I hate heart disease – BHF campaign

Speaks for itself really.

I like how they have positioned heart disease and also how they are using the fight sentiment so associated with diseases like cancer. More great work by BHF

Autism Speaks Interactive Ad

(via Digital Buzz)

Kinect technology is a really fashionable. This is a nice use of the technology for Autism Speaks (I never knew this was a sign of autism)

The Irish Charities Expo

The Irish Charities Expo 2012 will be a one day first of its kind exhibition to be held in Ireland.

The Exhibition will get charities and businesses, along with members of the public, together in the same venue so that they can network, develop partnerships and learn from each other.

The Irish Charities Expo is FREE to attend and over 5,000 company representatives will be invited to attend the event to engage and communicate with up to 100 charities that will be showcasing and promoting themselves to the key charity related personnel in Irish businesses.

Everyone Gives

I like the idea of this. I love the concept of networked giving. There is a clear ask (5 euros/pounds/dollars). I like that it is international…so it kind of feels like you are part of a big movement.

There doesn’t seem to be any information about who is behind it, or how much money the charities get. This video actually over complicates the explanation of it too.

What do you think?

(edit: I have seen that Colliers International are the people behind it)

 

Pinterest

Yes, it is hard to keep up. So whats the next big thing? Well everyone seems to be talking about Pinterest, and so I have signed up. So far I am still getting my head around it and how I should be using it personally so for organisations, who are time strapped, thats probably even harder to do.

So, as with all things social, when I am not sure what its all about, I turn to Beth Kanter….and guess what…she has a blog post about it and how it could be used for your organisation. So while I am off trying to figure it out, I thought I would share a link to her post so you can start getting your head around it.

Let me know what you think

Beth Kanter, Pinterest: A tool to curate relevant visual content for your audience

World Non Profit & Social Marketing Conference

Following on from the 2008 conference in Brighton this conference will bring together those interested in applying strategic communications, marketing and behaviour change methodology to solve key social challenges. Speakers will be from areas such as social marketing, the behavioural sciences, strategic communications, health promotion, community engagement, policy development and advocacy, and more.

Themes that will be used to structure the conference key notes, parallel programme and workshops will be:

• Rational and Non rational behaviour and how to influence it
• Intersectoral collaboration to tackle behavioural challenges
• Global learning systems including the new Global Social Marketing Network

Taking place in Citywest Dublin on April 11 & 12, you can book tickets here

Edelman Good Purpose Study 2010

Always worth a read, click on the image below or go direct to their site

Teens Are Stupid

This is a campaign by the Irish Cancer Society, presumably to try and discourage teenagers from smoking. It must be one of the hardest campaigns to run, and I really do wish them well with this new Teens Are Stupid Campaign. But essentially teenagers don’t really want to listen to people in authority telling them that they shouldnt smoke, it just makes them want to smoke. And no matter how they try the Irish Cancer Society is an authority figure. I came across this video on a weekend when 80,000 teenagers were heading to Irelands biggest music festival, probably going to see most artists on stage smoking!

Unfortunatly, I think this video misses the mark. I think they are trying to get all their messages across, but they have got caught up with organisational speak.

What do you think? Anyone got good examples of anti-smoking campaigns aimed at teenagers?

The Wheel Launches new website

The Wheel has launched a new version of its website today, the site will

offer free support and advice to anyone involved in community, voluntary or charitable work in Ireland ….and aims to encourage greater cooperation and skills-development in the community, voluntary and charitable sector

Hopefully the site will become a bit of a non profit hub for Irish organisations (maybe a bit like Fundraising UK?). This certainly should help…

At the heart of the new website is Sector Connector, an interactive space where people can exchange information and advice. Users can also access a comprehensive library of resource gcovering areas such as regulation, fundraising, financial management and governance. The website will also be home to Ireland’s largest database of funding sources; a jobs and volunteering section; a training section; a new directory of community and voluntary organisations and a year planner function to help organisations plan their national fundraising days and other major events.

The website can be accessed at: www.wheel.ie

The site was created with funding from the Vodafone Ireland Foundation and the People in Need Trust and will be maintained by The Wheel.

Homer Simpson for Non Profits

Have you read this E-Book from the Network for Good?

If not, then stop everything you are doing right now, click on Homer and download the book, its well worth the read.

photo source: http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/

If you arent convinced by my Stop Everything and download it now plea, here is a bit more about the E-Book (but trust me just click here and download it!)

The Truth about How People Really Think and
What It Means for Promoting Your Cause

The success of your online outreach hinges on your understanding of the inner workings of the human mind. Learn the basics of the new and revolutionary field of behavioral economics and how you can use these principles to craft more effective messages that will win the hearts and minds of your audience.

People are not rational beings, but the patterns of irrationality are consistent, and understanding them is key to effective marketing and fundraising.Some ideas to look forward to:

• Small, not big – The bigger the scale of what you’re communicating, the smaller the impact on your audience
• Hopeful, not hopeless – People tend to act on what they believe they can change–If your problem seems intractable, enormous and endless, people won’t be motivated to help
• Peer pressure still works (Nope, it doesn’t end after high school) – People are more likely to do something if they know other people like them are doing it.

Haven’t downloaded it yet?? Ok last time…here’s the link

Interim CEO appointed to Resource Alliance

Press statement 

Lyndall Stein appointed interim CEO of  the Resource Alliance 

The Resource Alliance (RA) is announcing the appointment of Lyndall Stein as interim chief executive officer, commencing 2nd March 2009. She will be responsible for the overall management of the organisation, providing leadership to the Resource Alliance staff team and volunteer network. It is anticipated that Stein will be in post for a period of eight months, while the RA recruits a permanent post-holder. 

Stein has more than 15 years’ experience working at director level for charities and not-for-profit organisations in the UK, most recently setting up Concern UK, where she worked as executive director from 2004 to 2008. Prior to that, she was international marketing director of ActionAid, leading a major change process to raise profile, develop campaigning, and build new income.   

Programme and consulting services director Neelam Makhijani has been promoted to the new role of deputy ceo.

The current ceo, Simon Collings, will complete a two-week handover with Stein, before he leaves the organisation mid-March for his new role as chief operations officer with GVEP International.

The Sin in Doing Good Deeds?

If a businessman rakes in a hefty profit while doing good works, is that charity or greed? Do we applaud or hiss?  

A new book, “Uncharitable,” seethes with indignation at public expectations that charities be prudent, nonprofit and saintly. The author, Dan Pallotta, argues that those expectations make them less effective, and he has a point.

Mr. Pallotta’s frustration is intertwined with his own history as the inventor of fund-raisers like AIDSRides and Breast Cancer 3-Days – events that, he says, netted $305 million over nine years for unrestricted use by charities. In the aid world, that’s a breathtaking sum.

But Mr. Pallotta’s company wasn’t a charity, but rather a for-profit company that created charitable events. Critics railed at his $394,500 salary – low for a corporate chief executive, but stratospheric in the aid world – and at the millions of dollars spent on advertising and marketing and other expenses.

Taken from New York Times, thanks to Karen for sending on

“Shame on Pallotta,” declared one critic at the time, accusing him of “greed and unabashed profiteering.” In the aftermath of a wave of criticism, his company collapsed.

One breast cancer charity that parted ways with Mr. Pallotta began producing its own fund-raising walks, but the net sum raised by those walks for breast cancer research plummeted from $71 million to $11 million, he says.

Mr. Pallotta argues powerfully that the aid world is stunted because groups are discouraged from using such standard business tools as advertising, risk-taking, competitive salaries and profits to lure capital.

“We allow people to make huge profits doing any number of things that will hurt the poor, but we want to crucify anyone who wants to make money helping them,” Mr. Pallotta says. “Want to make a million selling violent video games to kids? Go for it. Want to make a million helping cure kids of cancer? You’re labeled a parasite.”

I confess to ambivalence. I deeply admire the other kind of aid workers, those whose passion for their work is evident by the fact that they’ve gone broke doing it. I’m filled with awe when I go to a place like Darfur and see unpaid or underpaid aid workers in groups like Doctors Without Borders, risking their lives to patch up the victims of genocide.

I also worry that if aid groups paid executives as lavishly as Citigroup, they would be managed as badly as Citigroup.

Yet there’s a broad recognition in much of the aid community that a major rethink is necessary, that groups would be more effective if they borrowed more tools from the business world, and that there is too much “gotcha” scrutiny on overhead rather than on what they actually accomplish. It’s notable that leaders of Oxfam and Save the Children have publicly endorsed the book, and it’s certainly becoming more socially acceptable to note that businesses can also play a powerful role in fighting poverty.

“Howard Schultz has done more for coffee-growing regions of Africa than anybody I can think of,” Michael Fairbanks, a development expert, said of the chief executive of Starbucks. By helping countries improve their coffee-growing practices and brand their coffees, Starbucks has probably helped impoverished African coffee farmers more than any aid group has.

Mr. Fairbanks himself demonstrates that a businessman can do good even as he does well. Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, hired Mr. Fairbanks’s consulting company and paid it millions of dollars between 2000 and 2007.

In turn, Mr. Fairbanks helped Rwanda market its coffee, tea and gorillas. Rwandan coffee now retails for up to $55 a pound in Manhattan, wages in the Rwandan coffee sector have soared up to eight-fold, and zillionaires stumble through the Rwandan jungle to admire the wildlife. President Kagame thanked Mr. Fairbanks by granting him Rwandan citizenship.

There are lots of saintly aid workers in Rwanda, including the heroic Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners in Health, and they do extraordinary work. But sometimes, so do the suits. Isaac Durojaiye, a Nigerian businessman, is an example of the way the line is beginning to blur between businesses and charities. He runs a for-profit franchise business that provides fee-for-use public toilets in Nigeria. When he started, there was one public toilet in Nigeria for every 200,000 people, but by charging, he has been able to provide basic sanitation to far more people than any aid group.

In the war on poverty, there is room for all kinds of organizations. Mr. Pallotta may be right that by frowning on aid groups that pay high salaries, advertise extensively and even turn a profit, we end up hurting the world’s neediest.

“People continue to die as a result,” he says bluntly. “This we call morality.”