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!

Advertisements

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?

Subscribe

Like this post? Why not add your email or WordPress username to the subscribe button on the right and get future posts delivered direct to you?!

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?

—–

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

—–

 

 

 

10 tips for great online legacy fundraising

In 2013 I wrote about online legacy fundraising content. Although well written persuasive copy is still key, digital trends move on. So four years later it is time to see whether the web pages about legacy fundraising have improved and what has changed.

I looked at a random sample of over 50 large, medium and small charities. In most cases the pages were pretty dull, especially from smaller charities. It is hard to write warm, engaging copy about legacies as we often fall over ourselves trying to be sensitive. But the charities who get it right have a confidence and a clear sense of themselves and their audience.

Here are ten ingredients for emotive and effective online legacy fundraising.

Be clear and persuasive

WaterAid’s legacy site stood out as the go-to example of a persuasive and well designed site. The page starts with a clear call to action – leave the world with water – which sets the tone. They use eye catching and engaging links and headings (leave your mark / what would you like to pass on?) which include and challenge the reader. Images are positive and inspiring. They also include a photograph and name of a person to contact as well as a legacy promise which are both reassuring and clear.

Save the Children UK also use clear and inspiring headings (write a child’s smile into your will) and use bold to highlight important words. They use beautiful pictures of smiling children to reinforce their words. Their writing is confident, concise and persuasive (make a lasting difference, your kindness).

Use social proofing to normalise the action

Many charities talk about ‘thousands of people who leave a legacy’ or ‘thanks to people like you’. This social proofing is refecting and reinforcing the decision that the reader is almost ready to make.

Events like Remember a Charity week help to promote legacy fundraising. Many charities use the event to reinforce their ask, showing that remembering a charity is a normal action that everyone can do.

The Migraine Trust makes a clear statement which makes leaving a legacy accessible – “a gift of just 1% will make a real difference to supporting our charitable work”. This is a clearer way of what they were saying in 2013 (see below).

Use video

Since 2013, many more legacy pages include videos. Take a look at this personal message from a supporter on Prisoners Abroad. Or this slick video from ActionAid showing Mrs Harben’s legacy. Or this simple beautiful video from RSPB. Or this speaking from the heart story from Glenys who supports the Alzheimer’s Society.

Talk about impact

What difference will someone’s gift make? Talk big picture about your vision / mission or about specific services. More charities are making big statements about what a legacy means to them.

RSPB’s opening statement is clear and bold: Your legacy is nature’s future.

Refugee Action’s Leave a legacy page goes into more detail. It is beautifully written using storytelling and sense of urgency. It frames the problem and talks about what they can do with a legacy gift. The page is short, concise and powerful. A great example of a small charity getting it right.

East Lancashire Hospice talk about leaving a legacy of love and explain that last year, legacy gifts paid for three months of care.

If your organisation is all about solving a problem or finding a cure, talking about legacies could be difficult. How do you frame the ask when you might not be around or needed in the same way in 20 / 50 years? Don’t avoid the issue – think about how you can present it effectively.

Macmillan Cancer‘s legacy page says: “In the future, doctors and nurses are going to get much better at diagnosing cancer earlier, and treating it.” But stresses that half of us will get cancer at some point so Macmillan will still be needed.

Say please and thank you

Choosing to leave a legacy to a charity is a big deal. The fact that someone is reading your page about this is a good sign. Keep them with you by recognising this. Say please and thank you in the right places. If you come across as kind and thoughtful at the asking stage, it will reassure people that you will behave in the same way when you are processing their gift.

Think about motivation

Why do you think someone might have reached your page? What are they thinking. This page by the Miscarriage Association is written really warmly and in a gentle tone of voice. The quote perfectly positions the ask.

Include appropriate images

Brighten up a serious subject with colourful or inspiring images. Reward visitors to this page and make them want to stay. A collection of several images may work better than a single one. For example, this landing page for the British Heart Foundation includes images of family, medical research as well as a big thank you.

Many organisations seem to rely on stock images of grey-haired couples on their legacy pages. Remember to use images which reflect the demographics of your readers. Also people often write their will triggered by big life events such as getting married or having children. Your audience isn’t just people in later stages of their lives. Make sure you are using images which reflect their own image back at them.

Take a look at NSPCC’s page which includes quotes and images from supporters at different stages of their lives. Their stories may chime with readers, validating their own idea to leave a legacy to NSPCC (another example of social proofing).

Think about a hook

What could make your legacy fundraising stand out? What stories do you have to tell? Has a legacy gift allowed you to do something special or unusual? Is there someone you could write about or feature to make your ask come to life?

Mencap’s gifts in wills page is based around the inspiring story of Lord Brian Rix. The page says that he “helped change the future for people with a learning disability. With a gift in your Will to Mencap you can too.” It uses beautiful images from their archive and talks about what he achieved in his lifetime. It says that although lots has changed, people with learning disabilities still face challenges so by leaving a gift in your will, you can help change the future too.

Similarly, Leonard Cheshire, marking its centenary say “Leonard’s legacy became our legacy. It could be your legacy too.”

Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity includes information about JM Barrie’s legacy gift in their pages. Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity talks about your final chapter and how to write your own ending.

Include practical information

Make it as easy as possible for someone to actually get the legal stuff right. So include:

• information about different types of gifts (see this handy guide to the types of legacies by Demelza Hospice)
• your official name (and any previous names) and charity number
• suggested wording
• information to help someone work out the detail of their estate
• information for executors
• contact details so a potential donor can get in touch.

A promise can offer reassurance about how a legacy will be dealt with when the time comes. A few charities included these – see WaterAid’s promise, RNLI and Breast Cancer Now.

Be interesting

There were a few examples of charities who’d produced interesting supporting content. For example:

• Blue Cross reminds readers to think about their digital assets (passwords, data, photos, social media etc)
• Cancer Research’s campaign with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – Two Thirds of a Spring reflects the vital impact that one third of funding has on their life-saving work
• Alzheimer’s Society has an online book of remembrance
• visitors are invited to make a personalised video with Unicef UK. (NB Unicef UK have been running a campaign of promoted tweets about this recently, the only social media content I spotted about legacy fundraising during the research for this post.)

 Get the navigation and terminology right

Think about where your legacy pages sit. How easy are they to find within navigation or search? Be your own mystery customer and check.

Don’t bury your pages – make them prominent, especially if legacies make up a sizeable proportion of your income. Don’t just stick them under ‘Other ways to give’.

Check where they appear in your content rankings on your Google Analytics. Are you using the right terminology for your audience? Test whether the word legacy or will works best. Many charities use both.

See my previous post on legacy fundraising (persuasive and engaging writing in online legacy fundraising) for some tips on terminology and placing of legacy pages. Also how to talk about legacies on social media.

How do you measure up?

Is your online legacy fundraising content strong enough or is it dull and unconvincing? Give your copy a facelift before Remember a Charity week in September. If you are not sure how well it comes across, get your mum to read it or do a page swap with someone else from another charity. Get some feedback and think about how you could bring your content to life.

Share your examples

Have you seen (or written) any good or bad examples of digital legacy fundraising? Please do share them here.

My top five online legacy fundraising sites are listed in a JustGiving blog post. I’d love to hear what yours are.

 

 

See also:

• Online legacy fundraising content (previous blog post from 2013)
• Taking legacies online (Charity Digital News) – packed with other examples

 

January’s charity content highlights

Come out from underneath your desk / duvet and catch up with some of the latest creative charity content.

Innovation

Cancer Research are continuing their trend of using World Cancer Day (this Saturday – 4 February) to launch new uses for contactless fundraising. Ten ‘smart benches’ across two London boroughs will take £2 donations.

Are you planning to look in to contactless fundraising in 2017? NSPCC recently announced impressive results of their contactless fundraising and many other organisations are using it too. I gathered some examples of contactless giving in my blog post for Zurich Insurance and spoke to Haven House Children’s Hospice who are running trials at the moment.

Not sure what the technical term for this is but the National Lottery did a very smart bit of Twittering by launching this 7second video and inviting people to RT it ‘for a surprise’. The surprise was a personalised video, with the RTers’ Twitter profile image in a gold frame, with the words ‘National Treasure’ underneath. Nice! This was similar to a thanks reply from Save the Children I got in December.

Today it is Time to Talk Day (#timetotalk). Why not use Time to Change’s template to make your own graphic?

• Here are Luke from RNLI’s slides from NFPtweetup32 about their approach to innovation including live video and chatbots.
• Buzzfeed have launched a search tool for volunteering opportunities using Do-It’s APIs.

Good reads

• Heard the one about the powerful force for change? (Charity Comms) – about the role of humour in charity comms including examples from Water Aid and my personal favourite worm, Dave.
• 6 skills no one teaches you in charity digital – but should (Just Giving blog) – Zoe Amar describes the non-technical skills essential for digital success.
• Sharing the moral high ground? (Charity Connect) – about the wave of activism
• Highlights from the Agile Content conference from James Gadsby Peet and a recording of one of the presentations by Sarah Richards on content design. (more at #agilecontent)
• Easy alternatives on disabilist language and handy reminder about designing for screen readers.

If you get a moment, don’t forget to fill in the Charity Digital Skills Survey which is open until 17 February.

And follow #smex17 on Monday if you are not going to the Social Media Exchange in person.

Re-brands / new websites / charity content

• Alzheimer’s Society lanched their new brand and website. Here’s more about the reasons behind it: Alzheimer’s Society rebrands to show that dementia is a problem for everyone (Design Week)
• Action for Children also launched their new look, complete with lovely 404 error message. (I like a good error message – see here)

• The King’s Fund’s The NHS if… site explores hypothetical scenarios for the future of health and social care.
• This campaign video from Street Support in Manchester super-imposes stats on street scenes to show the impact of homelessness.
• Great pictures in the Guardian from Crisis’ midwinter swim.

To brighten your day

• Mum covers anti-homeless spikes in Manchester with cushions (BBC news)
• Twitter Twins: a history of social media mix-ups (BBC Three)
• Budapest spiral staircases – dreamy!
• Trump Draws

What have you seen?

What have been your charity content highlights from January? Do share! I’d love to hear from you.