woolworths logo

… it was exactly the same. The conversations that I used to have with colleagues and my manager are now becoming a reality. As Robert Peston has been saying it’s been a “lame duck retailer” for years and it’s not surprising really.

I worked there from the age of 17 right through to 20 when I was studying. Woolworths was very good to me, I used to come back every holiday from university, on my original rate of pay and get loads of hours. They were probably too nice come to think of it. It was a good place to work (as long as you weren’t planning on staying too long) but you had that nagging feeling that the retail reaper was going to strike eventually.

However, what’s scary is, if it can happen to Woolies then it can happen to anyone. I know Woolies isn’t what it used to be but it is a BIG company. 30,000 comployees, hundreds of stores. And for lack of a better word, it’s buggered. Students’ Union’s and charities, and anyone else for that matter, need to think that if you’re not innovating, upping your game and leading your area then you’re going to suffer. How many charities and third sector organisations will be cutting back, focusing on easy wins, core values and all the rest of it? That’s great, but if you’re not taking the odd risk, maybe failing once, twice, thrice, but making a great win somewhere else then you’re not going to make it.

The big thing that has struck me is that the public may like you, have a soft spot for you, but they won’t spend a penny with you and that’s what everyone needs in the end - money. How many charities are loved, liked, looked highly upon but at the end of the day if you can’t pay the bills then the administrators will be in. The new economy will be made up of companies who aren’t afraid to put themselves out there, but have a solid plan behind everything to make sure that donations/profits/readers/punters/whoever/whatever are still coming in.

I didn’t make it down South for the #nfptweetup but it seemed like it went really well. You could contribute a slide in advance for discussion by those at the event (apparently over 30 people showed up) about how twitter can be used, examples.

Mine was ‘What is twitter’ overkill and who in an organisation should be doing the tweeting. On the twitter overkill questioned it seemed that if you’re not interesting when you tweet then anything is overkill, but if you are interesting then tweet away to your heart’s content.

Below is the slideshow of crowdsourced slides for the event, experiences of using twitter, questions and examples:

Congratulations to Rachel Beer for organising the event, it was a cool experience to be ‘tweeting from the sidelines’ as the discussions unfolded.

There’s a couple of great posts from Chris Brogan about using twitter and where to start in the world of social media, with some useful tips for charities.

Seemed to be a trend over the last few days as some great posts popped up about what the US election and in particular the Obama campaign means for marketing professionals, charities and nonprofit organisations. Here’s the best:

Seth Godin kicks off with a great take on what the elections meant for marketing professionals. He definitely believes that online is the place to be for campaigning.

Kivi was quick off the mark with what nonprofit organisations can learn marketing wise from the election. She focuses on the ability of the Obama to fundraise from a whole spectrum of people, small amounts building to one huge total. She also links through to the Getting Attention blog which has a good piece about what the election taught us about email marketing.

The Charity Place has a piece about what nonprofits can learn from the Obama campaign, and it’s more of the same. Engagement, make friends first and then ask for money - not the other way round. I think that’s an important one, build a connection and then ask for the money.

Damn, I never have enough time as I think I do. I’m back and ready to fire, let’s get cracking. This is the second in a series looking at how third sector organisations are using the web to campaign.

This time I am taking a look at what the housing and homelessness charity, Shelter, is doing on its website in a campaigning sense.

Let’s break down the homepage and see how much is going on related to campaigning:

shelter homepage

First off we’ve got a huge great campaign in the centre of the page. If you’re Captain Hook it’s a nightmare, all those ticking clocks. It’s a great use of the web to campaign, inviting the user to do something right now about an issue. You’ve got a choice to make as well about which clock to click. There’s also a ‘What you can do’ tab underneath the Shelter logo.

Let’s see what happens when we click one of the ticking clocks, a nice flash interface tells me to wait after clicking the repossessions clock. I’m still waiting…oh, there we go. I’m through to a page in the ‘Now is the Time’ campaign. I’m invited to sign a petition and very cunningly it shows me the exact time that I ’stopped the clock’ on the homepage. Down the right hand side I’ve got a list of other people who have recently signed the petition.

shelter petition screen

I’ve signed the petition and feel much better for having stopped loads of reposessions. At the bottom of the petition it gives me the option to ‘become a campaigner’ with Shelter and receive regular updates about the campaign. This is really important as too often people sign a petition and then never hear anything about it’s progress. This makes people wonder - what is the point? And apathy is the hardest thing to overcome when running a campaign.

The ‘What you can do’ page is great. There’s plenty to get stuck in to and there’s also some video. Now previously we saw how Action Aid had used video to promote their social network for fundraisers and activists - Shelter are using it in a broadcast method with a short film called ‘Trapped’. I like the flash interface for it, with information along the top that you can switch to at anytime while viewing the film. Only downside is that I can’t embed the video onto my own blog and show people what a fantastic piece of work it is - perhaps getting it onto YouTube would be a good idea and then allowing viewers to embed it into their own website, or send an invitation to a friend to watch it?

The rest of the ‘What you can do’ section is pretty standard but important, petitions, email the PM, write to local newspapers - you get the idea.

Overall the Shelter website has a very strong focus on campaigning, a great use of interactive campaigning features such as the flash used to push people to sign a petition for the ‘Now is the Time’ campaign. The short film was presented very well, but needed to have more interactivity to make people feel like they should do something after watching it.

Over the coming weeks I’m going to be taking a look at how third sector organisations (charities, voluntary organisations, lobby groups) have been using the web as a campaigning tool. This came about as in my role at the Students’ Union at UCLan I am investigating ways for the Union to use the web for campaigning, as previously the organisation relied heavily on printed material and suffers from a general lack of imagination around campaigning. And the biggest problem, no people.

So, to kick things off I’m looking at Action Aid. As their website header proudly states they’ve been fighting poverty for 35 years - but how is the web playing a role in fighting poverty?

The key to any successful campaign is PEOPLE, people and MORE people. People feel, have rights and have time/effort/energy. Many hands make light work and all that. Well, on the frontpage of Action Aid’s site - perhaps not as prominently as it could be - is ‘MyActionAid‘. This is hosted on a separate URL so can be promoted offline. This is a social network for activists.

Social networks and media should be great for charity. They allow the creation of social networks around specific topics, and for Action Aid they’ve taken this to a higher level by hosting and creating their own network. I can’t get access to it, as I’m not a member, but this rather funky (E4 style video clip) shows me the power of it:

Good stuff and great use of video, plus it helps if you’ve got a relative celebrity to do your voiceovers (yeah that bloke off the E4 ads who puts loads of sarcasm into everything). However it’s only had 266 views on Youtube.

The homepage of MyActionAid could be a bit better, they highlight upcoming events but it could do with showcasing more of the fundraising events that are upcoming. Overall though, a cracking social network for activists.

The campaigns section is titled ‘What you can do‘ - good stuff, if I saw the section ‘Campaigns’ I’d be bored stiff. This is engaging and a call to arms, it says ‘We are ActionAid, come join us’. Not ‘We are ActionAid, we campaign on this’. Again, it’s about engagement and people. I managed to end up clicking a big circle called ‘Take action now’ but when I did I was a bit disappointed to find a news story about a Labour minister giving his heart. The form to actually take action about this was below the scroll line, so I might not have bothered to look. If there’s a form, put it high up or at least have a big link to it.

There’s good use of a blog for the campaign on targeting poverty, charity blogs can sometimes be a bit weak but the brilliant PR stunt of applying to demolish St Paul’s cathedral in protest at mining projects in India makes for great material for a blog, especially as it gives the charity a chance to expand and add detail.

So to sum up:

• Great social network for activists, but frontpage could have more of a buzz about it and feature more of what the activists are doing to campaign, raise money etc
• Good use of blogging to support campaigns, helped by some creative PR
• Hiding away forms that encourage engagement below scroll lines is not good
• Good use of video to promote the social network, was good to watch and helped by star voiceover

I got an email today, via the Common Purpose 360 network*, from a chap who is looking to expand The New Generation Society website. It’s a charity, setup at York University, by the looks of it they are trying to expand.

He was interested in creating a more ‘community feel’ to their website. Everything we listed was ‘we want our own Facebook, but we don’t want it to be Facebook’. Fortunately, I had just the thing for him and something I’m trialing in my role at UCLan Students’ Union to create a series of networks for course representatives based around their school and faculty.

I pointed him in the direction of Ning. A fantastic tool that allows you to create your own social network - complete with forums, events, photos, video, groups. Best of all it’s open-source so you can code your own gadgets for it, and it allows your users to get involved. Ning is not there to ‘replace facebook’ or to be ‘the new facebook’, instead it takes the forum/messageboard concept and allows you create an interactive community around a specific subject. It reminds me of when everyone used to have a free Geocities website about their favourite band/sports team/famous person.

So, we’ll see if the New Generation Society take up a Ning for their site and bring their community of activists online. For small organisations, especially those with no budget and who want to bring together a network for people around a particular subject - Ning couldn’t be better.

*Note: I’m a graduate of the Common Purpose Frontrunner programme. It’s for young people who have shown leadership in civil society. Apprently I have done so.