Before we start: How many of you feel confident that you know what comms support you could offer to charities? Worked in a charity? Volunteered with a charity? Read Media Trust’s ‘marketing and communications needs of charities’ report?
Who we work with
The grandparents’ association - £0.2m African Health Policy Network - £1m NADFAS - £1.6m The fostering network - £6.5m Breast cancer care - £12.6m Motor neurone disease association - £14.1m Mind - £24.8m Oxfam - £308.3m Charities all shapes and sizes work with Media Trust - this is a small selection of charities who’ve booked on our training events in the last month (plus Oxfam and Breast Cancer Care, who not only send staff to learn, but also send senior staff to speak)
What I’ll be talking about *** An intro to who we work with - how I got into marketing… My first marketing job. Projects: rewrite, produce complete new marketing literature, redevelop and rewrite company website, launch UK’s first learning disabled Actors’ Agency, handle comms and publicity round move to new-build studio, sell 32-date national tour at professional rates of work not yet written, produce tour literature for first national tour in 3 years, create press interest in all the above. No other comms staff, boss was running building project… My experience isn’t unusual - charity marketers often self-taught but highly educated, often doing a jack-of-all-trades communications role, often working with senior managers with little or no comms experience. Lots of challenges
Who we work with This is a real example – the range and needs of charity comms staff Training and events - Operational staff - manager/officer at medium orgs, assistant/officer at large orgs, anyone at small orgs from admin assistant to CEO.
Who we are We work with our corporate members and hundreds of volunteers from those corporate members, other marketing, media and communications agencies as well as individual volunteers to improve marketing and communications in the charity and community sector. Since 1995 expanded to deliver wider range of projects, now at 80-100 staff
What we do Communications resources and training - online, downloads, and live events Partnership with the Press Association that gets good charity press releases written up and sent out as PA wire stories. We match professionals wanting to volunteer or mentor to charities and young people Award-winning film production team. Volunteer Films in its 6th year offering charities £10k worth of productions for £1k. Community Channel - 24-hr platform on sky, freeview and online Sometimes have funding for community or particular media projects - e.g. community voices 26 grants to grassroots digital community projects
Who we are Speakers at our events include BBC’s - blogs editor, BBC Audio and Music - blogging IPC Media - Look Magazine’s assistant editor – celebrity support Virgin Unite - business mobilisation director – marketing strategy
How we know what we do is relevant Published September 2009. Researched cross-section of 400 charities of a range of sizes, geographical spread, specialism (Mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, face to face interviews and telephone surveys)
What I’m here for… We encourage media, marketing and comms professionals to volunteer through speaking at events, mentoring charities or youth organisations , or making films for charities as a way of giving back to society
What I’m here for… I know many of you are already finding matches with charities, so this is to describe other ways of making a difference Speedmatching - one informal and fun evening, could be longer-term volunteering ‘match’ Matching - as little as a phone call, as much as a long-term mentoring role for a charity marketer Mentoring - more in-depth, involved CRB checks as working with young people Making a film – annual volunteering project for filmmakers Speaking at events - from appearing as a panellist (have an opinion) to a 30-min presentation, delivering a half-day workshop, or chairing a larger event and keeping all the other speakers in line Writing/filming/recording resources for charities - as much or as little time as you want
What I’m here for More than 1500 delegates on regular training open courses, similar numbers for bespoke training at larger charities Small numbers = great value for money for charities - unrivalled access to expertise, lots of Q&A and discussions Speakers get to know delegates and their charities much more
Quick reminder! Medium size orgs, operational staff
Events we’re currently looking for speakers: Breakfast season – panel events – 5-min response to question, round-table Q&A Plan and market your events – speaking slot – 20-30 min presentation on one of these topics, time for Q&A 3 last bullet points – we’re always looking for people to present 20-30 min slots on an aspect of these…
Selection of speakers Jun-Sep this year – sorts of people you’ll meet
What you can do Senior staff from larger charities/charities who’ve been particularly successful in an aspect of marketing and comms – invite to speak – case study to pull out principles to apply to shoestring-budget colleagues
What you can do We always credit the author of the work, but make it available for people to use, download and distribute, as long as they credit us and the author Been gathered ad-hoc – undergoing overhaul, some resources to be rewritten, updated, created.
If answer to any of the first questions is yes… come and talk to me Immediate help - I want your top tips, useful blogs, websites or twitter feeds to read, helpful mentors or free resources that I should look into or recommend to the charities we work with. I’ll ask you to put your name on it (hence use your business card) so that I can contact you to talk about developing your idea into a resource, an event or a workshop session. I have calendars of our training and events to end-Sep for more info on more of our events. If time: I’ll also gather all the cards up, lay them all out and ask each of you to look over the cards and put a star on the two you think will be most helpful to the charities I described earlier. No actual prizes for getting the most votes but there will be obvious kudos… and much gratitude
Verna Chung, National Operations Director, Windsor Fellowship “ 'We couldn't have hoped to get trainers of this calibre working with any other training provider.’” A happy customer of training and events! We ran marketing training for a number of her staff. You can make people like Verna and Rachel this happy and enthusiastic about communications too! Let me know. **Any questions?**