Yesterday, we were delighted to support the Institute of Fundraising North’s conference, Making the most of the Internet, Email and Social Media. Over 80 people attended and there was a palpable buzz after a great selection of speakers ran through the possibilities that the internet and social media holds for charities.
I (Jonathan) presented on the subject of what charities really think of online fundraising and how to make the most of it. You can view my presentation below or on slideshare (complete with links on the slides to find out more):
There’s also a recording of the whole talk on Vimeo:
It was a really exciting event to be at, in the wonderful surroundings of the National Railway Museum, York. True to the nature of the event, we’ve shared some of our photos of the day on Flickr, and there are more tagged here.
One of the other speakers, Howard Lake, founder of UK fundraising, has already posted his reaction complete with some of the other presentations on his blog. There was also loads of real-time reaction and interaction using twitter by attendees and speakers alike – you can see a selection of the ‘tweets’ grouped here. Feel free to say hi to me at http://twitter.com/jon_bedford
The day also included a fantastic talk by Buzz Director Steve Bridger on An introduction to Social Media for charities, ProBlogger Chris Garrett‘s engagingly witty take on blogging, Beth Kanter joined us live from San Francisco to talk charities and social media, Nick from Missionfish spoke on using eBay for charity, and there was a fabulous case study from Dogs Trust – showing a charity putting everyone’s theories into (best) practice.
I was also fortunate enough to give a version of this presentation at Professional Fundraising’s Digicomms conference in January. And the two events shared some key themes – with many speakers at both events encouraging charities to accept that they have less control in the online world, that while there may be some risk in using Digital, New or Social Media (whatever you want to label it), the risk of *not* getting involved and being left behind is far greater.
There are so many websites out there that can be used as tools to help charities do what they do best – tell their story and make supporters part of that story. We see it more and more with both individuals and charities who use the Justgiving site, and we use those same tools ourselves, be it Facebook, flickr, YouTube, twitter or this blog.
Check out the other presentations from the day below:
