Introducing Quote Fridays...

By the time Friday rolls around, we're often all out of blog-worthy things to say. So every Friday from now on, we'll rely on people who are much funnier/cleverer/more insightful than we are to say things for us. Starting with hotshot ad man, Tony Cox, who penned the little gem above...

Hannah

The 25 Commandments

In the proud tradition of simply posting links to good stuff that other people have done, I bring you the 25 Commandments of Journalism – all of which apply to writing appeals.

If you have anything to do with creating or approving charity communications then I guarantee that this will be five minutes very well spent.

James

Facebook shop

Following the announcement that Asos will have their entire shop up on Facebook by the end of the month, I started wondering whether charities could use this technology to increase donations.

Most, if not all, charities have some presence on Facebook already. Some better than others, but nevertheless, they're there. The quickest, least-scientific flick through these pages shows that less than quarter have any sort of donate functionality (a crime in itself). Those that do always take you somewhere else to give.

There's nothing more annoying (and more likely to make you close your browser) than clicking a link and being taken to a third party website. So if the technology exists to run a shop through Facebook, this simple step should be every charity's first move.

Moving entire 'ethical giving' products over would be a sensible second step. Not least, as the fulfillment part of the process could happen almost exclusively online. Happy Birthday friend #237, I bought you five chickens, here's a link, and a photo on your wall and everyone can see what a nice person I am. Fulfillment cost £0. Public show of niceness 100%.

Hmm, we should probably call some clients right about now...

Richard

Guess what I found...

Today I discovered, and subsequently inherited Open's 2-year-old, never really used twitter account.

Find us at @openfundraising for all of those cool things that don't quite deserve a blog post but need sharing all the same! We should really have more followers than followees...

Richard

Nothing says Happy New Year like a week-late blog post

Hello, and happy new year! Things have been a bit crazy here since Christmas – lots of work coming to an end/going to print, with some exciting new projects kicking off on the tightest of schedules as well!

Above is a very bad photo taken on my phone of a photoshoot we did last week for the wonderful Action for Children.

I'm sure there'll be some more exciting posts on here the moment someone has a spare five minutes and something interesting to say.

In the meantime, you could still win £500 in our heroes competition.

Richard