London Regional ICT Champion

Since this project started, I’ve been evangelising blogs as tool for enabling voluntary sector organisations to communicate with their audience and each other.

Whenever I’ve asked people about using a blog to promote their work to a wider audience, the reception I’ve got has usually been an expression of polite indifference. And then people start edging off towards the buffet.

Part of the problem with the low adoption rate of blogs in the UK voluntary sector is that many people have only vaguely heard about blogging, are too busy with day to day ‘fire-fighting’ and don’t really understand why they should invest time in an activity seen as ‘geeky’.

If you’ve ever wanted to know why blogging in the voluntary sector can be a good thing, Tom Murphy sums it up perfectly:

Advocacy: Blogs are the perfect medium for creating platforms where passionate and articulate individuals and organizations can clearly communicate their views on issues and drive the debate.

Accountability: When people give to charity, often the most powerful means of keeping them involved is to show them how their donation is being used. Blogs provide the perfect platform for demonstrating the results of fundraising.

Show and Tell: Can you think of a more powerful tool for charities that using blogs to showcase the issues they’re facing or trying to solve on a daily basis? Whether it’s aid workers blogging in a foreign country or homeless people sharing accounts of their lives.

Every other benefit of blogs: Blogs promise organizations many benefits, and alongside the first three points, they offer charities exactly the same benefits. Whether it’s about conversations, knowledge sharing, search engine optimization etc. blogs can help.

Blogging in the UK charity sector gets an occasional mention in Third Sector, usually with a nod to major players like Greenpeace and Oxfam.

However, if you want to read other voluntary sector blogs with a more local voice, check out VolResource – which lists UK blogs.

Reporting on all this comment and opinion can also be a full-time job. Personally, I subscribe to Bloglines. Instead of trying to get my ‘news’ fix from 10-15 different web sites – which can take all morning, especially if I’ve lost a link – Bloglines lets me know when there’s new content on web sites I’ve asked it to monitor.

Bloglines updates regularly and gives me a digest of new stories which I can either ignore or click on for more information. Bloglines is also web-based, which means you can check your ‘Bloglines’ from any computer connected to the Internet. Believe me, it’s easier staying up to date this way.

Elsewhere,Charityblogs – aggregates the latest posts from voluntary sector posts.

So yes, blogging in the voluntary sector can be a good thing when done right, and in later posts I’ll be showing innovative examples of blogging used by non-profits/charities to egt their message out.