YouthNet blog
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Friday Sep 26, 2008
Online Cultivation & Stewardship
There's a lot of talk nowadays about stewardship, cultivation and online fundraising. Sometimes I think these terms are used interchangably and I get the impression that many of us aren't clear about what exactly they mean.
I'm always keen to get different perspectives on this, so I was interested to see The Gilbert Center's short survey covering these issues. It only takes a few minutes to complete, and the more of us that complete it, the more meaningful the results will be. He's the link:
http://news.gilbert.org/clickThru/redir/6731/rms
I'm particularly interested in seeing the results of the question about separate budget allocation for stewardship and cultivation - I'm not sure that this is something that most charities have thought much about.
Posted by Sam Thomas ( 8:40 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
Wednesday Sep 24, 2008
Yay for us
Excuse the self-congratulatory tone of this post, but we've won awards a-plenty recently and we're really pleased about it!
First of all we won Fundraising Charity of the Year at the 2008 Professional Fundraising Awards, followed by the Open Internet Award at the Nominet 2008 Best Practice Challenge.
Then guess what happened? Yes, we won another one - this time Best Charity to Work For at the 2008 Charity Times Awards.
Pretty awesome huh?
Posted by Sam Thomas ( 12:54 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
Tuesday Sep 23, 2008
New TheSite.org postcards now available
It's always exciting when the boxes arrive. Even when you've been working on a campaign for months, even when you know the graphic design of a piece of collateral intimately, even if you can recite the copy word-for-word, there's nothing like opening up that first box of postcards and holding that finished product in your hands.
Last week, we had our first delivery of the new TheSite.org postcards, designed by the lovely people at Point Blank Collective. Here's the front of four of them:
Chat-up lines may not be the best way to get a relationship started (refer to TheSite.org for more advice on that one), but they make us laugh and we think they're great for any sort of social setting.
If you're from a college, youth group or similar and would like some of these postcards to display in areas where 16 to 24-year-olds hang out, you can now order them through our online form.
The postcards have also started appearing in postcard racks in student unions and cafes around the country, as well as other venues here in London. They'll also be accompanying us to the Regional Skills events in Newcastle (30 September – 1 October) and Sheffield (8 – 9 October). If you spot one, pick it up and use it to enter our fantastic competition. There's a Sumo bean bag up for grabs for the winning entry.
We'll also soon be launching matching banner ads. They're just getting their final design tweaked, before being delivered - amongst similar levels of excitement - into our inboxes. I'll let you know when they arrive.
Monday Sep 22, 2008
Do volunteers get drunk?
Recently I heard of a volunteering organisation that has introduced a ban on its name or logo appearing on any clothing that will primarily be worn for socialising. As a significant number of their volunteers are students; the ban is particularly aimed at those going on group pub crawls etc. The organisation is worried about the negative association of their brand with a bunch of rowdy students off-their-faces creating their own pavement pizzas in the small hours.I have no doubt that this organisation isn’t alone in introducing such a ban, and you can sort of understand the reasoning behind it.
But, given that one of the major findings of the Russell Commission (the inquiry caterpillar that turned into the V butterfly) was that most young people thought the image of volunteering needed to change, then perhaps it’s not bad thing that volunteers are seen to go out on the lash.
It might also help to dispel the notion that the young people out pubbing and clubbing on Friday and Saturday night are somehow different to those who give up their free time to do goodly deeds. Chances are they are often the same people.
Perhaps next year’s Volunteers’ Week should simply be a piss-up?
Posted by Olly Benson ( 8:38 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
Friday Sep 19, 2008
You only hear what you want to...
...the above phrase is something I have heard (mainly) the women in my life say many times in a number of different variations, 'you only see what you want to see' and so on. I think this is otherwise known as selective hearing, perhaps you only hear certain bits or in the case of the males in my life they only hear what they want to hear. This selective hearing thing is something I have really taken to heart when it comes to my training schedule for the Royal Parks Half Marathon. In particular I've found I'm pretty good at selective reading. So the 'manual' says the following:
The book says, 'eat a balanced diet' I read, eat anything you want, you are in training so why not, actually the more chocolate and chips the better.
The website told me to, 'run at a steady pace and speed up slowly'. I interpret this to mean run slowly, it's more important to get through it than to do it in a distant time.
My friend told me to, 'make sure you rest in between runs to eliminate chances of injury', surely their saying not to train very much.
The guidelines say, 'make sure you drink plenty of water', I prefer just drink plenty.
My point is despite all the advice I've heard and my training plans best efforts I've had to ditch it all as I'm simply not taking it in. With only three weeks to go panic is beginning to set in...
Posted by Felicity Jones ( 4:05 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
Be great...
This is a very good website from the states promoting getting involved / volunteering with Boys and Girls Club of America. I'm guessing it's aimed more at the adults than the kids...
And from a purely radio-anorak point of view; this is possibly the best use of soundscaping I've seen used on the internet.
Olly
Posted by Olly Benson ( 9:50 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
Wednesday Sep 17, 2008
Are you feeling the crunch?
A couple of interesting news snippets caught my eye this week, in the midst of the current financial chaos.
Surprisingly, two of the three were good news stories. The first was Cancer Research UK raising a whopping £420 million in 2007/08, and the second was City Action's comments in the Sunday Times about volunteering by City employees being up by 40% on last year.
On the flip side, The Guardian reports today that charities are "reeling" from the impact of the current economic crisis.
Somewhat boringly for this post, it's probably too early to tell how great the effect will be on fundraising. One thing is definitely true though - the more eggs we have in different baskets the better. Cancer Research demonstrate this pretty well - their income pie chart is fairly evenly distributed, which should help them ride out the financial storm.
We've tried to broaden our income streams over the past few years for precisely this reason, and I certainly wouldn't feel that comfortable right now being a charity that's very dependent on donations from the private sector.
So, are any other fundraisers out there feeling the crunch?
Posted by Sam Thomas ( 11:40 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
Monday Sep 01, 2008
What becomes of an ex-volunteer?
Two months ago I left the organisation I'd been volunteering with since I was a kid. It was a fairly amicable split (at least on my part) and I'd been planning it for a while. The reasons that I left aren't that important (nor particularly interesting); what is more significant is what happens now.
When you leave an established job, unless you've been disciplined out or made redundant by evil new management, the chances are when you have your farewell drinks won't be the last time you remain in contact with the organisation or it's employees. The level you stay in touch is really up to you: from setting up your own consultancy that your old company then hires you back to do the work you were previously doing whilst in their pay, through to an occasional drink with your former colleagues when you happen to be near their office.
Good managers recognise that as an ex-employee you have tremendous knowledge and experience about what they do, and often it's a good idea to keep you on side. Quite often that's informal; I've occasionally taken calls or emails from my previous place of work asking "how did you do that when you were here?" or "can you remember the code for this thing?". And generally I'm happy to answer them.
But with volunteering it's a bit different. Because there is no payment involved, any contact you have with an organisation is "volunteering", and once you step down from being a volunteer for them, then it needs to be a total split. In a lot of ways, that's a good thing; otherwise you get the infamous voluntary sector workload-creep, and suddenly you find that despite leaving the organisation you are still doing things for them and worrying about them.
However, it also means that volunteer organisations aren't very good at building on best practice: if someone has been doing a role for a while and then leaves, you need them to be able to explain why they made the choices they did in their role, so others don't have to go through the same learning experience. Volunteers, like employees, can have huge knowledge bases about a particular area of your organisation's field of work.
And whilst employees have to give notice periods, volunteers can be here-today-gone-tomorrow. They can leave right in the middle of a project or event. I've known projects that have come to a standstill as a result of a key volunteer leaving. How many websites are there which haven't been updated since a volunteer webmaster quit – often forgetting (or refusing) to pass the login details on?
As for me - I'm not quite sure what my next move is. But, I've already had several invites to be involved in things for the organisation I left. On the one hand, it's flattering to be recognised for the contribution that I can make. On the other, I left for a reason. That should tell them all they need to know.
Posted by Olly Benson ( 8:24 AM ) Link to this post Comments[4]