The great outdoors

I attended the launch of the Arts Council’s report “Beyond their walls” this morning, with amazing views from the top of the Southbank Centre this morning. A beautiful morning to look out over the river, and think about the ways in arts and cultural organisations can engage with people in the great outdoors.

“Beyond their walls” shares 10 organisations’ experiences of working in the public realm. The concept of ‘walls’ with respect to public space is not just about organsiations thinking beyond the physical walls of their venues but, as was pointed out this morning, there are many people who do not engage with public spaces and it is these invisible walls that we should be mindful of when stretching our own boundaries.

The Arts Council hope that this document will inspire in organisations the desire to promote audiences and organsiational development, to explore options for collaborative practice, and to be encouraged to have a go!

We have one printed copy of the report here at the Audiences London office, so if you’re popping in at some point, you’re welcome to have a browse. Otherwise, the report can be downloaded from the Arts Council’s website here.

Top tips for charity communications

I recently went to the Directory of Social Change’s Charity Communications training day, and good value it was too. I attended some very good seminars by ngo media and virtual construction (set up by a very nice chap called Matt Haworth I used to work with in Manchester!).  The sessions were practical, encouraged networking and were definitely thought provoking, I recommend DSC training days very much.

My top tips from the day are:

1. Always ask for something – whether it’s just a signature or a donation, it never hurts to ask but do try to offer something for free in return!
2. Keep active – good for SEO and client relationships and trust. Keep your content fresh.
3. Personalise – when sending communications make sure it’s from a real person that your clients or supporters can interact with should they wish to.
4. Plan - communications plans do take a LONG time! Never underestimate how many people will want to give you their input, and how hard it will be to get the input from the people you need it from!
5. Evaluate - always try and track your communications, who they reach, who reads your stuff and what kind of impact it’s having on your business.

The Postcodes Project

The other day Hannah was helping me update our database; what fun doing returns from a big mailing, but so important – how annoying is it to be sent two copies of the same thing, and how useless to your organisatsion to send information to the wrong address! It’s important for us to log the borough of companies we’re communicating with for reporting purposes and I do notice that this isn’t always recorded.  So I showed Hannah a tool which can help identify this. In fact I was a bit taken aback to find that I was the only person in the AL team who seems to be using The Museum of London’s Postcodes Project to do this!

If you select the “Places” tab from the menu on this minisite, you can view boroughs by postcode. It’s not fool proof, as some postcodes cross more than one borough, but it is incredibly useful; especially when you’re needing to report on this sort of thing for your funders! There are lots of other fun tools to utilise too, such as themed tours and an oppportunity for you to submit your own stories about your area.

A steer for your volunteers

With the current levels of youth unemployment volunteering is becoming a neccessary way of gaining experience at work, particularly in the arts.   We’re getting more requests about good practice when it comes to working with volunteers, and definitely advise being prepared.   Anyone starting up or managing a scheme should take a look at the Management of Volunteers: National Occupational Standards 2008. Not the catchiest of titles but a great resource.  It’s a big document but is clearly divided into sections and provides great checklists on each theme, including managing projects, handling expenses, organsing events and perhaps most useful dealing with any problems along the way.  Anyone with a deeper interest can also attend management of volunteers training and qualifications, up to NVQ level 5.

And if you’ve got good examples of volunteer schemes in your organisation, and would be willing to share as a case study I’d love to hear them.

Free recession-busting podcasts from industry leaders

KnowHow NonProfit have uploaded to their website a series of free podcasts collected from leaders in the Third Sector at the 2009 ACEVO (Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations) CEO Summit, which this year was entitled Leading change: steering your organisations through the recession and beyond.

Subjects under discussion include:

Three secret weapons for getting through the recession

Being accountable: ‘The Obligation of Leadership’

The financial impact of the recession on the third sector

The recession as an opportunity to grow

Leading the future: driving and leading innovation

• Three secret weapons for getting through the recession
• Being accountable: ‘The Obligation of Leadership’
• The financial impact of the recession on the third sector
• The recession as an opportunity to grow
• Leading the future: driving and leading innovation

Visit the KnowHow NonProfit webiste here to listen to the podcasts.

AL on Twitter!

As you may have noticed, there’s a new feature on our blog – a tweet feed. Yup, we’re on Twitter. Follow us for quick news, insights, thoughts and signpoisting to some great resources by the whole AL team. And please do direct us to good people to follow! Follow us at www.twitter.com/audienceslondon.

Boost your individual giving!

It’s going to be some time before the economic situation is stable once more, and as reported by the Arts and Business Market Trends 2009 report, 43% have seen levels of individual giving drop.

So how can you increase individual giving without throwing expensive galas and member events?

•  Explore new online platforms. Matthew Little writes for the Third Sector website this month that Ebay’s charity partner MissionFish reports that online giving has tripled over the past year. A new feature on eBay that allows buyers to make a donation to charity when they pay for an item has raised an additional £700,000 since it was launched in November.
• Optimise your landing pages on your website to make donating quick and easy. This Landing On Gold report at http://www.donordigital.com/ gives some tips on this (the link will request some contact details to download the report, but it’s free).
• Utilise Social Media platforms. Facebook Causes allows you to set up details of your charitable case for example, but please remember that facebook users are individuals and when they come together to support a cause it’s because they have a reason to invest. It is a 2 way conversation, not a sales pitch! This article has some good points but I think it misses the community aspect of social media, tread carefully! http://blog.schipul.com/how-to-make-money-with-social-media/

And for more ideas, here’s a free presentation I found which collates fundraising trends for 2008 from some expert types. Have you taken advantage of them all in the last 18 months? http://www.slideshare.net/PaoloFerrara/internet-fundraising-trends-2008

Good practice for social media advertising

Are you think of or already advertising through social media channels? The Interactive Advertising Bureau have just released their FREE downloadable guide to Social Advertising Best Practices.

 They say that there are three key values in advertising through these channels:

• Reach: Social media has overtaken email as the most popular consumer activity. Consumer growth is coming from an older demographic than social media’s historical base.
• Relationships: Social media’s strength is in the personal connections it enables, the peer-to-peer contact, providing reasons for consumers to visit regularly and for extended periods of time.
• Relevance: Consumers are extremely engaged with the content and connections that their friends are creating because of its personal relevance.

I agree in principle, but as I’ve said lots before (just look through my other blog posts…) if you’re going to advocate your product or organisation through social media you have to listen to the conversation first before you can join in.

Full Cost Recovery Tool

I speak with my fundraising hat on today. Every fundraiser needs to do it – present a budget for the amount you’re asking for. Never easy to do before the start of a project but there is help out there! I’ve come across this tool from the New Philanthropy Capital website which should help you out calculating just how much a project will cost you.

Writing in a digital age

Just found this very useful (and interactive) guide on the Austrailan Arts Councilwebsite. It’s a document to support creative writers in a digital age. In fact I think it has some very useful tips for all creatives, as it’s pretty much impossible not to have some element of your artistic output online these days, whether you like it or not!

Download The Writer’s Guide here.