Collaborating with other organisations can be a great way to get more done. I went to the AGM of the local business community partnership organisation, Connect Reading, this morning and it was interesting to hear about some exciting plans to bring together charity, public and private sector organisations for projects that will make a significant … Read more
There’s a lot to remember when you’re putting together a communications plan for your project. Who are you trying to reach, would a newsletter be better than a tweet series, what do you want to say and so on….. Use this handy checklist of questions to make sure you don’t forget anything. 1. What is … Read more
In a Wall Street Journal article about employee engagement that was published this summer, a senior leader from a retail organisation was quoted as saying: “We used to prioritize our stakeholders as shareholders first, customers second, and employees third. We now realize we had it backward. If we put employees first, they in turn take … Read more
Last week I attended the Public Sector Communications Conference. It was a great day, with really interesting speakers and useful conversations with my fellow delegates to develop ideas further. It was the sort of day where you go home with a spring in your step and ideas buzzing round your head! As you might expect, … Read more
I’ve recently done some work with a small education charity to help them improve their termly schools newsletter. It was a classic situation of something they knew wasn’t working as well as it could, but as a small and operationally busy team they simply didn’t have the time to step back and look at how … Read more
Until I started working for myself, nearly 7 years ago, I had no idea how many membership organisations there are. I was aware of professional membership bodies, such as the Institute of Internal Communication and CiPD, but not of the multitude of others. Since then I have come across many more, including CharityComms (one of … Read more
The literacy charity for which I am a trustee, ABC to read, was recently awarded the Investing in Volunteers quality mark. Like many organisations, we are only able to do the work we do, changing children’s lives, because of our amazing volunteers. So we were delighted to receive recognition for the support we offer them. … Read more
I have just started a communications project with an organisation that has a high profile with the public, with content regularly appearing in the traditional media as well as on social media. This coverage can be mixed in terms of being positive and negative, based on fact and based on rumour and hearsay. It means … Read more
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. April is Autism Awareness Month. March sees Marie Curie’s Great Daffodil Appeal. Time-specific campaigns can be a great way for charities to raise awareness of their work and the difference they aim to make. They can also be an opportunity for different organisations doing similar things to work together. … Read more
Last summer a not-for-profit organisation approached me for help in identifying how to take their internal communication activity forward during a period of change. A campaigning organisation that had grown rapidly in a short space of time, they had never had time to review the way they were communicating with each other, but they knew … Read more