Child's i Foundation (oh and the Flip video camera...)

Matt hosted one of his Digital Dinners @ The Spectator last week. We've had some brilliant speakers over the past year ranging from Ninjas to We-Thinkers and now Charity2.0 folks, from the new Childs i Foundation.

Have a look on their website, its a fascinating way to approach charity in this new media world. Basically they don't want your money.  They say:

We don’t want your money. Yet.

Michelle (our director of fundraising) had a heart attack when we told her we didn’t want to ask our lovely supporters for money straight away. We figured that you need to get to know us, who we are, our goals, and where your money is going first.

This is a new idea so lets do things a bit differently.

Right now we need you to get involved and to help us complete our to-do list and get as many people on this planet to join our community. This is a big undertaking as the key to the success of this project is creating a worldwide community of supporters.

It really got me thinking. In this age of Radical Transparency actually most charities are pretty non-transparent, or at least they seem that way to me. I would love an organisation like Childs i Foundation to shift the traditional model of Not For Profit communication and participation on its head. After all the more involved you are in something, the more that you understand it and the more that you support it.

This is their YouTube channel.

But the other thing that was great was the Flip that they were using.

I totally fell in love with it! So easy and simple - just brilliant. Lucy recorded the evening and then simply plugged the USB into her computer and uploaded the video straight to YouTube.  Fantastic, I've been raving about the Flip every since then but I haven't actually ever used one.

Are they as brilliant as they seem??

(And hi to fellow guests like Simon, Deb, Matthew...)

Comments

[John]

Tom R-L told me a great story that endorses the thinking here. His friend, possibly a friend of yours too, is a fund manager who resented a charity trying to get him to buy stuff like chairs and cushions. He just wished they would ask him to run their investment portfolio because that would maximise his skills and their returns.

[Howard Lake]

You're right about the value of a Flip and similar products to charities as a tool that can support transparency.

I've been using one this year to report on and share the content of key fundraising conferences and training sessions on UK Fundraising (http://www.fundraising.co.uk), the online resource and community for professional charity fundraisers.

You can see them at

http://uk.youtube.com/user/HowardLake

I'm a former fundraiser myself, but I'd say the charity sector has always been pretty transparent, and has become increasingly so in recent years.

For example:

* charity regulator the Charity Commission requires and publishes all charities' annual accounts and reports (or at least those with a turnover over a minimum threshold):

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk

* Guidestar UK offers similar information and analysis at

http://www.guidestar.org.uk

* other organisations offer independent donor advisory services and analysis on charities e.g.

http://www.intelligentgiving.com

and

http://www.philanthropycapital.org

* fundraisers are self-regulated variously by the Fund-Raising Standards Board (www.frsb.org.uk), and Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (www.pfra.org.uk), and our Institute of Fundraising has clear codes of practice which we must adhere to, and which are published openly online (www.institute-of-fundraising.org.uk).

* my site, UK Fundraising, has been published since 1994 and, although aimed at professional charity fundraisers, has always been open for the public to use. I'm always aware, and am glad, that our professional resource lets the public see, if they want, what is going on in fundraising and what fundraisers discuss, share and learn about every day.

* the occasional bad apple and case of fraud etc gets reported by national media and the trade press. And the never-ending debates about face-to-face fundraisers ("chugging"), how much charity chief executives should get paid, charity 'junk' mail, and the increasing professionalism within fundraising are covered frequently by all strands of the media.

The volume of information available about charities is huge, in my view. Given the support and involvement of the public in this sector, whether in terms of funding or volunteer time, that is both welcome and essential.

The use by charities like Childs i Foundation of social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Flickr and YouTube etc are also welcome because they can only support this trend.

[amelia]

@Howard: Thank you so much for the comment, really interesting stuff. You picked up on a word that I thought a lot about before using, "Transparency". Its actually the wrong word. I didn't mean that charities aren't transparent, that's not right. I think what I was meaning was that most charities do not feel like a "conversation". With the exception of the child-sponsorship charities, the sense that I get as a charity giver is much more of a transactional, one-way type relationship rather than the dialogue that the likes of Lucy Buck are looking to establish. As the Cluetrain Manifesto said, "all markets are conversations", so it makes me very happy that the not for profit sector is starting to approach its fundraising in the same open way.

[vigilon]

Very good site! Worth-reading. I very like it. :-)