Tag: Charity

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Can hope be delivered in 140 characters?

I truly believe that Twitter will bring about the next great renaissance in human civilisation. I REALLY do!

Whatever you might think about that statement, it cannot be denied that every single second of every single day we see a deluge of tweets about people doing good and that is why I get SO frustrated when I see opportunities to amplify those positive emotions wasted. And my public enemy number one for wastage is the official account from Twitter highlighting the forces of good… @hope140
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Who's with me?

Spartans! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty... For tonight, we dine in hell!

Social media has the capacity to be the great leveller.

There are many stories of heroic Davids defeating mighty Goliaths, although not quite cutting off their heads, through the use of connections made possible by services such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube etc. But a recent campaign from eBay for Charity has left me feeling that maybe the Goliaths need to take some moral responsibility and stop fighting altogether.

“The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many, and before this battle was over, even a god-king can bleed.” – King Leonidas

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#Lesanto50 #CozyTweetUp Birthday Pot

Glenn Le SantoIf you’re a Twitter user then you must have stumbled across, or been shouted at by, @lesanto (a.k.a Glenn Le Santo).

Glenn is one of the hardest working people I know and is always ready to help others when the need arises, so now I’m asking you to give a little back.

Today marks a particular milestone in Glenn’s life, and pays testament to the fact that even old people can be cool.

Glenn has reached the ripe old age of 50 and @DarenBBC and I would like to ask you to dig deep and donate whatever you can so that we can give Glenn the birthday he deserves.


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CHaRiTY – Collaboration. Honesty. Recklessness. Transparency. Yackety-Yak!

After hearing about the launch of CharityComms 2020, I just knew I had to get involved.

Each participant was asked to contribute what they thought would be the five most significant trends that would affect charity communications in the next 10 years, and an accompanying image that represented their vision.

Charities represented in the initiative include Marie Curie Cancer Care, Amnesty International, Macmillan Cancer Support, UNICEF, Friends of the Earth, The Scout Association, and many more. There’s also a host of influential thinkers in the charity comms space who have contributed, including Jonathan Waddingham at JustGiving, Rachel Beer at beautiful world, Steve Bridger and Amy Sample Ward.

“The combined vision of so many influential thinkers in the charity sector has produced a unique insight into the future of communications. We hope CharityComms 2020 will provide ideas and inspiration to enable charities to tackle the challenges of the coming decade with confidence.” – Ben Matthews, founder of Bright One

What are your five?

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We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.

Cofacio x You = Help2

I believe that, deep down, everyone wants to help. But as humans gathered together in larger and larger numbers, this universal understanding was forgotten and we began to see other people as not like us. When we lived together in small communities it was easy to remember as we either saw the helping going on, or we heard about it.

As our global village grew, the conversations were taken over by the broadcasting media and their content twisted to reflect only those events that were negative. No longer would we discover all of the good that people were doing, instead, people were to be distrusted, even feared and suddenly we all felt alone and powerless.

And then along came social networks. Now we could talk directly to these people and discover what it was they really were… the same as us.

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Why can't iDonate? #AppleDonateFail

I read recently that Apple do not allow the inclusion of donate buttons into apps and @JohnCarnell has even set up a campaign to lobby them to change this using the hashtag #AppleDonateFail on Twitter.

This was an idea that I had considered for @MarieCurieUK due to the popularity of the SMS donation method during the Haiti appeal. Giving people the option of donating small amounts instantaneously through their mobile device is absolutely the way forward. It is at that real-time moment when you are emotionally affected by the event or news story that you are most likely to donate, and by making the method easy you increase the chances dramatically.

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It's not as bad as it seems…

Today I attended the Digital Fundraising Groups semi-regular gathering at the British Red Cross to discover what charities are doing to leverage social media.

There was a very entertaining talk by the Digital Innovations Manager of the Woodland Trust, who are doing some really rather excellent things in the areas or customer engagement and crowd-sourcing. I was very impressed by their quirky approach to the real-time internet and was glad to see them experimenting with a variety of ideas, both serious and quirky.

However one of the main points I gleaned from the various people in attendance is that the one thing social media is not really very good at is actually raising FUNDS.

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