One of my key aims when in a meeting is to come out of it with my name against as few of the Action Points as possible.
No such joy with this year's CharityComms Away Day, where the team decided that I should write a regular blog on what we've been up to and what's in the pipeline. I suppose I should be grateful – last year they made me join Twitter. (Note to self – cancel all future Away Days.)
As a membership organisation, we work hard to deliver value for your fee, so we want to make sure you know what we've been doing and what's coming up. Our strength is our network of charity communications professionals, and we want you to make the most of being part of that network, by being in touch – and joining in – with what’s going on.
What we’ve been up to
- Last month, we launched our second annual salary survey in partnership with TPP Not for Profit. I love hearing from members about how our work helps you, and one of my faves came after we launched our first salary survey last year: “I just wanted to say thank you and well done for publishing the recent salary survey – I took it to my boss and promptly got a pay rise!” I hope this year's survey has had a similar impact for some of you.
- I often get asked to recommend agencies and suppliers in the sector. Our new supplier directory lists those businesses who've joined CharityComms as corporate partners and share our vision of a charity sector with effective communications at its heart. Most of these show recommendations from clients: we know from Media Trust research that 68% of charities want external service providers to share their ethical viewpoints, while 59% specifically demand charity sector experience. So our new listing is a good place to start if you’re looking for an external supplier. And if you want advice on how to get the best out of client/agency relationships, download our free guide to working with agencies – the latest in our series of free Best Practice Guides.
What’s coming up
- Over the summer, we're beavering away on our next best practice guide: HQ and Beyond: a guide to engaging with staff across a devolved organisation. It's our first guide covering internal comms and also coincides with the launch of our new special interest networking group for internal comms leads: watch out for this in September.
- We also putting together a guide to integrated communications and a report analysing charity comms team structures: there's still time to send us your comms team organogram if you haven't already: tom@charitycomms.org.uk will be delighted to receive it.
- August is also our planning month, when we research and put together our calendar of events for next year. As always, we want to hear what your challenges are so we can help you meet them, so do give us your views via this short survey and you could also win stuff.
Finally, if you haven’t already seen our first Buzzfeed article 10 Things That Annoy Charity Communicators, do check it out. It seems to have struck a chord (with over a thousand views in three days, that counts as going viral with us). I’m just surprised that team Away Days aren’t on there.