CharityComms

Daisy O’Clee, Media Manager at the British Association for Adoption and Fostering:

“Our two HQ comms staff deal with local and regional communications. Before National Adoption Week, we’ll send a media pack to council comms teams and adoption agencies which will contain template press releases and suggestions for getting media coverage. We’ve got offices around the UK but regional staff direct all media enquiries to us at HQ. We log it all and then go back to the Director of our regional offices to brief them if it’s appropriate that they speak to local media. It works well because it keeps things clear about who is doing what and it stops journalists asking regional staff directly to comment on sensitive issues.”

Rodha Bruce, Branch Policy Standards Manager at the RSPCA:

“We have 174 branches which are run by volunteer-committees that have access to one of five regional press officers. Their priority is to get hits in the media about RSPCA issues and secondly, to promote branch projects. Branches are free to publish their own publications, for example if they’re running a local event. But they can’t publish material or write on their branch website about pet care or any of our central policies. We ask them to refer people to the central RSPCA website instead. Regional comms staff try to offer branch media volunteers appropriate training and the HQ comms team helps with things like artwork for publications.”

Annie O’Brian, Head of Communications at Home-Start:

“We have 345 local offices. Staff and volunteers there are free to do their own communications work. Our three-strong HQ comms team send local offices a media pack which gives information on branding, our vision and aims and sample press releases. They can use this to produce their own publications and work with the media but we don’t have the resources to monitor their comms work. Things will be easier when our intranet is set up over the next 18 months. Local offices will be able to contribute to this and it’ll mean we aren’t sending them so many hard copy documents which can be confusing and is not environmentally friendly.”

Cinzia Marrocco, Head of Communications at Sense

“The service delivery side of what Sense does is broken up into six regions spread out across England, Wales and Ireland. Each of our three press officers in HQ is responsible for coordinating the communications work in two of these regions. They attend regional meetings once a quarter to find out what’s happening in the area, to talk about any events that are coming up and to keep management teams informed about what’s happening nationally. Our publications manager is available to assist regions with their publications and we encourage them to submit news stories for the intranet and website which we will check at HQ before uploading.”

Anil Ranchod, PR Manager at The Children’s Society:

“In an ideal world we’d have media officers based in our three England regions, the South, the North and the Midlands. At the moment, all of the nine members of our comms team at HQ deal with regional media. We encourage community fundraisers and our shop managers to contact the local media themselves, with our support and advice. We’re in the process of rolling out a “How to Deal with the Media” guide book which tells them what to say and what not to say to the press. Then, perhaps, it’ll be a case of us being aware of what they’re doing but not policing it.”