communications

Being part of our story and sharing the love

Becky 2 Comments

Crowdsource image

A couple of weeks ago, I thought I’d start an experiment. I’d been working on collating all the data, stats, facts, figures and stories for our annual report – yes, it’s that time of year again! We always like to include some of the feedback we’ve received over the year, because we recognise that it brings our work to life.

This year’s annual report will be a story of the exciting stuff we’ve been involved in over the past year; it’ll show how we’ve helped people make connections, how we’ve tried to inspire others and how we’ve championed great things going on across Dudley borough. But it’s not only our staff who’ve been characters in this story; our story simply wouldn’t be as rich without others – the people, groups, communities, partners and places that are crucial ingredients for nurturing caring, vibrant and strong communities in Dudley borough.

So, I took a chance and posted an invitation on Twitter, asking people to let us know how we’ve 1) helped them to connect; 2) inspired them; 3) championed great work. This is essentially crowdsourcing an element of our annual report to get some authentic voices to demonstrate what we’ve done together.

I’ve been staggered by the responses we’ve received so far. Here are a few of them:

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The people who responded were:

Thank you so much to all of you for so readily responding!

If you’d like to share how you’ve been part of our story you still can! Simply comment below or use the #dcvsstory hashtag on Twitter or Facebook and join in!

Six simple steps to involving volunteers for small charities @SCWeek2015

Becky Leave a comment

Eileen (@dudleyvols) has shared a nice, visual six simple steps to involving volunteers in advance of Small Charity Week when we’ll be holding a drop in to answer all of your volunteer-involving questions on Thursday 18th June, 1pm-5pm.

Why not drop into our office between those times or, if you can’t make it, ask your questions here, on the Volunteer Centre blog, Twitter or Facebook and we’ll do our best to answer them for you.

As Eileen said, she can help you every step of the way and all year round to help your volunteers have the best possible experience with you.

Celebrating Small Charity Week in Dudley borough

Becky 6 Comments

SCW Loz Logo Date 2015

Small Charity Week (15th-20th June) celebrates and raises awareness of the essential work of small charities (defined as charities and CICs that have an annual turnover under £1.5million).

This year, we’re joining in with the celebrations and running special activities and workshops across the week including:

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Missed opportunities? Demonstrating our worth online

Becky 3 Comments
Photo credit: mkhmarketing / Foter / CC BY

Photo credit: mkhmarketing / Foter / CC BY

A study published by Lloyds Bank has reported that more than half of charities lack ‘basic digital skills’, especially compared with small business. You can read the full report here.

The study particularly focuses on the lack of understanding about how a web presence can increase donations and other forms of finance, but it also chimes with one of Dudley CVS’s priorities for the forthcoming year and one of the key findings of our recent state of the sector survey –  voluntary and community organisations would like some support with telling their stories online.

Being able to demonstrate your impact online, at a time when organisations cannot solely rely on grant-funding alone to survive, might expose your organisation to new sponsors, supporters, crowd-funders, investors, donors, businesses looking to fulfil their corporate social responsibility principles. But the reasons may not be purely financial. Having a web presence can be empowering for your organisation and the people you support; you can run campaigns, dispel myths, inspire people, connect, share and learn.

But what do you think? What do you think about the report? What has an online presence allowed you to do more easily? What are the barriers to getting your organisation on the web? Is it resources, skills in tech and design or anything else? How could we all support each other to grasp new opportunities that the digital world might offer?