs to respond with urgency. People are seeking support more and more expect a digital ‘way’ of solving their problem.’ Important post from Dan Sutch about bringing digital into service delivery.

Fundraising

• Ethical fundraising: 7 critical questions for the board and Chair by John Williams.
• Is compassion fatigue inevitable in an age of 24-hour news? Text from a Guardian podcast.
• This thread by Jon Arnold about fundraising applications was widely shared.
• PayPal / NSPCC video about their donation journey. Accompanying article from PayPal talks more about the redesign project.
• Brathay launched their 3.7 programme with the funds raised following Matt Campbell’s tragic death during the London Marathon in April this year.

In case you missed it, I wrote this about donor experience / in-memory fundraising.

People

Hope… and where to find it – read this moving post by Kate Carroll to help remind yourself why your comms / information / fundraising work, really matters.

• Simple ways to keep your digital team adaptable and creative – love this from Seb Baird of Time to Change for CharityComms.
• 5 ways charity leaders can make better decisions – Zoe Amar.
• The Post Office: How can a 375-year-old brand attract the best in digital talent? – eConsultancy.
• How to spread digital knowledge to other teams – Platypus Digital.
• The ageing population: what impact will a 100-year life have on charities – predictions from Joe Saxton.

And finally….

• Different messages on boy’s and girl’s t-shirts in Primark. FFS.
• How The Weather Channel Made That Insane Storm Surge Animation in Wired.
• Top charity shop idea of the month – Jeff Goldblum in every photo frame. This had 144k likes!

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, skills review and ideas injection.

——

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

Digital round-up – August

Highlights this month: ethical marketing, voice search, digital evolution and shopping with a giant fundraising cheque.

It’s back to school / work time. If you were off in August or just head-down because everyone else was, here’s some great content and good reads to catch up with.

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

• Scope launched their rebrand, disability gamechangers campaign and have been running a series of takeovers on Twitter. Here is a Moment from Sam’s takeover day.
• Nice promo for Woodland Trust’s family membership package.
• Simple, strong 11 second video from social enterprise HeyGirls challenging period poverty. No link for the call to action though. See also BloodyBigBrunch who invited followers to illustrate their periods in gif form.
• You have 5 ambulances and 9 patients – what would you do? Great content from North West Ambulance Service.
• Lovely video storytelling from the Mayhew. Here’s Nayan’s story for #InternationalFriendshipDay.
• Bake Off is back. Selection of the best charity fundraising bakes and cake content in this GBBO Moment.
• Museum Meme day included lots of absolute units and curator frustrations.

Here are some useful reminders about how images can reinforce negative stereotypes. I spotted a call for #NoMoreWrinklyHands and an article shared by Time to Change about the rise of the head clutcher image to illustrate mental health stories. >> Review and improve your use of images.

Comms

• Why the battle for our attention matters for charities by CAF’s Rhodri Davies for Charity Digital News.
• More on ethical marketing in this opinion piece from Sam of NSPCC – Smarter targeting or smarter content? Is a new standard of expected ethics forcing us to change how we think about digital marketing?
• You had me at hello – the importance of a welcome journey and how to get it right via email. Top tips from CharityComms.
• How to think strategically about email personalisation – eConsultancy.
• More email in this from Charity Digital News – Five great automated email marketing programmes for charities.
• Get your split testing right. There is Nothing Magical About 95% Statistical Significance – CXL.
• Our writing guidelines (they’re for everyone, not just for writers) – the Co-op’s approach to writing.
• Downloadable comms planning guide – in the style of snakes and ladders.
• Five Steps To Create A Social Media Content Plan by Teresa Litsa of Lightful.

Digital

• How does your organisation measure up? The latest global charity technology trends: results from the latest Global NGO Technology Report – Civil Society.
• The emoji report: analysis of every emoji published over 2 years on Twitter – Brandwatch.
• What will social look like in the next 10 years? We Are Social.
• Why we need to stop repeating the “50% by 2020” voice search prediction – eConsultancy.
• And what Government are doing about voice search – GDS.
• Facebook subscriptions and content monetisation by Dan Papworth-Smyth.
• The Anatomy of an Optimized Web Page [Infographic]– Social Media Today.
• Your monthly accessibility reminder: image descriptions on Twitter.
• Four Google Adwords scripts that retailers can use to supercharge sales – eConsultancy.
• The New York Public Library release classic books on Instagram Stories – this thread by Jack Appleby shows it in action.
• Promos’ survey found that 44% of consumers watch at least five videos online per day. Read their research into online video habits 2018 based on a survey of 500 people.
• 4 of the top innovative charity digital products – JustGiving – featuring the BECCA app from Breast Cancer Care, Austica’s app, RSPCA’s pet search function and Wateraid’s online donation platform.
• 5 things learnt from the Childline #UnderstandMe campaign by Marnie on NSPCC’s Digital Dunk.
• I am seeing many more organisations recruiting for data analysts in their digital teams. This is interesting from GDS showing how data capture, use and application moves on in an organisation. They are bringing the disciplines of user research and analytics together to reduce the artificial divide created by data created in different ways and by different teams.
• This is also about digital evolution. Cancer Research UK share the things they have learnt through their digital adaption journey. It’s time to throw out your ‘digital’ strategy.

Fundraising

• These charity experiments successfully nudge people to give more – interesting results of research encouraging people to see the broader picture of their giving.
• How to improve your online donation journey by Tim Dixon at nomensa.
• Losing the donor relationship – as we lose access to data about donors, Beate Sorum asks whether this will be fundraising’s digital disruption.
• Truth or dare: why are some causes harder to fundraise for than others? Examples and tips by Olivia Fuller for UK Fundraising.
• YouTube Giving

Alzheimer’s Research UK show some love for a giant fundraising cheque. Here we see it in action at the station, in a shop and on a train. A cheque picture with personality! >> Here are more examples of alternatives to cheque line-up pictures in my post Just say no to giant cheques.

People

• Getting comfortable talking about diversity and inclusion in the third sector. Take part in healthy conversations argues Sushi Juggapah of CharityComms.
• 55 steps to workplace happiness by Henry Stewart.
• The Independent’s Happy List 2018.
• Free digital skills courses from Accenture.

Have you booked your ticket for Being the Story in October? Here’s more about last year’s inspirational event. Being the Story 2017 – carthartic and powerful storytelling. Don’t miss 2018.

And finally….

Blue Peter explain the world wide web – from the BBC archive,1995.

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 digital copywriting, 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.

——

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

Digital round-up – June

June passed by in a blur of great weather, football fever and lots of great charity reads. Get an ice cream / cool drink and settle back to hook some juicy digital catches!

Warning – this is another bumper crop. 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. Enjoy!

Content

• Love this short animation from Dogs Trust sharing the headlines from their impact report.
• Fab World Cup content from RightsInfo – comparing human rights data for the teams playing each other. See here Morocco vs Iran.
• There was some powerful content shared for #RefugeeDay. Including this moving video from Children’s Society. And this list of 34,000 refugees who have died trying to get to Europe.
• Have you taken Time to Change’s mental health quiz?
• Public information film from Age UK about being scam aware.
• Engaging animation produced by CBBC’s Newsround with Centrepoint about homelessness in young people.
• Crisis launched their EverybodyIn campaign with a video and interactive comments map.

• Sometimes less is more. Like this 10-word Amnesty International UK tweet in response to Donald Trump. And this response to the announcement about leaving the Human Rights Council.
• This response to other US policies was very moving too. People shared images of their five year old selves imagining what it would have felt like to be separated from their families. Heartbreaking.
• The CoastGuard Team use minifigs to give important safety information. Here’s a 5s video which has had 57.3k views giving a warning about staying safe during Storm Hector.

• So much cuteness from charities to mark Bring Your Dog To Work Day!

Digital

• Find out why Kate Collins, CEO of Teenage Cancer Trust says that Twitter is an essential leadership tool. This is a great article to show to your non-digital CEO.
• And this video from Cambridge CVS on Why should your organisation embrace digital?
• Six small charities doing great thing with digital by Third Edge.
• How can employee advocacy boost brand marketing? eConsultancy. Does your charity encourage staff to be ambassadors on social media?
• The short guide for non-techies running digital projects in charities by John Dunford in Third Sector.
• User experience for small charities – video produced by CRUK with Small Charities Coalition for Small Charity Week.
• 23 quantitative and qualitative user research methods: a comprehensive guide – UserZoom.
• Future trends of the almighty email by Rebecca Brewer on JustGiving. Top tips and examples.
• Webcredible’s guide to designing for Voice and why it is important. And why the future of donations is Voice on UKFundraising. But hey Alexa, what are you doing to my kid’s brain?
• Is your charity ready for the age of automation? Beth Kanter for Lightful.
• Top tips from social media managers on Lightful.
• Have you ever used the Content Scoring Matrix Template from Edo?
• To take the next step on digital, we dropped the word ‘digital’ – how Citizens Advice is going ‘beyond digital’.
• Your monthly reminder about why you should NOT use ‘click here’ / ‘read more’ / ‘more info‘ in your links.
• Find a small charity in your area with Olly Benson’s Small Charity Roulette tool. Genius!

In case you missed it Brathay Trust: a lesson in crisis comms.

Teams and ways of working

• Be a better cross functional team member, with these 5 ways to build your confidence by James Gadsby Peet.
• How to build your digital skills – lots of tips from Louise of NSPCC in the Digital Dunk.
• 5 tips for remote working by Leanne Griffin for the CRUK tech blog. This is a brilliant read!
• 10 things I’ve learnt about being freelance in 4 and a half years – great tips shared for National Freelancers Day by Angelica Malin.
• Looking after social can be a tough job. So should you ask your social media manager if they are ok? by Thea Neal.
• Do you know about the comms2point0 comms job description model. Really useful if you are thinking about the skills you are looking for in a new member of staff.

Mind your language

Suicide has been in the news a lot recently. Here are some guides to writing about it responsibly.

• This quick read guide is based on guidelines produced by Samaritans and Mind.
• Samaritan’s guidelines for talking about suicide.
• This opinion piece in The Pool argued that the reporting following Kate Spade’s death was a masterclass in how not to report suicide.
• Samaritan’s guide to helping someone who is feeling suicidal.

Events

• Catch up with the slides from Charity Comms’ Psychology of Communications conference. See also this post from Kate Brennan-Rhodes ahead of the event – To change behaviour, you need to look beyond the obvious.
• YoYoPresents was an event about digital transformation. Here’s a thread shared by Kirsty Marrins covering the presentation given by Woodland Trust. And a Wakelet (Storify replacement) by Graham Manuel-Jones.
• 5 take aways from the PR Week Crisis Conference.

Fundraising

• Are charity subscription boxes the new trend in regular giving? Kirsty Marrins looks at products offered by Scope, Mind and the Blurt Foundation.
• 4 ways to use digital to retain donors – Matt Collins for JustGiving.
• Plan International UK pilots project to transform child sponsorship communications on UKFundraising.
• Did your charity run any World Cup fundraising? Here is a selection in my World Cup Moment. And others in a UKFundraising round-up.
• How JustGiving crowdfunding went from an idea to £100m in five years by Jonathan Waddinton.

More

• What can we learn about micro acts of aggression? This article on The Conversation is worth reading. Discrimination against fat people is so endemic, most of us don’t even realise it is happening.
• Long thread about the many ways those ads follow you round the internet.
• nfpSynergy report on focus groups quotes about annual reports and accounts. Top tip: include a summary page.

And finally….

• The search is over for the best / worst office stock photo! While you are looking for your stock pictures, keep an eye out for the ‘shocked girl’!
• Scary / amazing data visualisations – all the flights on one day.
• A beatboxing Starling courtesy of BBC’s SpringWatch.
• A skateboarding bird!
• I love this thread about being a good listener by @sacraparental.
• The question you have always wanted answering – what would my favourite horror films look like with Paddington in them?
• Love this film of clips about computers from the BBC archive.

 

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 digital copywriting, 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.

——

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

 

 

 

Join these digital leaders

Digital teams going the extra mile to share their knowledge.

I love our sector. We do so well to connect and learn from each other. From attending meet-ups, mentoring and shadowing, or learning from hashtags or other people’s top takeaways from events, there are lots of free ways we can share and learn from each other.

Must reads

One of my go-to sources of knowledge and inspiration are the hubs of big charity digital teams. These include:

• Citizens Advice digital team blog
• CRUK’s technology team’s blog
• Macmillan’s digital team on Twitter at @Mac_digital
• NSPCC’s newly launched blog and @thedigitaldunk on Twitter.

I regularly include their posts and links in my monthly round-ups as they are so useful. As well as an excuse to peep in at the window of these big charities, the shared thinking and best practice is good food for thought for us all. Posts can prompt discussion, collaboration and new ideas.

There are quite a lot of councils and other public sector blogs from digital teams around too. For example:

• the GDS blog
• HackIT – Hackney Council’s ICT team
• DigitalFirst from Brighton and Hove City Council
• Digital Media team at the V&A Museum
• Co-op’s digital blog and @coopdigital on Twitter.

Benefits to the team

Although producing the posts and curating the accounts can be time-consuming, the task brings other benefits.

• Team building – done collaboratively, creating posts about projects can help the team to reflect and review the work they are doing. In busy teams, it is easy to move on to the next task, project, crisis with no time to review or think about how to share successes, challenges or failure with others. Creating a culture of review and sharing can help to give space for reflection and improvement.
• Knowledge sharing and skills development – if members of the team read each other’s posts, it can help them to learn from each other and appreciate stresses and demands. This can drive better future projects.
• Internal comms – content can help non-digital internal colleagues to understand the processes and thinking behind digital projects. If writing for a non-digital audience, it can be good practice for team members to be more careful about the terminology used in their posts, cutting out the jargon too. Posts can be repurposed for internal channels.
• Profile raising – well-shared posts can help to raise the profile of the digital teams, helping with future recruitment. Who wouldn’t want to work in a team doing cutting-edge work?
• Creativity – a blog gives the freedom to be creative, finding different ways to share knowledge. It feels nice to do the thinking around a topic, write it up (or draw pictures or make a video) and share it. A blog can be colourful and fun showing the personality of the writer and team. And no-one gets bored of seeing photos of post-its (do they?).

So do follow / subscribe to these accounts.

Better still, start your own team’s blog to share your processes, successes and failures. We can all learn from them.

Your top tips

Are there other blogs or Twitter feeds run by digital teams you’d recommend? Have you contributed to your team blog? Any top tips for making it work? Do you have a content calendar or a blog owner who manages / edits it?

Please share in the comments.

 

<Headline image drawn by my son, found on my desk recently!>

Can I help you?

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

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Digital round-up – March

With more wintery weather heading our way, poke your head out from under the duvet for some of the highlights from March 2018. It has been a bumper month (snow, data abuse, more snow, lots of hashtags) so this round-up has lots of gems.

Campaigns

• Bullying UK launched an interactive video – your choices change the story.
• Advice and how to spot the signs of cyberbullying in this video by NSPCC.
• Time to Change shared another video as part of their #InYourCorner series.
• The 50 mums | 50 kids video released on World Down’s Syndrome Day has had 3.4m views.
• 10 things you can do to use water wisely – shared on World Water Day by Eden Rivers Trust in Cumbria. See also this Moment of #WorldWaterDay tweets.
• There was lots of great content for #InternationalWomensDay.
• Love this information for applicants video from Big Lottery Fund Scotland
• Dog’s Trust are raising awareness of dog theft with their Family Pawtrait campaign.

Comms good practice

• This from Jenny Pennington at Shelter is important – How to talk about your beneficiaries well.
• Why you shouldn’t say Thank You by fundraiser Nikki Bell.
• How to solve the wrong problem – Kate Brennan looks at CRUK’s OB_S_TY campaign.
• Complexity bias: why we prefer complicated to simple by Farnam Street.
• Stephen Fry’s message about prostate cancer spurred me on to get checked (HuffPost) or why public information doesn’t work. Here is the video announcement from Stephen in case you didn’t see it.
• If you are looking for an antidote to giant cheque pictures (just say no), take a look at this video from RNIB supporters in Peebles, Scotland or these golden shiny balloons for CLIC Sargent.
• In a recent flurry of #CharityJobs, this one stood out. Rosie Downes of Crisis shared 5 reasons to apply.
• 15 marvellous microcopy examples (and how they improve UX) – eConsultancy
• Is your password in the top 500 list (Information is Beautiful)? Best change it if so!

Also, catch up with the slides from CharityComms’ content strategy conference and read Eleanor Dean’s blog with her key takeaways – Three thoughts on creating better digital content for your charity.

Social media

• 7 ways to prepare for inevitable digital platform changes – how to stay ahead of the game by Ben Matthews on CharityComms.
• Why we are actually loving the new Facebook algorithm – Julia Kirby-Smith of RightsInfo on Charity Comms.
• What does it means for communicators if we #deleteFacebook asks Albert Freeman on Comms2Point0.
• Post Cambridge Analytica, Luke Williams looks at ethics and asks Micro-targeting and Psychographic segmentation – what are we happy with? And this thread by @SaraDannerDuki is a good explainer about the story.
• Making content to fit a trend – the best how-to videos as curated by Magneto Films.

Digital evolution

Have you read the Charity Digital Skills Report? How you does your organisation compare? Do you have a digital strategy? Do your trustees ‘get’ digital?

I went to the DigitalAgenda Impact Awards and heard about lots of brilliant Tech for Good projects. Here’s a blog post from Ross McCulloch about some of the winners (4 examples of digital innovation) and a blog post about the Citizen’s Advice case management system which won an award. Is tech for good on your radar? Are you working on projects or know who is in your space?

• Ten things I wish I’d known 10 years ago – John Slack shares his experience of digital in museums.
• 5 things we learnt from rebranding and rebuilding our website by Anna Chapman of The Bike Project on JustGiving.
• SCVO’s new website – what we’ve learnt so far. The organisation moved from a static content site into a data-driven platform integrated with back office systems and feeding to and from external sources.
• Making public sector websites age-friendly – a useful reminder about accessibility on Digital Leaders.
• A SEO PR primer by Stephen Waddington.
• Tipping Point: Agile procurement is in a precarious position as Waterfall looms large by Dominic Campbell of FutureGov.
• Prototyping – how to learn just how bad your ideas are by Tom Barrett.
• Digital design principles for the UK charity sector by CAST.

Tech trends

• Top tech trends for charities in 2018 by Lisa Hornung at NCVO.
• Why charities need to embrace voice assistants on Macmillan’s digital team blog. Includes examples from Comic Relief, British Red Cross and Arthritis Research UK. See also Breast Cancer Care’s taking care of your breasts tool.
• 5 ways charities are using VR on Charity Digital News. Includes lots of examples. Also read the BBC’s blog on what they are doing with VR.
• 22% of searches start in Google Images, how can you optimise your content? The rise of visual search.
• 10 breakthrough technologies 2018 by MIT.

Charity reads

• Why the local pound matters – How Preston took back control.
• Small change, big difference – Karl Wilding looks at the importance of micro donations.

And finally….

If you are looking for some cheering up, try these:

• chair dancing with this 93 year-old lady
• how to put orphaned kangaroos to bed
• photos taken by people trying to sell their mirrors
• pet-hates in response to Stuart Heritage who doesn’t like pianos in train stations
• find out how many Londoners do the same journey as you
• next time it snows do this with glowsticks or get a gate like this to make a pleasing pattern
• listen to the call of seals in Pembrokeshire, part of this 3D audio BBC radio programme Sounds of Wales
• almost as good as the sound of ice being dropped 90m down a borehole. Weee!

What else?

What were your good reads in March? Please do share.

If you want more, see also:

• Lightful’s digital round-up
• JustGiving’s top 10 reads in February
• Third Sector’s digital round-up.

Can I help you?

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

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Did you miss Jan/Feb’s round-up? Catch up with more good reads!

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