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Thursday Aug 30, 2007
So who does read the voluntary sector blogosphere?
Professional Fundraising ran an interesting article this week about Intelligent Giving, "the independent site for the smarter giver". The site has ruffled some feathers in some parts of the sector, notably after the Institute of Fundraising Awards dinner, when it listed the charities that paid for tables (you can also read a short interview with Dave on our blog here).
Whilst I don't think "the blogosphere exploded" as Professional Fundraising put it, it did cause some controversy. We were caught up in it as well, as YouthNet went to the dinner, and paid for a table, as our Deputy Development Director Sarah explained in her comment on their blog.
Anyway, I've got some time for sites like Intelligent Giving, and the debate that they often spark. What I found particularly interesting about the article though was Intelligent Giving Editor Dave Pitchford's comment that he estimates around 50% of their readers are from the voluntary sector.That got me thinking about the introspective nature of the voluntary sector in the UK, and how much of a problem this is for the sector. Being a fresh faced youngster, I haven't been in the sector as long as most, but it strikes me that we can be almost neurotic in raising and debating issues that start off small and can appear insurmountable, once we've peered at them and prodded them from every angle.
So, some of the questions I've got are:
Is it such a problem that sites like Intelligent Giving are read mainly by people in the voluntary sector?
How do we engage with "the public" more on the issues of transparency, effective ways to give and charity governance?
Why would you read blogs about charities and voluntary sector issues unless you worked in the sector yourself?Posted by Sam Thomas ( 9:07 AM ) Link to this post Comments[3]
We want to stimulate robust debate leading to real progress. It's what the sector and it's stakeholders deserve.
Posted by Richard Marsh on August 31, 2007 at 10:58 AM GMT+00:00 #
Thanks for your thoughts - I'm really looking forward to seeing more of ImpACT's work!
Posted by Sam Thomas on September 03, 2007 at 08:25 AM GMT+00:00 #
To me, more of an issue is bringing the issue to a wider audience - as one of your questions suggests. We are doing our best to address this; possibly our most ambitious aim is to make charities, and everything about them, more interesting.
This is a tough job. As all fundraisers know, journalists ignore you unless you throw something pretty unusual at them. And so, this is what you have to do, and what we do. The art is in judging the angle and the impact, and anticipating how the sub-editors might spin it. As a former News of the World sub I think I have a fairly good feel for this.
Our resultant press work means that we actually have a far wider readership than the 500 web visitors a day mentioned in the PF article. Since launch we have helped generate over 80 articles in the national press, plus several TV and radio appearances. So in fact our various messages have been received already by millions of people.
Posted by Dave Pitchford on September 03, 2007 at 09:36 AM GMT+00:00 #