I hope you’re making the most of the summer heat wave. Although we’ve finished our last event until September and looking forward to some summer hols, we’re still busy and ambitious on your behalf and we’ve lots planned for the months ahead.
We’re listening: thank you for your time
Firstly, I must say a big thank you for your overwhelming generosity with your time and insight – we brought together a small group of members and non-members to do a deep dive into our current offer and consider how we could improve. Over 500 of you completed our events programme survey. Wow! We were stunned and will work hard to ensure we use the insight to build the programme around you. We’re data crunching and distilling the feedback right now.
We’ve heard you want support on rebuilding public trust and crisis comms, you love our podcasts, you’re keen on hackathons, need ready-made tools and ways to enhance your career development. We’ll try to keep the old-favourites while adding some new stuff which speaks to your needs. We’ll also enlist the support of thought leaders and practitioners beyond the sector to continue to challenge and surprise you.
New projects underway
We’re working in partnership with Joe Barrell at Eden Stanley on a new edition of Make it Matter – our guide to communication strategy. In early spring, we held three workshops with members and others from the industry to explore some key themes – digital transformation, storytelling and measuring impact. This autumn we’ll be inviting your feedback to inform the development of the book and gathering case studies too – so if you’ve done work you’re proud of and are willing to share – we need you.
We’re also working with Alex Scott and partner agency Narrative to explore the hot topic of innovation and working with digital content experts Laura and Julius at Contentious to engage you in this content in an innovative and participatory way – you’d expect no less!
We’re also working with charity filmmaker Mike South on a toolkit to help charities create useful video content to engage audiences and support the great work that charities do. This project comes out of research carried out by Molly, our CharityWorks graduate trainee, on filmmaking in the sector. You can read more about her findings here.
You’ll have seen CharityComms is an official champion of the Charity Digital Code of Practice – don’t forget to send in your feedback and join the conversation on #CharityDigitalCode.
And last but not least, please do share your ideas to help us build our new template library. Drop us an email with the templates you’d like to contribute and share with others.
These are just a few of the ways we’re working collaboratively with members, agency partners and the wider communications world – we believe it’s the best way to get great results.
Community power
I recently dipped into a new book called “New Power – how it’s changing the 21 Century – and why you need to know”. It challenges us to embrace a new mindset from formal, top down, experts to informal networks, collaboration, crowd wisdom, transparency, DIY. At CharityComms, we put collaboration and partnership at the heart of our approach. Still, I was led to question, could we do more to harness the power of the community to share and shape your own solutions? Is there more we could do to seed peer to peer social interaction? Could this help increase our reach and inclusivity and maximise the value of our content? Do let us know what you think.
The CharityComms team is changing…
We have not one but two Sarah’s! Sarah Clarke (alias Clarkey) joined as our new membership manager in May – Sarah comes with a wealth of membership and marketing experience from the arts sector. Sarah Cutress joined as our new events assistant in June. Molly Clarke, our graduate placement has become a permanent member of the team with a focus on digital comms. We’re delighted to welcome back Lally Wentworth from maternity leave – she’s balancing bringing up baby Ruby with her new role as mentoring manager. You can find the contact details for all staff, new and old, on our website.
Lastly, we are saying goodbye and thank you to Kirsty Lister, our finance manager for the last eight years and Duncan Hatfield, who’s been with us for three years, as our communications officer, projects officer, and project manager. We wish them every success for the future.
Image: Ibrahim Rifath on Unsplash