How to use

New Media
CONTENTS

01 Foreword by Caroline Diehl – Chief Executive of Media Trust

03 Foreword by Matthew Legg – ICT Hub Chief Commissioning Editor

05 Chapter One – New Media explained

08 Chapter Two – Social Networking

11 Chapter Three – Blogs

14 Chapter Four – Forums

17 Chapter Five – Flickr

20 Chapter Six – Interviews in the digital age

23 Chapter Seven – Wikis

26 Chapter Eight – Online shopping cart

28 Chapter Nine – Social Bookmarking

31 Chapter Ten – Fundraising videos

34 Chapter Eleven – Legacy donations online

35 Chapter Twelve – Twitter and mobile communications

37 Chapter Thirteen – About Media Trust and Capacitybuilders

Glossary

Credits
FOREWORD
by Caroline Diehl, Chief Executive of
Media Trust
Media Trust is a dynamic and innovative charity
that brings together the media industry and
charities. We work to build effective voluntary and
community sector communications through a range
of partnerships, projects and services including
media training, film and TV production, our digital
TV station Community Channel, Community
Newswire, Media Matching and Youth Mentoring.

Media Trust worked in partnership with the ICT

Hub to deliver a number of key objectives. These
included the development of an online advice
service, and an online discussion forum to ensure
voluntary and charity organisations have access to
a range of new media advice, training and support
services. This ‘How to use new media’ guide is full
of practical advice and voluntary sector success
stories resulting from this work.

Tapping into the potential of Web 2.0 can feel

quite daunting at first. After all who hasn’t felt
nervous about blogging for the first time? With this
in mind we’ve put together this booklet (also
available online of course!) to share with you some
of the valuable advice and stories which have
emerged over the course of the project.

We hope that you find it useful and inspiring, and

please do keep sharing your experiences with us.
Take time to visit Media Trust’s website where we
can potentially help by linking you with a skilled
and passionate volunteer advisor, who, in turn,
could introduce you to the brave new world of
blogging, podcasting and twittering!

01
 For more information please visit:

www.mediatrust.org

Many thanks

Caroline Diehl
Chief Executive
Media Trust

carolined@mediatrust.org

02
FOREWORD
Matt Legg ICT Commissioning and
Corporate Development Manager
As technology advances ever faster, we are offered
an increasing number of new and exciting ways for
the voluntary and community sector to reach new
audiences – to communicate, advocate, lobby and
provide services in innovative ways. In addition we
work increasingly in an environment where ICT is
changing many aspects of our society, from how we
conduct business and consume services to how we
spend our leisure time.

The ICT Hub is delighted to have supported this

publication working in partnership with the Media
Trust. Following on from the hugely successful ‘New
Media Case Studies’ publication also produced in
partnership with the Media Trust, this publication
builds upon these case studies providing further
highlights of exemplary practice in how the voluntary
and community sector is benefiting from new media
technology.

We hope this publication will inspire you to think

about how you could use ICT to either do things
better or do better things, and demonstrates just
how powerful technology could be in helping your
organisation.

I hope you will find this insight into new media

useful and the case studies as inspiring as I have.

Matt Legg
ICT Commissioning and Corporate Development
Manager

03
 CHAPTER 1
New Media explained

So you have all heard about...

‘New Media’. They get all excited about gleaming

technology and clever gizmos. They talk in
acronyms and begin sentences with: “ Did you
know you can...”

The rest of us just want to get on with

campaigning, fundraising or service delivery. We
want to tell stories about the people we work with,
the communities we’re in and the issues we’re
passionate about. We want to find and talk to
people who can help us get change, deliver
services or make a difference

Well this book tries to bridge the gap. It’s about

telling stories and having conversations. And its
about a new space where you can do that... it just
happens that that space is on a computer.

Frankly I don’t like computers. They always go

wrong. They hide my work in some side pocket
where I can’t get at it. They refuse to acknowledge
that the printer is there, right next to the desk. No I
don;t like computers... but I love what they can do.
I can see my photos as soon as I’ve taken them. I
can make films and write stories and post them for
the world to see. I can contact friends, colleagues
and comrades. I can find information and make
connections with ideas and people.

This book is about that potential. ‘New Media’ is

just a label. Like ‘Web 2.0’ or ‘The Live Web’ – it’s
just a name that people give for the new space, a
different sort of Internet.

Back in the ol’ days, the Web was like TV. Big
04
companies broadcasted channels at us and made
us come to sites or ‘portals’ to get the information
and content they saw fit to let us have. This was
their space and we were guests.

Now we have something different. We have

millions of people around the world creating their
own media, telling their own stories. They make
films and music, they write stories and reports.
They take photos and have discussions. They write
but they also read. They find others who share
similar interests and passions and have
conversations just like at a party.

This is the biggest party you’ll ever be invited to.

There are groups talking about your issues. There
are people exchanging ideas or chatting about new
ways of doing things or sources of funding. There
are people collecting money or getting signatures
on petitions. There are others organising events
and actions. Your friends (and opponents) are
there. Your clients and stakeholders are there.
They’re telling their stories, coming up with ideas
and questions. They’re getting involved in the
conversations.

You can stand in a corner of the party hoping that

people will come over and listen to you. You can
have your website and hope people will visit. Or
you can get out into the party and mingle, join in
the conversations and tell your stories and listen to
others.

In many ways there is nothing ‘New’ about this

media. It’s as old as humanity itself because it’s
about storytelling, chatting and connecting with
people. It just happens to work via a computer
05
 keyboard and screen. This book will show you that
the technologies are now accessible, easy and
free. You can concentrate on using them to do
what you do anyway – having conversations,
forming relationships and telling stories.

06
CHAPTER 2
Social networks

IMAGINE
First coffee of the morning and Jon checked his
email. There had been a flurry of activity on the site
over night. More people had signed the petition and
said they would be attending the march. The group
that had sprung up around the event was busy with
discussion about how to carry on after the day itself.
It all seemed to be progressing well. Sam in
Newcastle and Helen in Adelaide seemed to be
co-ordinating the activity very well. Jon wondered if
he’d ever meet them in the real world, as he posted
an encouraging message on their pages. While on
the site he noticed a new face, Su was introducing
herself. She was a new teacher in Liverpool and
was wondering if she could help with the march, but
also if she could use it as a theme for her class to
work on this term. Jon left her message and told her
about Mike... he seemed to have established himself
as the first port of call for the teachers who were
getting involved.

Social Networks are in some ways the most chaotic

and difficult to grasp parts of the Live Web... and
therein lies their potential. Sites like Facebook,
MySpace and Bebo allow users to create their own
pages. Some like MySpace and Bebo allow anyone
online to see the personal sites; others like
Facebook only allow qualified members to view the
pages.

These networks are built around the idea of ‘friends’.

Your page is a place where your friends (real or
virtual) can connect with you and you with them.
You can exchange messages, play games, swap
music and videos etc. Pages on social networks are
part self-expression and part bulletin board for
conversations. And that’s where they start to get
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 interesting, social networking sites such as
Facebook or YouTube can help you reach thousands
at the click of a button.

Different social networks have different atmospheres

and different communities. Bebo tends to be for
younger teens, MySpace has a lot of musicians and
wannabee artists while Facebook is increasingly
popular with young adult professionals. There are
even networks such as Linkedin that cater for the
business networking market. What happens when
people of similar ages and cultures get together on
these networks is that they find common interests
and make new ‘friends’ who share an interest in a
particular film director or band or social issue. The
social networks encourage their members to form
groups around these common interests and often
provide tools for them to do so. These can include
applications like calendars or alerts to help organise
or online polls and recommendation tools to get
other people interested.

People who spend a lot of time on social networks

have lots of connections and are involved in lots of
online activities. A typical user might be a member
of a number of groups, be in messaging contact
with real world and virtual friends and be regularly
posting words, pictures and links to their social
network Blog. Social networks are a little like parties
with conversations starting and stopping,
relationships created and ideas and stories
exchanged. This is potentially very powerful for a
campaigner or fundraiser looking to make new
contacts or increase interest in their cause. These
networks are social; their users pride themselves on
connections, friends and conversations.
Consequently they are particularly useful spaces to
spread ideas or generate enthusiasm.

You can of course join any or all of these networks

as an individual or an organisation. Be prepared
however to invest quite a bit of time. Others on the
08
networks will find you and your interests and invite
you to become friends. Of course this is great in
terms of making contacts and possibly widening the
organisations reach but maintaining active social
network presences can be intensive.

The other way in which you can make use of social

networks is to make use of the ‘power of crowds’.
Chances are that someone in your organisation or
your family already has a social network page. As
part of the community they are in an ideal place to
become the ambassador for your organisation and
its issue. You could ask them to include a badge on
their page that says that they support you. They
could write on their Blog about your issue or they
could raise a question and ask people to vote on it.
If they were really keen they could start (or join) a
group. These could be short-lived; maybe leading up
to a march or event, or longer-term; raising
awareness, discussing or campaigning. Chances
are these social networkers will be ‘digital natives’
and so will also be using YouTube and Flickr etc so
they will be able to bring other media together. A
final advantage of using these ambassadors is that
they will know how to ‘speak’ and interact in these
spaces. They will be able to exploit the network
potential to the full. Facebook for example is perfect
for the armchair activist. With Facebook you can
encourage people to raise money or heighten
awareness without them even having to leave the
comfort of their own home.

One thing to note about the Live Web in general

and social networks in particular is that these
spaces and the relationships they generate are
unpredictable. You may start a conversation off but,
like in the real world, you have no say in where that
goes or what others do with the idea. Again this can
be very powerful. Supporters may take an issue and
create a whole new fundraising idea that catches on
and brings in all sorts of new supporters. Great! But
they might also take an issue and change the focus
09
 or even the point. You can of course disassociate
your organisation from that shift but the
conversation will continue. One advantage of trying
to build a network of social network ambassadors is
that they can help to keep the conversation going in
the direction you want it to.

PROS and CONS

pros
1. Free.
2. The biggest party you’ll ever be invited to. There
MUST be people who can help you out there.
3. Passionate and active community of users, many
of whom are politically and socially active.
4. Can take on a creative life of its own.
5. Very high-profile at the moment... lot of potential
media coverage.

cons
1. Can be intimidating for first timer.
2. Can be time consuming. If you’re playing there,
set yourself targets and time limits and let your
networks know.
3. Can be fickle. What is fashionable to talk about
today may not be tomorrow.
4. Difficult to get tone of voice right.
5. Impossible to control.

GETTING STARTED
1. Visit sites that don’t require registration to view
(most except Facebook) and look at the sorts of
conversations online. Search for relevant groups
and postings.
2. Find out if any of your supporters (or their
children!) are already involved. Ask for their
advice or enlist as ambassadors.
3. Decide which networks to sign up to.
4. Set clear aims and time limits e.g. get signatures
for an online petition, recruit for event, get ideas
for new schools pack.
5. Create an account on your chosen networks.
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Make sure the name is relevant and attractive.
6. Look for groups on the network you can join
before starting a new one.
7. Regularly review what your presence on the
networks is achieving.

TOP TIPS
1. Have clear aims and time limits. Evaluate
regularly.
2. Make use of ‘digital natives’ to be your
ambassadors. Be sure to support them.
3. Don’t try and be something you’re not. Be human
and use your real tone of voice.
4. Don’t worry if your space is not all about work.
People might connect with you because of your
love of knitting and then get involved in
campaigning on climate change.
5. Find ways to integrate the online and offline
worlds. Invite your ‘friends’ to your events or
arrange to meet on the march.
6. Connect your social network page to your other
Live Web work e.g. your photos on Flickr, your
favourite videos on YouTube etc.

CASE STUDY

The Mersey Basin Campaign

(www.merseybasin.org.uk) is an environmental
organisation based in the North West of England.
One of its key aims to get people involved in
protecting their area and take an active part in its
development. The Campaign has it own Blog
(http://merseybasin.typepad.co.uk/) and as a way of
getting new material, it came up with the idea of
getting some colleagues who were taking part in the
Mongol Rally (London – Ulan Bator) in a ‘green’ car
to take a Mersey Basin carved wooden salmon.

The idea at the start was that they’d deliver the fish
along with a solar panel and laptop, to a local
school in the Gobi desert. But the Live Web took
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 over. The fish ended up being passed to some
backpackers, who took it to China. The backpackers
then established a Facebook group to chart the
fish’s journey, and she’s now on her third ‘guardian’,
somewhere in Burma – (www.travellingfishy.com /
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=1006162
5194).

It hadn’t been the Mersey Basin Campaign’s idea to

use Facebook, there supporters had done it
themselves. As Kate Fox, the Campaign’s New
Media Manager says: “we’d fought shy of ‘doing’
Facebook, but it happened organically, giving us a
chance to post information and get our stories out
to a whole new audience.”

12
CHAPTER 3
Bloggs

IMAGINE
She had just come back from meeting the class
working on the project. She was so excited she had
to tell her colleagues. After a discussion over coffee,
she sat down at her computer and wrote a quick
paragraph on her blog: “... and the best bit was when
John said that he hadn’t thought of it that way before.”
She posted her story and went back to work. After a
few phone calls finalising details for Saturday, she
posted the venue and times on her blog. As she did
so she noticed that someone from another mental
health charity, this time in Newcastle, had left a
comment asking how she had got the kids so fired up
and telling her about a new fund that was opening in
the North East, would she be interested in doing a
joint bid? And there was also a comment from John
saying that he’d posted a link on his Bebo page.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em blogs are everywhere.

Politicians have them. Celebrities have them. Even
the bosses of big corporate companies boast about
their online journals. For some they are self-
indulgent ramblings about what you had for tea. For
others they are a sign that the power of publishing
and media has been taken out of the hands of Big
Media and now everyone has a voice. The truth is,
they’re both.

A blog is an online diary that can be easily updated

as frequently as needs be. Whilst the main
commentary is from one editorial source anyone
reading can comment on the content. And the
beauty of blogs is that they are easy to set up, edit
and keep up to date. A blog (‘web log’) tells an
online narrative and can be used to highlight any
particular issues or events.

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 It allows you to publish quickly online, post and
answer comments and upload photos. What it does
above all is create a relationship with your users as
you can address them informally and keep them up
to date with what is going on, what you are
planning and what is coming up, just as you might
chat with your friends. This is why it has commonly
been used as an online diary; however there are
ways that you can make this work for you and
your charity.

That’s about it really. You can add a calendar so

that readers can track back through recent posts, a
search box etc but essentially it’s a personal page
or journal.

The real magic though comes in that all the posts

on the blog have a button that readers can click and
then comment on the story. Those comments are
then added to the posting. Postings can have as
many comments as you like. They can all be from
different people or they might be a backwards and
forwards discussion with someone asking the author
a question, getting a response and ending up in a
conversation.

Critics are right. Some blogs are boring accounts of

the everyday. Yes there are some blogs that we
might find very distasteful, (Remember the Girl with
a one track mind?) and even dangerous (her
relationships and career were damaged after the
true identity of this saucy anonymous blogger was
revealed). But there are many that consist of useful
information and links the author has found. Others
are more journalistic with news and views from
communities. Still others are simply passionate
arguments or accounts. And then there are some
that are just stories of real life.

There are two ways in which you could begin to

engage with the world of blogs. Firstly you could
just read them. Find ones that are relevant to your
14
work, issue, community etc. and then read. To find
relevant blogs, use a search engine like
www.technorati.com. When you have found a
blogger that’s useful, look at the links she includes
on her site, that’ll point you towards others. You
might find information, news or a new perspective.
You might find someone who you can work with. If
you find something good, leave a comment. That
new relationship might lead somewhere.

Secondly you could launch your own (see Box on

setting-up). Don’t worry; this is not like setting up a
website. Think of it as opening a notebook. At one
level, blogs are a very efficient way of distributing
information. If you have some news or information
supporters, stakeholders and even the media, post
it on your blog. Your supporters, members and
journalists can subscribe to your Blog and get the
information as soon as you write it. No need to
send out printed press releases or spend ages by
the Fax machine.

But blogs are more than newswires. They are story-

telling spaces. You can use them to show why you
are doing what you are doing and allow others to
contact you. Just start writing – short pieces, long
pieces whatever. Talk about the family you just met.
Tell the story of your office or the last council
meeting. Tell your readers why that parkland is
important. The key thing is to sound like you’re a
real person and like the issue you’re involved in is
important. Don’t try and write like a reporter or a
spin doctor – write like a human. Don’t write a
funding proposal or an annual report, tell stories.
Don’t feel as though you have to write a lot or even
every day. Maybe tell your readers that’ll you be
adding a new story every Friday afternoon.
Remember you’re talking with people not at them.

Finally think of your blog as your part of a

conversation. If you find an interesting or even
annoying posting on someone else’s blog, write a
15
 response on your blog. Link to their entry by
copying the web address of their posting into your
story. Your Blog will then automatically add your
story to theirs as a comment.

As your blog gets going, maybe one entry is the

story of a project you’ve been working on with a
school and the next is information about an event or
news of a funding success. People who read or
subscribe to your blog keep up-to-date with your
news and also why that news is important.

Amnesty does a very good job of combining

personal information with tit bits about the
organisation and news about human rights.
However there are links across the web on how
best to blog. Just a take a look at some of the below
and get blogging! If you really want to take your
interest in blogging further The Rough Guides
publish a great introduction to blogging.

PROS and CONS

pros:
1. Free.
2. Easy to use – no need to know about web
programming or get techies involved.
2. Easy to subscribe to – keep in constant touch
with supporters.
4. Interactive – people can start conversations with
you.
5. Accessible – being mainly text-based, Blogs are
very easy for people using screen-readers.

cons:
1. Can be difficult to remember how to write like a
real person and not sound like a PR person.
2. Can be addictive – set yourself set times to
update.
3. Conversations can be time consuming – set
yourself times to answer comments and make
sure it’s clear on the Blog.
16
4. Some of your supporters might not have Internet
access so keep in contact in other ways.

GET STARTED
1. Go to wordpress www.wordpress.com, blogger,
www.blogger.com or typepad, www.typepad.com
and set up a free account.
2. Give your Blog a name that’s relevant and
attractive e.g. saveourpond.wordpress.com.
3. Put a link on your existing site to your new Blog.
Also add the address to your letterhead and
email signature.
4. Write a story about a real experience that sums
up what your campaign or service is all about.
5. Visit www.technorati.com and search for your
issue or area of work. Read a few of the Blogs
and then write a response on your Blog.
6. Work out and publish a schedule that tells your
readers when you will be adding stories and
when you will be responding.

TIPS
1. Think small – short and often. Think of it as
keeping in contact with friends.
2. Think human – tell stories and talk like a real
person who’s passionate about what they do.
3. Be honest – admit when you’ve got it wrong or
don’t know.
4. Develop your own editorial style; the beauty of
blogging lies in its informal nature.
5. Link – point your readers to other interesting
Bloggers or sources of information. The more
you link to other blogs and the more they link
back to you, the more people will find you online.
6. Post regularly– No matter how well written your
blog is, readers wont return if they see that it is
not being updated.
7. Tell everyone about your Blog.

CASE STUDY
Simon Blake is the CEO of Brook the sexual health
charity for young people. The Charity already had a
17
 successful website but Simon decided to launch a
blog so he could talk directly to supporters, partners
and anyone interested in issues around sexual
health. Called ‘Talking of Sex’, his blog at
http://brookcentres.blogspot.com/ gives him a
space to talk about the organisation (his story of the
annual party gives you a picture of the team and the
people they work with); the people he meets as well
as his opinions and perspectives on the important
issues his organisation is dealing with.

His blog is more than a platform for Simon to sound

off. People leave comments about their experiences
or their own ideas. Simon says that sometimes he
wonders whether his blog is making any difference
and then he finds people saying: “Oh you’re the one
that blogs.” “It can be quite overwhelming
sometimes,” he says. “blogging makes you reflect on
your work. It keeps me connected.”

Simon had been worried about broaching

controversial issues but found that blogging was an
ideal way of establishing his organisation’s position:
“blogging helps me be a bit bolder in what I say
about our issues. We’ve found it’s completely safe
to do it, indeed its impossible not to.”

LINKS
www.technorati.com – a blog search engine
www.bloglines.com – a site that lets you subscribe
to lots of blogs and have all their posts brought
together in one place www.feedburner.com – a
service that helps you publish your blog as a feed
(see the chapter on feeds) or as an email list. It also
tracks the number of readers. Handbook for
bloggers and ‘cyber dissidents’ from Reporters
without borders:

http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542
www.squarespace.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogging

18
CHAPTER 4
Forums

IMAGINE
Brenda is two months into receiving treatment for
breast cancer. Once she got over the shock and
disbelief of her diagnosis. Brenda begun her
research, after some depressing search results,
she stumbled across a page on the site of a
leading breast cancer charity. Here she found
ongoing conversations that she identified with,
between participants suffering and in remission
from breast cancer. Through this forum Brenda
received advice, from the qualified nurses that act
as moderators, on how to combat some of the
side effects of chemotherapy. She also finds
comfort in offering words of support to newly
diagnosed women.

Forums allow discussion between users. Once set

up they can be cheap to run, encourage the
exchange of ideas and build up a community.
Scope has set up one for its users,
http://www.scope.org.uk/forum/index.php that does
just that.

Scope is the charity for people with cerebral palsy.

It concerns itself with research and treatment for
sufferers as well as support groups, advice services
and awareness campaigns. For a charity such as
this it is therefore important to be in touch with its
members and give a voice to those who need to be
heard. By offering an online forum, sufferers and
carers can get together and exchange ideas,
support or just chat about what’s on their minds.
And they do. With over 15,000 registered users,
Scope certainly has a thriving forum that helps
break down the barriers between the online world
and the real issues that people face.

19
 What are forums?
Forums are online web pages allowing anyone to
post messages and respond. They allow people to
talk about anything – sharing whatever is on their
mind. There are essentially two types of forum – pre-
and post-moderated. A pre-mod forum is where all
posts are checked by the organisation or moderator
before they go live. This means that it is up to you,
as the owner of the forum, to make sure that nothing
inflammatory or slanderous or any random
advertising can be sent live. This is the model that
Scope has used. It’s a good one, but it does mean
that you will have to ensure that there is someone
available to check all posts before they are sent live
for everyone to read on the big bad cyberweb. This
also means that people posting won’t necessarily
know when their posts go live.

A post-mod forum means that users can post

directly on to the live site. This makes for a much
more dynamic relationship with your users, but the
cons are that you are not always aware of what is
being posted.

Alex White, web content manager at Scope, says

that for them, the key feature was not allowing users
to exchange contact details, so they opted for a pre-
mod board.

Having taken some advice from NCH, Alex was

concerned with users leaving themselves vulnerable
to unsavoury predators. Whist many users claimed
they felt they didn’t want protecting, he took the
view that it was better to look after all users and
ensure that all posts were vetted before going live.

They have since had the odd complaint when users

have posted email addresses that have been
deleted by the hosts. The rest of the message will
then be posted live with a note remind users that it
has been pre-moderated. Though this is not always

20
popular Alex points out: “we do it for a very good
reason”. i.e.: making sure that no one can give their
personal details to the wrong person.

How to set one up.

The main thing to consider is whether you are going
to create your own forum from scratch or whether
you are going to use off-the-peg software. There is a
lot of free software and a lot of different options out
there. Just type ‘software forums’ into Google and
you’ll be immediately overwhelmed.

A typical forum will allow users to create their own

user name (user contact details, such as email, will
normally be collated into a database, but these
won’t usually appear on the board itself). Standard
features will show when a message was posted (by
date and sometimes by time), allow users to
respond to them, and set up a themed discussion
so it is easy to follow an online chat, see how many
times a posting has been viewed and search on the
system for a keyword or name.

How to direct users to your

organisation’s forum
You will need to ensure there is a tab or a link in
the main navigation to the forum. To encourage
users to actively contribute, try highlighting some of
the more interesting discussions that are happening
on your home page.

You know how frustrating it is when you are

searching for contact details on an organisation’s
web site, but to no avail? Well, bear this in mind
when you are setting up your forum. Though most
people will want to exchange information online you
might find that there are some who actually want to
get in direct contact with you. In their introduction
to the forum Scope offer a phone number and an
email address for people to contact them directly.
This means that if a visitor to the forum sees

21
 something that bothers them in the posts – maybe
an inaccuracy that someone else has posted – they
can contact the charity directly.

Points of view
The main thing to bear in mind when hosting a
forum is that the people who contribute to the
forums are expressing THEIR own views – not
those of your organisation.

It is worth making this clear on your pages and, as

mentioned above, also letting people know how to
contact you if they have a complaint or query about
the forum or what is posted on the pages. Be sure
to have someone answering those incoming emails
though!

Hosting forums
Hosting is an essential part of managing a forum.
You can, of course, set up a forum and let it take its
own course. However, like any community, it will run
better if it has a guide. On the internet these online
guides take the form of hosts – they can help seed
information, answer queries that users post, make
sure that no slander takes place (I have seen some
particularly flaming discussions take place between
some normally calm, placid and friendly book
readers) and to occasionally step in and calm the
cyber flames. Just as at a party, a good host, never
dominates the forum, but initiates conversations and
ensures everything runs smoothly. Your role is an
important one, like the host of a party, to protect
your members or guests contact details. A good
host should never be too liberal with the guests’
contact details!

You should think about giving yourself a name such

as ‘webmaster/webmistress/host/forum host’ etc.,
so that people know that you are representing your
charity. You might also want to set up a ‘thread’ – or
discussion area just for announcements from your
organisation. Scope has established a category
22
called ‘forum news’ for this purpose.

To help build up the community feel, you might also

want to make sure that you welcome all new visitors
to the site. People respond better when they know if
there is a friendly helping hand around.

Scope has invested time and resource intro

moderating their forum space.
Alex White, points out that all the Scope hosts have
backgrounds in nursing, social work or telephone
counselling so they are well-trained in the field of
advising people. This means that if members post
messages asking about a detailed case, a Scope
response worker will either post a general message
on the board in response or might suggest
contacting them on confidential phone line. This
provides a slick dual support service to its members.
Regional response workers might take this one step
further and may offer home visits if they feel this is
required. The combination of well-trained hosts,
telephone support and outreach work means that
they are able to offer a personal response to their
users. And yet they can also reach many users at
once. For example, they recently found that one
person posted a message on the board asking
about special shoes for disabled children. A host
replied with information about which shoes may help
and the posting had over 2000 views; proving how
the forum can act as a useful resource for more than
just the person who posts.

Unfortunately, Spammers are hard to avoid in forum

spaces. Whilst Scope gets over 20 genuine
messages a day, they also get 50-60 spam
messages. You’ll find you might want to make sure
that the tidying up becomes part of your daily
routine in checking the messages. This is also an
essential for social networking sites.

Very occasionally, says Alex, someone can become

persistently abusive and the hosts will delete their
23
 message. The reason behind deleting a message is
always explained and if it’s just a general spammer,
they won’t return but occasionally a user might
apologise for their language used, rewrite their
message and repost. The other issue you need be
aware of is libel. You don’t need to be legally
trained, just watch out for postings criticising
products or people.

Options
There will be many potential options regarding the
style and format of the forum. One of which will be if
your forum reveals a posters’ online history to other
users. Scope allows you to click on a user’s name
and see how many posts they have made and when
their last posting was. This may seem intrusive but it
all helps build up a community.

You will have to decide whether you want a forum

that people will have to log in and register with or
one onto which one could post directly. Asking
people to log in may seem like unnecessary or
restrictive but it means that you can build up your
own database of users and monitor where they
come from. It also means that you can be sure that
everyone who signs up to your forum is legitimate,
has read the rules and is not trying to sign up for
advertising purposes! The last thing you want is your
website being hijacked by a Viagra salesman.One
thing to make sure you have clearly highlighted,
though, is a guide to the rules for posting.

What to avoid
The trap that many organisations seem to fall into is
failing to allocate enough resources to their forums.
The set-up costs can vary, but it is worth allocating
some funds to make sure that the forums are well-
staffed and maintained. This will depend on the level
of service you want to offer of course, but Scope
have seven full time members of staff who take it in
turns to moderate their forums, and there is
someone allocated to do this each day.
24
CHAPTER 5
Flickr

IMAGINE
The Council was due to make its decision about the
waste ground tomorrow. Councillor Smith sat by his
computer and looked at the site. He was used to
the group’s rhetoric now but there was something
different on the site. There was a photo of the
ground and a link that said: “more”. Councillor Smith
clicked on the link and suddenly his screen was
filled with pictures. There were ones of children
playing, football teams, and a group of Scouts
building a den from trees. There were pictures of
kite flyers and dog walkers, old ladies with a flask of
tea on a bench, cyclists, and walkers. There were
pictures by amateur photographers of the waste
ground at sunset. There were out-of-focus camera
phone self-portraits. What was more these pictures
all shared a common title: ‘Save Ambridge
Common’ and they had attracted comments from
well beyond Ambridge. People in surrounding
villages left best wishes. People from around the
world were asking to be kept in touch on the fate of
the waste ground. Councillor Smith turned his
attention to the proposal to be voted on tomorrow.
He was no longer facing a couple of activists... he
was facing a community.

Photographs have always been a powerful means of

communication but until recently, frankly they’d been
a pain to handle online. You had to organise them,
find storage space and arrange them on your
webpages. And if you wanted to make use of
someone else’s pictures you had to link to them or
ask for copies that you could add to your ‘gallery’.
Not now though. Online photo-sharing sites mean
you can manage your own photo library but also
connect with other people’s libraries to tell your
stories in new ways.
25
 The leading photo-sharing site is Flickr
(www.flickr.com). . Flickr calls itself ‘the best online
photo management and sharing application in the
world’.

In short, a free account at Flickr lets you upload your

digital photographs, from your computer, by email or
direct from your mobile phone. It is used by amateur
and professional photographers alike as well as
individuals and organisations. You can add titles,
descriptions and keywords or tags. You can arrange
them into sets or albums and set the copyright on
each image. You can specify that all images are your
copyright and people can’t use them or you can use
what is called a “Creative Commons’ licence which
means that people are free to use your work for
non-commercial purposes as long as they give you a
credit. This is potentially useful because you might
find your pictures taking your story or message
around the world.

Flickr provides you with100mb of free web space,

all at the click of a button. Along with this, you can
add up to 300 contacts (other Flickr members) and
75 tags for your photos. Whilst using 75 word tags
for your photos isn’t advisable, do make sure that
you list the main search terms for your charity so
that your photos can be found. Four or five tags are
normally enough.

When your Flickr gallery is up and running, you can

then use a simple piece of code to ‘embed’ the
pictures on your site. Visitors to your site will see
your images but you don’t have to worry about
hosting or arranging them. You can have a gallery on
your site run for free by Flickr.
Flickr is not a substitute for a full website for your
charity, but what it does is offer an easy point of
access to collate your photos and to encourage
user submissions. Just as the Children in Need
2007 website encouraged users to submit their
videos via YouTube, you might want to encourage
26
your users to submit their photos of a particular
event via Flickr from your website. So you’ll need to
make sure there is a clear link and clear instructions
from your own site.

So far so good but Flickr is based on sharing – and

like all the Live Web sites and services,
conversations. You can add keywords or tags to
your Flickr photos so that people searching on the
site for “Ambridge” will find your pictures and your
campaign or organisation. If you include other tags
such as “park”, “playground” etc, people, who are
possibly also interested in play etc, will find your
work. Similarly, you might find them by searching for
“play” or “park”. A new connection is made and you
might be able to work together.

Another key aspect of Flickr is that visitors can leave

comments. You can set it up so Flickr let’s you know
when someone has left a comment on one of your
pictures. Someone leaving a comment is someone
talking to you, expressing an interest in what you are
doing. If you respond, maybe it’s the start of a new
relationship which might be a fundraising or
campaigning relationship. It might be a potential
partner... who knows. And of course you can leave
comments on other photos and open a dialogue
that way too.

Every other Flickr user is potentially one of your

Contacts. Once you start adding people as your
contacts their photos get aggregated for you on a
separate page which you can view. So the real
power of Flickr comes in groups. In our imaginary
example, the Save Ambridge Common group’s
photos were part of a larger network of images
taken by the local ramblers, dog walkers, kite flyers
and kids. They were all linked together by common
tags but they were also part of a Flickr Group.
Anyone can start a group and then encourage
others to post their photos to that Group. Not only
do you get lots of interesting images but you get
27
 people feeling as though they are part of a group
whether that is a campaign or a fundraising group.
They own it. They have a stake in it.

More and more people are taking pictures. The

availability of cheap digital cameras and in particular
the ubiquity of mobile phone cameras mean that
people are documenting their lives like never before.
Many of your supporters will be taking photos.
They’ll be taking them at your events but they may
also be taking pictures that are about your issue.
Many will be taking their photos on their mobile
phones and sharing them with friends and family. If
you brought them together on Flickr together with
images you’ve taken, pictures of your fundraising
garden party or the lobby of parliament, you have a
documentary built (and owned) by the people
involved. And to the outsider, your organisation
looks as though it is at the heart of a vibrant
community of people passionate about an issue or
idea.

PROS and CONS

pros:
1. Free
2. Easy to use – Flickr gives you free tools to
upload and resize your images.
3. Easy to set up Groups to link people together.
4. Easy to embed images on your site – you can
embed one picture or a whole album.
5. Reach – your photos will be seen by more
people on Flickr then on your site.

cons:
1. You can’t control what other photographers do –
they might use you tag on images you don’t like.
2. Groups can get very big and might drift off the
focus you set. Be very clear on the Group page.
3. Although you are only legally responsible for the
images that you own, you might have a

28
professional responsibility to ensure that your
network of photographers are aware of issues
around Internet safety and copyright.

GET STARTED
1. Go to www.flickr.com and set up a free account.
2. Think of a name for the Flickr page that’s relevant
and attractive. It might be your organisation or it
might be the issue. Put a link to your homepage
on your Flickr profile.
3. Upload, describe and tag some photos. Think of
tags that people might search for and include
your organisation’s name.
4. Create a Flickr ‘badge’ and embed it on your
site.
5. Start a Flickr group around your issue.
6. Encourage supporters to upload relevant photos
to the group. Use your Blog as well as offline.
communications.
7. Search on Flickr for other groups and
photographers taking pictures that are relevant.
Leave some comments and invitations to join
your Group.
8. Build Flickr into your planning: “How are we
going to cover the Marathon this year?”

TIPS
1. Get as many photographers ‘covering’ your story
as possible.
2. Don’t look for ‘great photographs’. Look for
passionate pictures, ones that tell a story even if
it is a bit out of focus.
3. Think of a set of tags that every photographer
knows to add to any of their pictures.
4. Be aware of the privacy of any of the people in
your images. As their image will be available to
all (you can however set privacy levels for Flickr)
you may not want to name them to protect their
identity.
5. Publicise your album and group. Link to it from all
your other Live Web spaces.

29
 CASE STUDY
Sobell House is an Oxford based hospice
(www.sobellhospiceoxford.org).
It uses Flickr to host all of its photos
[http://www.flickr.com/people/sobellhospiceoxford/].

“It’s so much easier than the running battles with

designers or having to administer them,” says
fundraiser Kevin Game. Sobell House encourages
its supporters to upload their photos and link them
into the charity’s images. Sobell House has found
that people contact the charity after finding images
on the site. Some ask if they can use the images
and some just want to know more.

Kevin is exploring the possibilities of using the site

to make contacts outside the charity world. “Flickr
builds a community of photo users,” he says. As an
example, the local Harley Davidson group attended
a fundraising walk and took photos which are part of
the Sobell House album of the event. Kevin is
adding the tag “Harley Davidson” so that any other
bikers looking for picture of their beloved bikes will
find his images and his organisation. Maybe those
bikers are also looking for a charity to support.

30
CHAPTER 6
Interviews in the digital age

IMAGINE
Completely by chance Mike meets a well known
soapstar at his wife’s company gala event. Mike was
seated next to the soapstar and they got to talking
about the premature babies charity that Mike
volunteers for in his spare time. It turns out that
prematurity was a cause close to the celeb’s heart
as her sister had recently had a seriously premature
son. Mike was surprised when he put in his
customary follow up call a few days later, the star
enthusiastically agreed to not only donate but
become an ambassador for the prematurity charity,
appear at a few of their upcoming events and better
still become somewhat of a spokesperson,
promoting their work to the media and recording
interviews and testimonials.
Rather than the tired old method of printing the
star’s testimonial, Mike begun to consider more
interesting ways they could use the heartfelt words
of their newfound celebrity stakeholder. Why not
create an online gallery with audio and video stories
from their supporters, and not just their famous
supporters; any of their donors or volunteers

Loveearth is an innovative organisation engaging

with their target audiences; taking us to the edge of
the world and retaining their interest with celebrities
giving their heartfelt accounts of their passion for
the planet. All visitors to the site need to do is click
on a link to hear, for example, Will Young talk about
his love for Africa.

What this design award nominated site is doing is

putting up audio ‘postcards’ from users, celebrities
and nature ‘heroes’. The latter includes wildlife
cameramen and women as well as natural history
film-makers and producers. These audio pieces
31
 involve such varied people as musicians, presenters
and directors all talking about what inspires them
most on this wild and exciting planet that we live on.
This in turn encourages visitors to the site to think
about what is around them and even send in their
own postcards. On these pages:
http://www.loveearth.com/uk/postcards/galleries/cel
ebrities
http://www.loveearth.com/uk/postcards/view/b9f53f
8f-6e5c-4601-aa41-dad4c6692401
Will Young talks about his affinity with the African
continent, and the wide open skies and landscape
of the iconic Serengeti… The audio file is
accompanied by a still shot of him on location
helping to situate the audio and give some vibrancy
to the page.

What this content means is that visitors to the site

can listen to personal stories, bringing both the site
and the campaign alive. It adds texture to the site.
Whilst Loveearth is primarily a commercial site from
BBC Worldwide, it does have charitable partners
and is raising awareness for good causes.

With partners such as the World Wildlife Fund, the

international environmental charity, EarthWatch,
EWB – a Botswana based NGO, focusing on
tracking and looking after elephants – Loveearth has
managed to get audio commentaries from people
such as Will Young, Graham Norton and Jack
Osborne. Whilst you might not have the power or
the contacts that the BBC brings to attract big
names, there are still plenty of things you can do…

Firstly never underestimate how willing people are to

support your charity if you ask. Why not approach
local celebrities, dignitaries, or people in the
limelight you know of who tend to support charities
such as yours. You never know, they may well
record a testimony for your site, though you’ll
probably have to be flexible with your deadlines in
order to fit in with them.
32
Its best if you keep the audio recording to no longer
than two minutes long. As with most things on the
web, people tend to get distracted fairly quickly so
don’t make it much longer than that. It will also help
you to secure your interviewee if they know that they
don’t have to talk for too long! And try to give the
interviewee some guidance as to what you want
them to talk about in that time. Structured questions
can sometimes work well.

You’ll need to record your interview or feature in a

digital format compatible with the most common
uploading tools. A minidisk recorder (with a
reasonably good microphone) will usually suffice,
though data tape can be even better. You may need
to invest a little in some cheap editing software to
cut out the ‘umms…‘ and errs…‘. However many
computers (mainly macs) come with such free
editing software like Garageband, or Audacity. On a
PC the best option is usually Adobe Audition
(though this isn’t free). With a very basic level of skill
you can cut and edit your celebrity chat/feature and
save it as an mp3, a Windows media file or even a
Realmedia file.

When you’ve mastered the art of spicing up your

site with sound clips you could then perhaps move
up to basic video clips! Again, with a cheap digital
camera and some editing software (once more,
Macs come with an inbuilt editing suite that’s very
easy to master) you could be uploading your
footage to one of the many web 2.0 video sharing
sites such as YouTube. Once up there you can
embed the clips on your site with a tiny bit of
embedded code…

Often it’s good to give all three options to allow as

many different users with as many different types of
computer to access the audio stream. Also people
may wish to save the audio for later to listen to on
their mp3 players or iPods. Why not give them the
chance to save to their hard disc? Once you have
33
 your piece of audio and have uploaded it to your
site, best practice is to tell users how long the audio
interview will be so that they know how long they
need to listen for!

When you’ve mastered the art of spicing up your

site with sound clips you could then perhaps move
up to basic video clips! Again, with a cheap digital
camera and some editing software (once more,
Macs come with an inbuilt editing suite that’s very
easy to master) the clips can be uploaded onto
sharing sites such as YouTube and then hosted on
your own site with that embedded code.

Taking things one step further, Loveearth pins their

‘postcards’ onto an interactive Google map of the
world, where celebrities and heroes’ postcards sit
alongside those of users, showing the responses
they have had right across the globe, and helping to
build on the metaphor of the virtual postcard.

However if you feel you can’t get an audio interview

with a celebrity, don’t fret. Loveearth has gotten
round this problem as well by just putting up the text
testimonies, as they did for moonwalker, Buzz Aldrin,
and presenter, Michaela Strachan. If you can get a
celebrity to write testimonies for you, you’re doing
just as well!

And if you want to take the testimonials one step

further there is one more leaf you can take out of
the Loveearth book. That is to encourage users to
submit their own thoughts about the work that you
do. If you are going to show user responses, it is
worth highlighting how valuable they are by treating
them to the same exposure as celebrities whether
you’re putting them on your homepage, a gallery on
a map! All feedback and responses help build your
community, a sense of participation that will
undoubtedly include and encourage both new and
existing users.

34
CHAPTER 7
Wikis

IMAGINE
Simon had to have the new strategy paper ready for
the Trustees meeting by a week on Tuesday. He
could write it himself of course but with the delicate
political situation within the organisation he didn’t
want to go it alone. He hated the word
‘stakeholders’ but unless the whole organisation felt
ownership, the Trustees would never buy it. He
looked on the Wiki. His initial page of themes had
sprung off in all directions. The fundraiser had linked
from his discussion of ‘single parents’ to another
page of ideas about marginalised groups and a new
EU fund. The schoolteacher they’d worked with last
year had edited the page on education correcting a
misunderstanding and linking to a Guardian article.
Most interestingly, the intern had bounced off one of
the campaigns pages and written a thoughtful piece
about her own experience. Simon had no idea as to
the level of the interns experience and potential. He
added a link back to the main report structure page
and left a note asking her to have a coffee next time
she was in. She really had something to add.

When we think of wikis we tend to think of

Wikipedia – the collaborative encyclopedia built with
the wisdom of crowds. At Wikipedia, anyone can
begin a new article or edit an existing one and make
it better. There is of course a lot of debate about
whether Wikipedia is as accurate and reliable as
encyclopedias built by the great and the good from
the top-down, but one thing is sure, the Wikipedia is
built with passion, enthusiasm and involvement.
Everyone who adds to it or makes it better is doing
so out of their interest in the issue or subject. They
have a stake in the ownership of their encyclopedia.
It is those issues of passion, enthusiasm,

35
 involvement and ownership which are at the heart of
the wiki way. And it is those that offer great potential
for teams and organisations.

To install or use a wiki within an organisation is at

one level to offer a giant whiteboard where anyone
can write documents together, collect together
information or just brainstorm and connect ideas.
The ability to easily add ‘pages’ and connect them
together means not only that lots of material can be
amassed, connected and made searchable – a bit
like an organisational encyclopedia – but that
everyone can get involved. Enabling everyone
across an organisation to contribute their
knowledge, information and experience means an
organisation is making the best use of the
information and knowledge that is spread across
people’s desks and inside their heads.

But wikis offer more than that. Because they are

more informal than traditional knowledge
management systems, people can feel able to add
ideas, notes and thoughts to the mix. Your team has
a wealth of experience and ideas as well as codified
knowledge. Because creating a wiki page and
linking it to others is so easy and informal, people
can feel happy to add informal notes or asides to
the mix. These may spur others into making
connections, adding and bouncing idea round. In
effect we have an encyclopedia and brainstorm
space in one. As far as use goes in the non-for
profit sector there are endless possibilities for wikis.
The Wikimedia Foundation, the charitable
organisation behind Wikipedia, unsurprisingly heads
up the forefront of wiki use themselves, by
dedicating a section of their own site to debates
and discussions about their own charitable
organisation.
http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#The_
Wikimedia_Foundation

According to Eric Mattson, social media scholar and

36
co-author of the study, ‘Blogging for the Hearts of
Donors’, focussing on social media usage by the
200 largest charities in the US, not for profit
organisations are overtaking businesses in their use
of social media, including wikis. These organisations
are built up of a passionate core of people who
want to hear about what is going on and want to
participate.

Wikis, whether you use software on your own server

(like the free mediawiki software that runs
Wikipedia) or on a free host like wikispaces, pbwiki
or wetpaint all work on the same principle. Every
page has an ‘edit’ button. When you click on it you
can change any text and add links either to another
or new page on the wiki, or to another website.
That’s about it.

The most important thing to remember is that wikis

are a radical thing for most people, particularly
people in organisations. We are not used to being
asked to contribute on equal terms, to being given
permission to join in and add our thoughts and
ideas. We are not used to be told to just get
involved, pitch in and help build something. We are
not used to having informal thoughts and notes
valued alongside polished, finished documents. As
such any organisation looking to develop a
wikispace needs to look at training and supporting
its staff so that they can play a full part and the
potential network effects can work their wonders.

So, how could an organisation use a wiki? You

could develop a wiki as your organisation’s
knowledge base, an ever-growing resource that
pulls together all of your staff and stakeholders’
wisdom, experience and information. This can be
formal information or informal knowledge and
stories.

In terms of managing, sharing and making the most

of information and resources, Mercy Ships, a US
37
 based organisaton [www.mercyships.org] which
provides hospitals ships uses a wiki to keep track of
its complex logistics and teams. In the wake of
Hurricane Katrina, wikis were used to bring people,
ideas and information together
[http://katrinahelp.info]. Others have used wikis as
part of planning. A loose collection of civil servants
and social media advocates used a wiki to organise
a conference
[http://barcamp.org/BarcampUKGovweb]. Global
Voice Online has used a wiki
[http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/wiki/] to bring
together information and help it not only plan but
also run and follow up the work of its real-world
conferences.

It is of course possible to widen an information

wikispace beyond the walls of an individual
organisation. The Sustainable Community Action
wiki [http://sca21.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page] acts
as a place where people involved in the area, from
many different organisations can share information,
build knowledge and connections as well providing
a rich site for people looking for information about
the subject and the people and organisations
involved. By opening up the space, information not
only flows more effectively but arguably gets turned
into knowledge that can form part of initiatives,
plans, relationships and action. When information
becomes personal and connected to the real world
and work, it becomes knowledge that can be used.
It becomes powerful.

It is the power of wikis to make information work

harder and becoming knowledge that offers huge
potential for organisations willing to open up and
enable their teams and stakeholders and clients
become involved.

As well as acting as archives or encyclopedias,

wikis can help organisations and movements plan.
As with the barcamp and Global voices examples
38
above, wikis can enable the sharing of information
prior to events. But they can also be used as a
creative thinking space for more general
brainstorming. Many corporates including Sony,
Nokia and investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort
Wasserstein are now using them as a means of
team building and also as a way of planning.

PROS and CONS

pros
1. Limitless space to brainstorm ideas while
keeping them all connected and searchable
2. Effectively gives permission for everyone to
contribute easily and on equal terms
3. Very effective at cutting out emails and sending
documents backwards and forwards
4. Can create organic archive that matches the way
people work and think. People create their own
links, categories and taxonomies

cons
1. Can be difficult to get people involved. As well
as training, offer some simple, direct challenges
e.g. “can you add a paragraph about X”
2. Can be difficult to manage, particularly if you
make it open. You can set membership options
and always roll back any changes
3. Can have cultural implications. Once you have
opened up the organisation and its thinking, it’s
hard to go back.

GET STARTED

1. Go to www.wikispaces.com and create a free

account
2. Decide what your wiki will be about. Planning an
event, producing a report, building a resource
3. Decide whether it will be members only or open.
If work is opened out, consider how this will be
managed and evaluated.
4. Run a training session with any users explaining
39
 the technology but more importantly, the
principles and philosophy
5. Set a timescale and evaluate results.

TIPS
1. Be clear about your aim and your timescale. Make
sure everyone knows.
2. Get everyone on board from senior managers to
stakeholders, clients and friends. Harness the
wisdom of crowds.
3. Set up some initial themes or areas so that people
aren’t faced with a blank slate
5. Make the wiki part of the work process. Can work
be done on the wiki that would normally have been
done by email or passing documents around?
6. Incentivise use. Publicise creative use internally
and externally
7. Look for some quick wins. Maybe an article in the
staff newsletter written on the wiki or a project
that’s been easier because it was coordinated on
the wiki.
8. Enable people to access the wiki from home.
Sometimes creativity doesn’t work 9-5

CASE STUDY
Penny Wilson, a playworker and trainer with the Play
Association of Tower Hamlets had long thought that
playworkers were not sharing their knowledge and
experiences not only so they could learn from each
other, but also so that stories could be collected
together for research and development. She set up a
wiki (www.theinternationale.net/playstories) where
frontline playworkers could simply add stories from their
playgrounds. The wiki made it easy and informal. She
found that playworkers did not have to worry about the
technology or even how they wrote. They could just
leave notes and experiences for others to read, connect
with and share.
Penny says: “We were looking for a simple and direct
way of sharing stories and building an archive. The wiki
made it easy, even for playworkers who hate
computers.”
40
CHAPTER 8
Online shopping cart

IMAGINE
Erin was getting frustrated; shopping was never her
favourite past time and this Christmas in a bid to
avoid the crowds she had decided to do her
shopping from the comfort of her own study. After
seeing a documentary on an Oxford based social
enterprise that ran an online arm selling tasty fair-
trade goods, Erin was convinced that ethical giving
was the way forward, as well as a convenient
excuse to avoid the shops! However when Erin
logged on and started her shopping she found a
newly developed site that would only let her buy one
type of product at a time, worse still due to the
reassuringly ethical nature of the site it didn’t retain
any of Erin’s payment details. As she typed in her
credit card details for the third painstaking time, this
ethical giving caper suddenly seemed far less
appealing.

An online shopping cart is a basic function of many

websites, from Amazon, to Lastminute.com. It’s
been part of the Oxfam toolkit since 2004, but since
2007 there has been a new campaign helping us all
to avoid ‘rubbish presents’. A virtual shopping cart
enables users to buy products online at the click of
a button, with a secure server protecting credit card
details. Oxfam have taken this one step further and
not only offer their online visitors a chance to buy
ethical and inspiring gifts, from a classroom at
£1700, to bees at £50 and packs of seeds at £28.

Oxfam unwrapped:
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/Browse.aspx?catalog
=Unwrapped&category=UWGifts

How many times have we received gifts that we

don’t really want? Wave farewell to knitted jumpers,
41
 ‘collected love songs’ cds and cheap earrings, you
know-all those gifts that get put straight in the back
of a cupboard to collect dust. Oxfam is taking a
stance against ‘rubbish presents’ and leading the
way for ethical gifts with their online shopping carts.
You too can use the new found ‘good giving’
movement to promote your own products and raise
awareness for your campaigns.

What do users get out of it?

The key to making a shopping cart work is to make
products as easy to find as possible. Oxfam enable
users to search by theme, such as education,
farming, HIV education or by price, which makes
this functionality particularly user-friendly along with
a ‘like this? try this’ recommendation facility similarly
to Amazon.
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/ProductDetails.aspx?
catalog=Unwrapped&product=OU2706
Offering easy ways to search means users will find
the exact product they want within just a few clicks.
Convenience and ease will prompt users to become
regular shoppers.

How to make it work for your organisation

If you’ve ever shopped online, you’ll be familiar with
the shopping cart model. On top of this, the
recommendation facility is a non-intrusive way of
adding on value for your organisation. Shoppers
search for a product and then once they’ve found it
they get automatic recommendations of other
products that might accompany or compliment the
original. If your organisation is selling bracelets
made in India, why not recommend an
accompanying necklace or pair of earrings?

Whatever you’ve got to sell, make it easy for people

to find more. Additionally, for budget conscious
shoppers, Oxfam Unwrapped allows users to search
by price bracket – £5 and under, £5-£20, £20-
£50, £50+. You too can do the same with your
products.
42
Oxfam promote some of their more popular
products on their homepage [See fig xxx], therefore
enticing potential customers with new gift ideas they
may not have actively searched for. This is based on
user statistics and back end information, letting you
know from information captured on your database,
which are the most bought/searched for products.
The database also helps generate automatic
referrals as ‘meta data’ is entered into it. It is this
(invisible to the user) meta data that helps ensure
that one product will refer another, encouraging
more traffic around your site.

The new Oxfam shop uses Microsoft Commerce

Server 2007 and was built by a multimedia agency
for them who help support it along with an Oxfam
internal team. It took a year to build from conception
to completion. The icing on the proverbial cake is
that Oxfam have also included a wedding list facility
within their shopping cart application. Again this
was first seen on Amazon, but is a useful application
for any shopping site, allowing users to set up a
wish list and send it on to their guests and friends.

A helping hand
It is helpful to users to have fully-fledged FAQ
(frequently asked questions) pages – informing
users, for example, on how to place an order, when
they can expect to receive their products, how to
get their products delivered, how they query an
order and your returns policy. It is worth ensuring
that this page is kept up to date by adding answers
to common questions that your current users are
asking.

Also worth considering is how to divide your

products into searchable categories to help users
find them more easily. For instance, Oxfam splits
their offering into the following categories – Gifts
that Grow: which include tools for farming, fertilizer,
seeds; Working Wonders: supporting farmers or
fisher folk, offering financial advice; Positive
43
 Pressies: such as condoms, HIV counselling and
training; Emergency Essentials: including shelter
and a feeding pack; Four-legged Friends: if you’re
looking for a goat or chicken and School Scene:
providing anything from educational materials to
school rooms. Ensure that your potential user’s
transactions are as smooth and convenient as
possible, by grouping your products by type, region,
price or whatever is most relevant to your
organisation.

Essentially, Oxfam’s Unwrapped campaigns is one

of the most innovative initiatives the charity sector
has seen in a while, as it supplies a real demand at
the same time raising money and awareness for the
charity. A shopping cart on your site can be put to
use in the same way. Oxfam believes that there is an
increasing demand for ethical gifts and increasing
competition in this market. Whilst an online
shopping cart will increase demand and traffic, it will
need an initial investment to establish and maintain
it. So it’s worth remembering Ebay can often do the
job just as well and is free….

44
CHAPTER 9
Social bookmarking

IMAGINE
Sam had just been told the baby had Down’s
Syndrome. After the initial shock, Sam had turned to
her computer and Googled ‘Down’s Syndrome’ –
1,670,000 results. Where should she begin? The
people at the hospital had given her some booklets
and the name of the local organisation supporting
parents of children with learning difficulties. After 20
minutes getting more confused and overwhelmed,
she googled the organisation and went to its site. It
wasn’t as flashy as some sites but it had the usual
navigation including a page called “Information”. On
that page were other links: “Latest medical
research”, “Benefits and money” and one that
caught Sam’s eye: “Just been told your baby has
Down’s?” She clicked on it and found herself on a
page that brought together bookmarks, news,
videos, photos and blog entries all talking about
exactly how she was feeling. There was still lots of
information, but it was all obviously chosen by
people who understood. At the bottom of the page
was a request: “If you find any other useful
information online, tag it with “Down’s Syndrome”
and “Ambridge Learning Difficulties Alliance”, it’ll end
up here for the next parent to find.

So, you’ve heard of social networking, now explore

social bookmarking, brought direct to your web
browser with del.icio.us. What this tasty website
offers, is a neat little solution for users to collect
their favourite websites all in one place. It allows
people to keep favourite articles, blogs, music and
reviews, and access them from any computer on the
web. They can then be easily shared with friends
and family as well as the del.icio.us community.
There’s a lot of stuff out there. Words and now
pictures, video and audio. Google et al do their best
45
 to help us find it, but at best Google is a clever
machine. It can’t judge relevancy only how many
people link to a page. It can’t recommend: people
do that. We have the information and stories we’ve
created and we have the one’s we’ve found. Each of
us is an expert on something. How often do you tell
someone on the phone that they need to talk to Jo,
she’s the expert on that. Jo has a lot of knowledge
at her fingertips but not everything, and Jo’s not
always there.

Social bookmarking enables Jo’s knowledge to work

harder. If Jo tags all the pieces she writes for the
blog, all the photos she takes and all the videos
she’s uploaded to YouTube with the right keywords,
they’ll all be linked together and people will be able
to find them. If she tags all the bookmarks with the
same tag, that brings them together too. Take our
imaginary example. Ambridge Learning Difficulties
Alliance adds the keywords “down’s syndrome”,
“learning disabilities”, “learning difficulties” and
“Ambridge Learning Difficulties Alliance” to all the
postings on its blog. It asks any of its members who
post content online to do the same. It also uses the
tag “mental handicap”. Now it knows that this term
is no longer acceptable but it also knows that a lot
of people (maybe new parents) still use the term
and may search for it.

The Alliance goes further though. It tags content

others have created. It uses http://del.icio.us to tag
its bookmarks. Rather than having all the bookmarks
(the web addresses the Alliance uses most
frequently) on the office computer’s browser, they
are saved on the del.icio.us site so they can be
accessed from anywhere and they are all tagged.
Like social networking sites Flickr and YouTube,
del.icio.us also allows you to tag the sites that you
bookmark, making it much more flexible than your
favourites folder on your computer. The tags also
mean that you can search the site for links that other
people have saved using the same tags – it all
46
helps build up an organic community.

So now all the good information and personally

recommended content that Jo and her colleagues
have amassed over years in the area is tagged.
Anyone around the world using tag search engines
like www.technorati.com or www.blogpulse.com find
that information. Anyone searching on del.icio.us
finds the bookmarks around Down’s Syndrome
recommended by Ambridge Learning Difficulties
Alliance as well as those recommended by others
who really know the subject.

The final step in the puzzle is to bring all that

information together. You could just provide links to
the relevant search engines and del.icio.us or you
could pull all that quality content into your own site.
A site like www.pageflakes.com allows you to set up
a single page (that you could link to from your site),
which automatically pulls in the latest content with
your tags on. You could have a pageflakes page for
the organisation’s tag that pulls in the latest news –
from the mainstream media as well as so-called
‘citizen’s media. You could have one that pulls in
everything that is tagged with “Down’s Syndrome
medical research”. Each page would have blog
stories, photos, videos, bookmarks, news... none of
which would be hosted on your site so there are no
storage or bandwidth problems. You, your
organisation and your partners become human
filters for the best information. You become an
authority.

But the real power comes when that authority is

shared. To continue our example, there are other
Jo’s around the world. If they agree on a common
set of tags the information can work harder. Sam
can get the expertise of a worldwide collection of
experts and Jo can possibly find things that she
would never have come across as well as sharing
her own finds with similar hard-pressed
professionals.
47
 And one other thing, using tags and ‘social
bookmarking’ services helps you work more
effectively. You no longer have to worry about filing
something in just one place. That bookmarked site
may have useful information about medical research
but also about benefits. You don’t have to decide
which ‘folder’ to put it in. Give it two tags: ‘medical
research’ and ‘benefits’ and it’s filed under both. It’s
not only your clients who can find things, you can
too. By tagging information you make it more
findable and usable. Bear in mind that del.icio.us is
not the only site of its kind. Digg is equally popular
and their social bookmarking sites include; Blue Dot,
BookmarkSync, Furl, GiveALink.org, My Web,
Newsvine and Reddit.

PROS and CONS

pros:
1. Free.
2. Makes information manageable.
3. More people can find your information.
4. Makes it portable. You can access your
bookmarks and even your database from
anywhere.
5. Connects your information and you to other
experts.

cons:
1. Can be difficult to agree on tags. You may have
to focus on what people would search for rather
than what you would like them to search for.
2. You can’t stop people tagging content, even stuff
you don’t want associated with your brand or
issue.
3. Bookmarks can go out of date.

GET STARTED
1. Agree on set of tags relevant to your
organisation and issue. Look online for what
others in your area use and match that so you’re
connected.
48
2. Tell everyone across your organisation (and
friends outside) to add tags to their blog
postings, Flickr photos, YouTube videos etc.
3. Set up an account at http://del.icio.us and import
and tag your bookmarks. You can specify which
bookmarks are public and which private.
4. Place link on your site to your del.icio.us page.
5. Create page at www.pageflakes.com.
6. Search at www.technorati.com for your tags and
right click on the ‘subscribe’ link. Copy link and
add the ‘RSS feed’ to your pageflakes page.
7. Add the RSS feeds for the searches, your
del.icio.us bookmarks and any other tagged
content to your information page.
8. Link to it from your site.

TIPS
1. Encourage visitors to your site to add your pages
to their del.icio.us and other bookmarking
services. You can put a ‘widget’ on your page
that allows users to bookmark the story.
2. Publicise your tags. The more people that know
them, the more content will be tagged.
3. Use a site like www.bloglines.com to subscribe
to tag searches so that you can see what other
people are tagging.
4. Make sure everyone in the organisation is doing
it. If someone is still guarding their own filing
cabinet or bookmarks, you and your clients are
missing out.
5. When you’re tagging, try and be specific i.e. not
just ‘environment’ but ‘canal, environment,
Newcastle’.

CASE STUDY
There are a lot of techies and geeks helping
charities, organisations, or ‘non-profits’ as Americans
say, make use of ICT. There is a lot of expertise and
ideas around. The problem has been that that
information has been on countless different websites
and people’s blogs and in their bookmarks etc.

49
 Back in December 2004, a new tag began to
appear on del.icio.us: ‘nptech’. It’s difficult to know
who started it but it soon took off and the
community began to add it to their bookmarks, their
blog entries etc. It wasn’t the only tag they used –
they used other relevant ones such as ‘content
management systems’ or ‘open source’ but all of the
content they had around ICT for ‘non profits’ was
pulled together by the tag.

The tag spread beyond del.icio.us to include

PowerPoint slides upload to SlideShare, blog
postings, videos... in fact all manner of useful
content, pulling the community of like-minded
people together.

Chris Blow, an activist in the area says: “I think that

the development of this tag is arguably the single
largest reason for the current (thriving I think) state
of what is commonly called the ‘nptech community’.”
The specially developed tag has now spawned
other np tags including: npblog, npflickr, npsl
(nonprofit second life), nptag (nonprofit tagging),
npyoutube and others helping the geeks and the
organisations they help find the best content.

50
CHAPTER 10
Online video

IMAGINE
Ray had just picked up a text message from Chris
on the march. He’d got some film of the group
outside Parliament and emailed it to YouTube,
should be on the site in a few minutes. If he could
he’d get the speeches later too. Greg checked the
YouTube page. The site was still formatting the
mobile phone video for the site. While he was
waiting he saw that Susan in the US had posted a
new update to her story about caring for her Dad.
While Ray was waiting he copied the embed code
from the page and pasted it onto the organisation’s
video page. When he refreshed the box appeared
and the new ‘episode’ of “Young carers: the
American experience” began to play. After watching
it and leaving Susan a comment, he found that
Chris’ video was ready to embed too. Ray turned
back to his own site and clicked through to the “Live
March” page.

If a few years ago a request for a photo library on

your site would have turned your IT person (if you
had one) puce. To broach the idea of using online
video would have had them on the floor gasping for
air. Even if you could find someone to shoot the stuff
there were issues of different formats, storage
capacity, bandwidth... No, video was for the big
boys. Not anymore.

The growth in cheap video cameras, particularly

mobile phone cameras, the availability of free video-
editing software and in particular the explosion in
sites that allow you to store, share and then embed
your videos on other sites, has meant we can all
make films. Running alongside this technological
shift has been an equally important cultural shift:
we’re now not frightened of the idea of making films.
51
 As we browse through YouTube videos, we’re
reassured that we can do that too. Videos don’t
have to be perfect to be powerful. They don’t have
to be about big things: simple often works best.
They don’t have to be long: short windows into a
world can make all the difference. It’s almost as if
we’ve all been given permission.

Video gives your organisation a chance to reach a

broad international market, through a YouTube page.
Take a leaf out of Pudsey’s book and encourage
people to upload their own videos of fundraising
activities. The BBC’s 2007 Children in Need took
cyberspace by storm this year and raised even more
money than ever.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pudsey/cinnews/news/2007/
10/26/50236.shtml

As with all the Live Web media of course, the real

power comes in how that story connects to other
stories and therefore connects people. YouTube and
its competitor sites is not just a gallery or storage
space, it’s a place where people leave comments,
add videos to their ‘favourites’ lists and use tags to
connect videos, stories and issues together.

When I upload a video from my computer or direct

from my phone, give it a title, description and some
tags, I am adding it to a global video conversation
about ‘carers’ or ‘the environment’ or whatever. My
video will appear alongside others that are similar.
People will find it and leave comments. I will find
other films and filmmakers who are as passionate
and knowledgeable about the issues as I am.

When I take the piece of code that YouTube gives

me that enables me to ‘embed’ that video on my
site, it does more than save bandwidth. Sure, that
code means the video plays on my page in a box.
As far as the viewer’s concerned, it’s on my site. I
don’t pay to stream it or store it but it looks like it’s
mine. What is more important is that because it
52
remains on YouTube where there are millions of
visitors rather than on my site where there are
perhaps hundreds, it has a bigger reach. People find
it on YouTube, find my issue and then my site and
then... me. YouTube and video sharing is yet another
tool to help your organisation spread the word,
increase awareness or raise funds. You can upload
your video straight to the site, tag it appropriately
and users will engage with your organisation.
Video offers a powerful way of telling direct stories.
Even just a ‘talking head’ can engage a reader with
the story and so the issue in a way that is more
difficult in other media. The fact that so many
supporters and stakeholders have access to video-
storytelling equipment means that it is possible to
get many different perspectives and ideas buzzing
around your cause or issue. You do not need to hire
a professional camera crew to make THE single film.
You can ask lots of people – particularly young
people – to make films about your community, the
parkland that’s under threat, their playground or their
homes. They can upload them to YouTube and as
long as they include your tag, you can pull them all
together. As with all this open source content idea,
what a visitor sees is a vibrant and passionate
community telling stories, raising awareness and
potentially money. Your organisation just brings it all
together and helps it happen.

It is tempting with video to think that once the film or

films have been made, that’s it. People watch them
and that’s the end. On the Live Web stories are
always beginnings. It is important to remember that
viewers of your – or your supporters’ – videos will
leave comments. They are active and see your film
as the start of a conversation. You need to think
about how you will respond and make use of those
relationships you have set in motion. Even just a
simple ‘thank you’ acknowledgment will do. It will
keep the relationship open and who knows, that
commenter may end up being one of you best
fundraisers or campaigners.
53
 A word of warning; Always make sure you
thoroughly check the video content regularly to
ensure that there is no self promotion, advertising or
material that can offend. It might even be worth
specifying this in the guidelines for uploading video.
Morwenna Gordon, producer of the Children in
Need site 2007, has some advice in particular; “If
your charity has a very specific peak (such as a one
off event) you need to think about what that means
for the interactive activity around this event in the
days and months preceding it” For instance, if you
are asking users to submit examples of what they
are doing for one event in particular on a particular
day, remember that these videos won’t actually be
available until AFTER the event itself, so you’ll need
to put up other previous examples of fundraising, or
people explaining online what they will do… You will
also need to watch out for rights that aren’t cleared.
For example music over 2 minutes will need specific
copyright unless it is original. Morwenna also
pointed out the need for clear instructions online –
ideally an extremely clear video telling users exactly
what to do and how to participate.

PROS and CONS

pros
1. Cheap and easy.
2. Very powerful and direct.
3. Very sexy and popular at the moment.
4. Mobile. You can shoot and ‘report’ from
anywhere.

cons
1. Difficult to upload longer videos to YouTube etc
without broadband connection.
2. People you interview can be intimidated by idea
of video.
3. Can be difficult to keep it short and simple. Try
telling your subjects: “You have 30 seconds. Tell
us about your experience”.
4. As you (and your friends) shoot more, may have
54
to think about way of archiving all the links on your
site and thinking how to guide your visitor through
all the stories.

GET STARTED
1. Get your phone out and if it has a video camera
point it at your colleague and ask them to say
what your organisation is and to tell a story about
why it’s important. Keep it under a minute.
2. Go to YouTube and create an account. Think of a
name that is relevant to your organisation and
issue. 3. Upload the film. YouTube will give you
an address that you can send your video to from
your phone (via email or MMS message).
4. If you have a video camera, try and shoot
something a little longer or more complicated.
Use free software like iMovie or Windows Movie
Maker to edit the film.
5. Contact your local media studies teacher to see
if any young people want to become part of your
film making community.
6. Make a clear call to action to view and submit
videos on your own website to ensure your video
contributors are on the right track, just as
Children in Need has done. This is a link that can
take you through to the guidelines for submitting
videos. CiN have done this with a large promo
box clearly marked ‘Fundraising – submit your
own videos’. [See image 1.] Not all of your
audience may be familiar with uploading videos,
so you might want to give them guidelines on
how to do it. You can set up a page with clear
bulleted instructions on how to submit their
videos to YouTube.
7. Think of tags you want everyone to use on their
films. Publicise the new film making community.

TIPS
1. Keep it simple. Tell stories and go for the details
that people remember.
2. Don’t get too hung up on quality. Go for the
passion!
55
 3. Remember that videos have sound. Use it to add
to the atmosphere and story. You can always add
soundtracks later.
4. Encourage others to add to the film show.
5. Favourite other relevant videos on your page.
6. Offer guidelines on length, format etc.

CASE STUDY
The International League for the Protection of
Horses (ILPH) has a website which provides
supporters and potential supporters with a range of
information (http://www.ilph.org/). It also has a
YouTube channel
(http://www.YouTube.com/user/horsecharity) where
it posts videos it has shot. These range from the
CEO explaining what the organisation does, to
events and reports on horse rescues.

Visitors to the YouTube can subscribe to the

channel, rate and leave comments on the videos as
well as add them to their own favourites. The
channel has attracted a number of ‘subscribers’ and
‘friends’ who are now connected to the organisation
and its work. The channel also pulls in other relevant
videos so linking it to the broader animal welfare
and indeed horse communities.

As part of its work, the organisation rehabilitates

horses and then loans them to good homes. Many
of the people who go on to care for the horses add
their own videos of how the horse is progressing.
Phil Spiby, Head of Communications says: “It helps
people feel part of a club. It gives them a sense of
belonging. It’s been a fantastic thing to get
feedback.”

56
CHAPTER 11
Legacy donations online

IMAGINE:
It was a sombre day at the Funeral; the deceased, a
passionate and committed women’s rights
campaigner, would be dearly missed. Mike couldn’t
help but smile when he heard the words read on
behalf of the deceased by her brother, that she
‘didn’t want flowers or any of that nonsense’ but
rather for her friends and loved ones to make a
donation to the women’s refugee group to whom
she had willed her estate. Her family handed out the
usual memoriam cards; only these ones had the
refugee group’s url included. Mike promised himself
he would log on and donate when he got home.

Legacy donations are nothing new, but what about

using digital media platforms to help your
organisation attract posthumous donations? The
World Wildlife Fund uses its website to encourage
people to leave money via their will. By promoting
this service online, a frequent visitor who may not
have previously considered it, may be prompted to
include the charity in their will. This can have a
substantial affect on future funding.

https://secure.wwf.org.uk/core/takeaction/legacy00
00003872.asp

The WWF site, points out “leaving a gift to a

favoured charity in your will not only helps a good
cause but also normally reduces your inheritance tax
liability, because any gifts to charities are deducted
from the value of your estate prior to taxation”. It
seems that legacy donations form a substantial part
of what the WWF receives, funding roughly one fifth
of the projects that the familiar panda logo-ed
organisation completes.

57
 The organisation goes on to offer advice on how to
prepare or amend a will – you just need to fill out a
form for them to send you a booklet either by post
or by email and WWF make it even easier by
offering supporters a will-writing service. They also
provide info on how to leave a willed gift. These gifts
are normally split into three categories
● Residual gifts – the residue of your estate;
● Partial residuary gifts – a percentage of your
estate;
● Pecuniary gifts – specifying a particular sum.

In return for nominating WWF as legal beneficiaries

donors get a tree dedicated in their name, along
with the knowledge they are helping to tackle
climate change, protect endangered habitats and
safeguard the future of animals on the verge of
extinction.

As a smaller charity you might not be able to offer a

tree naming service, but you can certainly publish
people’s names in your newsletter or on your
website as and when contributors tell you about
their legacy donations. One nice feature on the
WWF site is the legacy donor interviews. People,
who have already named the organisation as a
beneficiary, explain their choice and motivations. Its
a friendly and informal touch and lets users
experience, in a first person sense, why others have
nominated the charity as a worthy cause to include
in their wills. Similarly your donors would be happy
to tell their stories to improve your organisation’s
legacy campaigns, to personalise what can be a
fairly anonymous procedure and make that daunting
decision seem easier.

Crucially, however, what WWF does to support

both the web pages and the pamphlet is provide a
contact – a ‘planned giving adviser’ whose contact
details are on the page. Legacy giving is a sensitive
subject and not to be taken lightly, so more than

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ever in this case, the personal touch is important.
Consider how your organisation can tackle the
issue, determining the resources required. Sally
Burrows, Head of Legacy Management at WWF
points out how valuable it is to make sure that you
are responding to people’s questions regarding
donations from their will. She points out that several
years ago she attended a seminar run by a Direct
Marketing agency, where the Managing Director had
sent request to 50 odd charities for will guides and
monitored the response. Whilst some got back to
him within a week, others took up to two weeks,
others up to a month and some didn’t even bother
to respond at all! Sally goes on to emphasise that in
order to include your organisation in their will,
potential legacy donors need to have complete trust
and faith in your charity, and efficiency plays a large
part in that. It is therefore important to have a fast
and considered response. Her top tip would be to
set up a dedicated response team to make sure that
you can build a relationship with people just at the
time they are beginning to think about writing their
wills.

Legacy income is just as, if not even more,

important than other methods of fundraising so it
should be prioritised accordingly.

However she does point out that their response

team is not trained to give legal advice. The team
will respond to basic questions about how the
money will be divided, whether it is a registered
charity, will send out packs, and answer general
questions on a day to day basis but as they do not
have indemnity insurance they are not in the
business of giving people either financial or legal
advice. The team help out with the admin, but will
direct potential legacy donor towards legal counsel
when it comes to actually changing their will.

When going about the tricky task of acquiring

59
 legacy donations online, your target audience is a
key consideration. Whilst we may have all heard
about the increase in the silver surfers, what is in
fact more of a reality is that there are more 30 and
40 year olds surfing the web. These may not be the
obvious target market; however they will probably
be seeking information, if not for their own wills,
possibly for their parents wills.

The World Wild Life Fund is not the only

organisation that offers the chance to donate
through your will. Acorns, a children’s hospice trust
based in the
West Midlands received £1,171,000 from willed
donations in just one year. Like the World Wildlife
Fund, Acorns offer a downloadable pamphlet giving
advice on how to prepare a will, which is clearly
signposted from their navigation.

In terms of setting this facility up for donations, one

of the key considerations is to sensitively convey the
message along a number of channels (online and
offline) and ensure that there is appropriate
information on the website, focussing on the
charitable cause and the “legacy” the supporter will
contribute to the cause. Whilst offering appropriate
and easily accessible information on how to include
the charity in the will.

The WWF is also currently looking at adding a

‘pledge’ button to their site. This will mean that
users will testify to leaving a certain donation from
their will, however whether they carry this through
will of course have to be seen at a later date...

One of the key issues to bear in mind when seeking

to increase your legacy donations is that you are
broaching perhaps two of the most taboo areas in
the British psyche – money and death. It is certainly
worth raising awareness of how to contribute on
your website, giving examples of other users who

60
have pledged donations in their will and getting
testimonies where possible, however you will have
to deal with this subject with a lot of sensitivity.
Ensure that there is a well resourced support
function for potential legacy givers and above all –
be patient, a strong legacy donor base will take time
to establish.

61
 CHAPTER 12
Twitter and mobile communications

IMAGINE
The vicar had just phoned. He was going to have to
ask them to move the meeting, something about a
leak in the hall, would Su be able to move the
meeting to the old building down the road. Su knew
there was no choice but she had to contact the
organising committee, the speakers and the 6
groups who were coming... oh and the local
journalist who’d promised to cover the event. She
picked up her mobile. She typed: “Save Our
Hospital meet moved. Now Old church hall, High
Street. Pass the word.” She sent the single
message. Within minutes Su’s phoned buzzed. A
message from the MP’s secretary. Another from
George who was organising the catering. A third
from someone in Ireland who was involved in the
campaign there, just wishing her luck. A little later
she sent another message asking whether the
group thought they should lay on some wine. Within
a minute, Jo replied from Sainsbury’s he’d pick up a
few bottles. Su looked at her watch and thought
she’d better phone the journalist. He hadn’t got the
hang of Twitter yet. Better just check.

There are currently 1.244 billion internet users

worldwide, on about a billion PCs. There are 3
billion mobile phones in use. In the UK, 63.8%of the
population are Internet users while 79% have mobile
phones. The mobile phone is the most widespread
and potentially powerful IT tool we have and it
crosses the age, class and gender lines. Kids
obviously have them, but so do Grannies.

Of course it’s possible to make sure your website is

mobile-ready so that people can access your site via
the new generation of mobile phones. An easy way

62
to set up a mobile-version of your site is to use a
service like www.winksite.com. Winksite allows you
to easily create a site that people can see on their
small screen. You can create a very simple site with
contact details and a page or two that explains what
you do but Winksite offers lots of scope to add
news (that can be pulled in from your main site) and
even chat rooms and forums, all for free. As phones
become more sophisticated and people expect to
be able to get their news and information on their
phone, it will become more important that
organisations can be easily reached wherever and
whenever people want. Mobile sites are one thing
but there are potentially more powerful ways of
using the network people carry in their pocket, ways
that reach way beyond the early adopters who want
to surf the web in the palm of their hand.

Twitter is a site that brings together ‘micro-blogging’

and ‘messaging’. At its most basic you can use
Twitter as a way to create a mobile micro blog.
When you sign up for a free account at
www.twitter.com you are given a UK phone number.
Any text message you send to that number will
appear on your Twitter page. Even if Twitter only did
this, it would be good. It means anyone can set up a
blog really easily and update it from anywhere,
anytime. The runners you have in the London
Marathon could micro-blog as they’re going round:
“London bridge and it’s starting to hurt. Still, 3
grand on its way to the hospice”. The kids you are
working with on an estate could tell stories of their
communities and play in short stories (under 140
characters): “10 o’clock. The playground gate’s
locked. Back to the carpark I guess.”

But Twitter does more. Other Twitter users can

choose to ‘follow’ you. When you post something,
the message or story gets sent to their mobile
phone as a text message. If you have 20 followers, it
goes to everyone. You only pay for the one text

63
 message you sent to the site. This is obviously a
great (and cheap) way of keeping people up-to-
date. But it’s also a way of asking for information
from your network: “About to go into meeting.
Anyone got any new facts we can present?” It’s
also a way of sharing ideas or asking questions:
“Can you ask around and see if people like the idea
of joining forces.” Essentially Twitter takes the power
of networks and conversations mobile.

Using it with your own group or existing network is

one thing but Twitter is worldwide. You could
expand your followers (or the people you follow) to
include others in your area. Maybe they’ll have
information about the latest developments or a fresh
perspective. Maybe they’ll have some ideas. Maybe
they’ll just be able to offer support.

A key thing about Twitter and similar services such

as www.tumblr.com and www.jaiku.com is that
because they are based on mobile phones, the
learning curve is really easy. Users don’t need to
have computers or even know about the internet.
They don’t have to worry about the protocols or
technologies that are behind it. All they need to
know is that the Twitter entry in their address book
sends a message to everyone in the organisation
and that the message they receive has similarly
gone around everyone.

PROS and CONS

pros:
1. Free.
2. Easy to set up and use. Perfect for the
computer-phobic!
3. Simple and direct idea. Can use it for simple
controlled things like information delivery or free
idea sharing and brainstorming.
4. Accessible anywhere and anytime.

64
cons:
1. Can be difficult to stop being verbose and telling
stories in 140 characters (can be seen as a
positive thing!).
2. Can be difficult to integrate into your site. There
are ways of embedding your ‘Tweets’ but they
might need a bit of contextualizing.
3. Can be overwhelming in terms of responses. You
can set Twitter to notify your phone or just your
Twitter page when those you are following say
something.
4. If you are part of a worldwide network, their
Tweets might arrive in the middle of the night!
You can set Twitter to only notify you at set times.

GET STARTED
1. Go to www.twitter.com and set up a free
account.
2. Give your Twitter stream a name that’s relevant
and attractive.
3. Put a link on your existing site to your new Twitter
stream and encourage people to “follow “ you.
Twitter will help you send an email to people
encouraging them to sign up.
4. Do a short and simple training session at your
next meeting to show colleagues and supporters
how easy it is.
5. As well as general small story-telling, try to plan
using Twitter to help with specific event e.g.
conference or lobby.
5. When you have some followers, look at who they
are following and see if it might be worth
introducing yourself.

TIPS
1. As well as using Twitter to get and share
information, use it to tell short stories.
2. Twitter in the moment. Tell that story of the family
you met as soon as you leave them, when the
picture’s still in your mind.
3. Use Twitter to alert people to things you find

65
 online. Include the address
4. Twitter questions as well as answers. Make use
of your network.
5. Be creative. See the 140 character limit as a
creative challenge not a shortcoming.

CASE STUDY
YoMo provides practical training for schools, youth &
community groups in young peoples participation
[http://www.yomo.co.uk/]. It used Twitter at a recent
conference to enable attendees to play a full part.

Tim Davies set up a conference Twitter page and

asked people attending the conference to “follow”
the new account. Conference organisers were able
to send messages to all attendees throughout the
event and in turn they could Twitter their own
contributions, which would be added to the
conference page, which was projected in the main
room, and on tickers running along the top of each
PowerPoint presentation being given.

The young people attending the conference took up

the offer immediately and even the adult participants
used it. Tim believes it added an interactive element
to gaining feedback and could be used more to help
create networks, particularly of young people.

“It cost us nothing to set up. And it provided some

really insightful gut-reaction instant feedback
throughout the event,” Tim says.

66
CHAPTER 13
About Media Trust and Capacitybuilders

Media Trust works in partnership with the media

industry to build effective voluntary and community
sector communications.

Our aims
● resource the communications needs of the
voluntary and community sector
● harness media and communications industry
support
● engage the public in the voluntary and
community sector
● strengthen the impact, reach and effectiveness of
our work

Our vision
We want Media Trust to be at the heart of the media
and communications industry, inspiring and enabling
the media to reflect, debate and support the goals,
achievements and voices of the voluntary and
community sector.

We aim to bring added value and new opportunities

to both sectors and stakeholders in the public and
corporate sectors.

We want to create a society where the:

● voluntary and community sector is widely visible
and celebrated for what it achieves – community
engagement, volunteering, charitable giving and
take-up of voluntary sector services
● public can easily access the voluntary and
community sector
● voluntary sector staff and volunteers can access
the resources, skills and contacts to
communicate effectively with target audiences
via a wide range of media and communications

67
 Our corporate members
Media Trust corporate members include:
BBC, BSkyB, Channel 4, Daily Mail and General
Trust, Discovery Networks Europe, Disney Channel
UK, Emap plc, Guardian Media Group, ITV, MTV
Networks UK and Ireland, News International,
Newsquest Media Group, OMD, Time Warner and
WPP Group.

Capacitybuilders
works in partnership with government and other
infrastructure bodies to help voluntary and
community organisations (VCOs) work more
effectively. Their overall aim is to help create a more
effective third sector, so that every third sector
organisation is able to access high quality support
that meets their needs, when they need it. By
improving support, this will strengthen the sector,
increasing its ability to create a better quality of life
for individuals and communities.

68
GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Unless otherwise specified all definitions are from Wikipedia

ICT:
Acronym referring to Information Communications Technology

Web 2.0:
a trend in World Wide Web technology, and web design, a second generation
of web-based communities and hosted services such as social-networking
sites, wikis and blogs which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and
sharing among users. Also known as the live web

New media:
new media relies on digital technologies, allowing for previously separate
media to converge. Media convergence is defined as a phenomenon of digital
media.

Social networking sites:

social network services uses software to build online social networks for
communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested
in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most services are primarily
web based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such
as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion
groups, and so on. Well known social networking sites include Facebook,
MySpace and Bebo.

Blog:
(web log) is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse
chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or
add content to a blog. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular
subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog
combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media
related to its topic.

Forum:
an internet forum is a web application for holding discussions and posting user
generated content. Internet forums are also commonly referred to as Web
forums, message boards, discussion boards, (electronic) discussion groups,
69
 discussion forums, bulletin boards, fora (the Latin plural) or simply forums. The
terms “forum” and “board” may refer to the entire community or to a specific
sub-forum dealing with a distinct topic. Messages within these sub-forums are
then displayed either in chronological order or as threaded discussions

Flickr:
a photo sharing website and web services suite, and an online community
platform. It was one of the earliest Web 2.0 applications. In addition to being a
popular Web site for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely
used by bloggers as a photo repository. Its popularity has been fuelled by its
innovative online community tools, allowing photos to be archived, tagged and
searched.

Wiki:
is software that allows users to easily create, edit, and link pages together.
Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community
websites.

Online shopping cart:

software used in e-commerce to assist people making purchases online,
analogous to the American English term ‘shopping cart’. In British English it is
generally known as a shopping basket, almost exclusively shortened on
websites to ‘basket’. The software allows online shopping customers to place
items in the cart. Upon checkout, the software typically calculates a total for the
order, including shipping and handling (i.e. postage and packing) charges and
the associated taxes, as applicable.

Social bookmarking:
a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks
of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata. In a social bookmarking
system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or
share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared
only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or
another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can
usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a
search engine e.g. Del.icio.us, Digg or Reddit.

Twitter:
a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send
“updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the
Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, or a third-party
application such as Twitterrific. www.twitter.com
70
CREDITS

Media Trust would like to thank the following people

for their contributions to this guide.

Firstly, a big thank you to all the charities and

voluntary organisations who shared their success
stories with us.

To the writers
Paul Caplan is a digital coach, or a digital
charabanc as he prefers it. He runs the
Internationale which works with Government and the
third sector to look at ways of using the new Live
Web of social media and the power of
conversations. Paul has been a photographer and
journalist for 20 years or so and has taught in
schools, colleges and universities. You can find out
more about him and the digital charabanc at
‘content to be different’ his Blog at
www.theinternationale.org

Susie Goldring has over 14 years experience in

media both on and offline. For the last 8 years Susie
has worked at the BBC focussing on arts, music
and one of the corporation’s biggest education
campaigns.

To the Copyeditor
Rebecca Heffernan is a Producer and Researcher
for Media Trust. She doesn’t like the term new
media because the differentiation between
‘traditional’ and ‘digital’ media is increasingly
irrelevant. Rebecca wishes she was a digital native,
but she is probably a bit too old for that to be
honest.

71
 To the Photographers
Adrian Lowrie is a London based photographer who
graduated with a First-Class Distinction from
Newcastle College’s Foundation Degree in
Photography in 2007. One of 20 emerging national
photography talents to be awarded a prestigious
Nikon Discovery Award in London in November
2007, Adrian continues to work on commercial
commissions and personal projects.

Janine Reilly currently works as a web producer but

has been involved with various multimedia, e-
learning and web projects for over 10 years. She
has worked in a variety of editorial, content
management and producer roles working for, or
with, a mixture of Broadcasting, not-for-profit and
digital media companies including the DFes, NCALT,
BDP Media and the BBC.

Thank you to Capacitybuilders and ICT Hub for their

support.

Finally, thank you to Jo Inskip at Media Trust for

overseeing production of this guide.

72
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