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On behalf of all those who are passionate about reading, I want to offer huge congratulations to the London Evening Standard for working in partnership with the national charity Volunteer Reading Help to put a spotlight on literacy among Londoners.
Tag Archives: Fundraising
Send back-office staff to the front line
You must never forget that your staff are often the best ambassadors for your organisation. This might seem obvious, but I say it because I recently came across an interesting story.
I met someone from the web team of a large charity. He’d been there for five years, which is a decent amount of time in a sector that has, as we know a high turnover of staff. As part of a digital training day, he visited a local project supported by the charity in order to interview some beneficiaries. Afterwards, he told me that in all the time he’d been with the organisation, this was his first visit ever to a funded project. This was his first opportunity to see their work in action.
He told me how inspired and proud he felt, and I have no doubt that he would have returned to work the following day with renewed energy and a clearer sense of his charity’s mission.
I expect this story isn’t particularly unusual. If you’re not working at the front line, going out to visit a project might be on your to-do list (especially if it’s overseas), but with a huge workload and limited resources, going out to get a sandwich for lunch is probably the furthest you get.
When I worked at the BBC, my first job was in local radio. As part of our induction, new members of staff – not just those in the newsroom – were taken on a minibus to visit key towns and projects important to the station. We also had homework to do, and at each spot one of us had to explain why this site was important. This wasn’t just a great team-bonding exercise; it also made clear what our purpose was and who our audience was.
I’d love to hear how charities ensure that staff are kept on-message, and I hope that it’s not another five years before the web guy gets to go out and visit other projects.
Stop Press: I posted a message on Twitter on this subject and I got a quick response from an events fundraiser for a small charity, who has been out on location twice to meet the families it supports – and he said it makes a huge difference to see what they experience.
