Trina Wallace

If you are planning your new charity website here's how to create well-structured, focused and on-brand website copy...

How can you create space for yourself at work and manage relationships when they feel tricky? Here's some tips on creating boundaries...

Pooling your resources with other organisations can help you reach and inspire new audiences. What are the main lessons charity communicators can learn from recent prominent collaborative campaigns?...

Online job interviews are becoming the norm. Here are 10 things you can do to help you feel prepared, as calm as possible and ready to shine in an online interview...

How do you take the pain out of sign off? Here are five tips that aim to help you make sure your donors’ money is spent on communications projects that truly help your charity get closer to achieving its vision...

Here are some key steps to coming up with inspiring “boilerplate copy” that will help you build lasting relationships and motivate audiences to get involved...

Charity communicators need to prioritise their own, and colleagues, self-care. Then we’ll be better able to serve the people our charities support. Here are five ideas to help you better take take care of yourself as a charity communicator...

It’s when you meet someone your charity supports who is angry, and you walk away frustrated with the system too – but more determined to do something about it. Or when a chat with an upset colleague leads you to book a meeting with your boss because you think something should be done about the […]

It could be your charity’s equivalent of a Christmas shop window display at Harrods or a summer blockbuster trailer. Your annual review could be brilliant. It can offer readers a snapshot of everything that you do that is amazing so that they feel excited about, and want to champion, your work. Numerous departments can reuse […]

With clarity, purpose and our audience in mind. That’s how we communicate in charity comms, right? Well, not always. And not speaking the same language can hinder the causes we work for. Your membership proposition, for example, might be my brand story. Another charity’s message matrix could be completely different to the content in yours. […]

“Successful people are failures because they have dozens of failed projects behind them. We tend only to see the successes.” These are the words of journalist Tom Hodgkinson, writing in the Guardian last week.  A recent CharityComms seminar on why failure is the key to success aimed to help redress this balance. “It’s not easy […]

More and more charities are looking to integrate their communications activity across all aspects of their organisation. But how can you measure whether your integrated comms have hit the spot? Planning how you’re going to evaluate your communications is a key part of any integration process. Agreeing measurement parameters across all parties is vital and […]

You’ve decided integration is an effective way of working that will improve your processes and get results. Here are four steps to help convince your colleagues and persuade your management team. Step 1: Gather evidence Organisations don’t try to change unless there’s a strategic issue that needs addressing. You’ll need to clearly illustrate your problem […]

It’s something charity communicators tend to become expert in. Justifying your budgets is part of the job – and rightly so when you’re spending donors’ money. Aspects of charity communications appear to be challenged more than others by senior management though. Members have told CharityComms recently that spending on print magazines and newsletters have come […]

Love them or hate them, there’s no denying the power of their brand. Apple is everywhere. I was reminded of this when I had a recent meeting with a development charity client. They are in the process of gathering case studies of the people they support around the world – which can be a difficult […]

Like most politicians, in the current US presidential election campaign Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are twisting the same statistics to meet their very different agendas. “Over 4 million jobs created in the last two years,” says Obama. “He has not created jobs,” Romney retorts. In fact, you could argue that both are true. It […]

Writer Robert McKee says it’s the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today. And after recently reading his influential book Story about the art of storytelling, I’m inclined to agree. “Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience,” he says. “They are the currency […]

You have 10 projects on the go and deadlines coming out of your ears when your colleague utters those much-feared words. “I think it’s best we all meet to discuss it,” they say. “We’ll only need half an hour.” But you know. You know that half an hour meeting will turn into a couple of […]

Freelance copywriter Trina Wallace applies principles of Innocent’s tone of voice to charity communications  “We want to sound like Innocent.” This is the brief I’m (still) often given when I ask charity clients to describe the tone of the writing they want me to produce. It’s no wonder. Over the last 13 years, drinks and […]

“If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.” Those are the words of Don Draper, top creative in the US drama Mad Men, set in a 1960s New York advertising agency. I came to Mad Men, which first aired in 2007, quite late and I’m busy working my way through four seasons’ worth […]

Being consistent across your communications is key, says charity copywriter Trina Wallace Doing more with less. Thanks to budget cuts and lack of funding, that’s what charity communicators have to become expert in.It’s because while comms teams in many charities are shrinking in size, the work they have to do is increasing. The online world […]

Charity copywriter Trina Wallace applies lessons from language used in the 2011 "riots" to charity communications  From “feral rats” to “protestors”, and “scum” to “opportunists”, language used to describe the UK rioters over the last few days has varied greatly. “Everything depends on your point of view,” as The Guardian’s Jon Healey points out in […]

Trina Wallace offers five top tips for creating communications that get people talking  Former Play School presenter Floella Benjamin summed up a Golden Rule for charity communicators this week.“We just need the explosion, we need to get people talking about the importance of it,” she said in the Evening Standard. She was talking about the […]

"It's what people say about you when you leave a room." That's what brand is to Carolan Davidge, Director of Brand and PR at Cancer Research UK. And on 30 March a room full of CharityComms delegates got together to discuss branding further. Speakers at the Developing Your Brand and Image Conference talked about everything […]

Other people's feedback is a vital part of the creative process, says freelance copywriter Trina Wallace  The best charity communicators love the word “but”. Their ears are not closed to it, they heed the words that follow it and they act on them to make their charity’s communications better. “I love that new enewsletter you’ve put […]

How do you get an online audience to support your campaign, give you money or volunteer when you have a limited comms budget? At the sold out CharityComms Digital Communications on a Shoestring Conference, delegates were looking for answers to these questions and more. Trina Wallace shares five things she learned from the day. 1. […]

How do you show the difference your organisation makes to people's lives? Freelance copywriter Trina Wallace focuses on impact  My friend Jenny visits an older woman, Ethel, once a week for a local befriending charity.Sometimes they talk about the weather, other times it’s what’s on TV or what Ethel has had for lunch. That’s not […]

The coalition government. Budget cuts. Slow recovery from the recession. When putting together your charity’s communications strategy you need to consider them all. The recent CharityComms conference on developing a communications strategy helped charity communicators to think about key issues as they put together their strategies. Here are seven things we learnt during the day. […]

Copywriter Trina Wallace suggests five things charity communicators can learn from a magazine cover, such as Men’s Health “Strip away fat!” “100 simplest weight-loss cheats ever.” “Boost your brain power by watching the World Cup.” Charity sector communicators can learn a lot from these headlines.They’re taken from the July issue of Men’s Health magazine. Like any […]

How can charities demonstrate the impact of their work? That was the important question tackled at a recent CharityComms conference. Here are six things I learned from the day about measuring and communicating impact. 1. Use case studies – funders like them. “Reading a story about an individual your charity supports is always fascinating. I like stories,” […]

Charity communicators need to ask questions about the communications they produce, says freelance copywriter Trina Wallace  The Five Ws (and one H) have served my career well. They’re not self-help mantras, a team of favourite colleagues or a range of on-trend power suits. They’re words which make up a checklist. Who. What. When. Where. Why. And…How. […]

Copywriter Trina Wallace reports on lessons learnt from Mencap's 2008 rebrand You can understand their disillusionment. One minute, potential supporters and donors are told that charities desperately need their hard-earned cash to change lives. The next, they read about the latest charity rebrand, costing thousands of pounds, which appears to have produced, wow, a brand […]