I'm in love (with a charity!)

The causes people support can be very close to their heart and charities can experience some of the best brand loyalty because when someone chooses to support a cause they feel like there's a synergy between their values and aims and that of the organisation.

I think our relationships with the charities we work for and support are a bit like love affairs. Most of us are serial monogamists, some mate for life, some have a bit on the side and the consultants have "open relationships".

My first love when I graduated was St Wilfrid's Hospice, Chichester. However I wanted the bright lights of London and was too young to settle down, so I started looking around for something new. I fell in love with Safe the Children after my guides took part in their pop-up shop initiative and I was so excited when I got a date with them (you might call this an interview) and I suffered the heartbreak of unrequited love when I found out they didn't want me the way I wanted them :(

I was attracted to Depaul UK because they seemed pretty cool (what with the uber successful iHobo app) We hit it off and things are going pretty well, but now the honeymoon period is over I'm still deeply in love but must admit I've started to look lustfully at other charities. I was even tempted to play for the other team when I experienced the amazing hospitality of Google, but I know the reality of corporate world wouldn't live up to the fantasy.

I must admit I have a bit of a crush on UNICEF though. Their Easter Egg Facebook app drew me in, then their East Africa appeal and the subsequent telephone call (when I signed up as a regular donor) sealed the deal. Their Own a Colour appeal made me want to get a poster of them on my wall - the idea didn't initially grab me ( I was playing hard to get) but the website blew me away...

So, I've admitted my secret crush. Now I want to know how you've got a crush on! 

Y not charity?

I'm always fascinated to hear people's stories of how they came to work in the third sector. Within the small team of fundraisers I work in my colleagues have past-lives as diverse as Corporate Lawyer and Vicar! 


I've worked as a fundraiser since I graduated in 2008 so you might think I'm a career charity professional, but even I had a bit of a strange journey to the sector. When I was 17 my best friend and I started a youth theatre group at our local theatre so when it was time to go to university I decided I wanted to study drama and ended up going to a full blown drama school (yes, it was a bit like being one of the kids from Fame). Because our timetable was so sporadic I had some pretty crazy casual jobs during uni, including dressing up as banana to hand out leaflets.


Looking back some of the things I most enjoyed doing with my theatre group were the project management and event management elements, including organising a series of different fundraisers when the theatre was threatened with closure. Coming from a small town and a working class family no one ever suggested to me that a career in fundraising, or the charity sector as a whole, could be a great fit for my skills and interests. I ended up doing a fundraising internship in my final term at university, primarily to get events management experience, and everything fell in to place. Having been involved in Girlguiding my whole life I was passionate about community action, I just never realised that it could be a career.


I was very interested to read about this research recently that found that (of 1,132 14-15 year olds surveyed) 28.5 per cent of boys and 15 per cent of girls think charity is the most boring sector to work in. The survey also found that only 3.2 per cent wanted to work in the charity sector, fourth from the bottom of the 24 options. Whilst I am not entirely convinced that this survey really reflects the whole picture it does bring up some interesting points, especially in the article when the gentleman from the research organisation suggests that children associate charity with charity shops.


If charities are going to grow and be sustainable in the future I think it is vitally important that we are recruiting top talent in to the sector. What a shame it will be if passionate young people don't realise how great it is to work for a charity. I think sector bodies such as the IoF should be thinking about how they can promote the sector as a career prospect to young people, but we all have a part to play as well. 


Next time you go to give a talk in an assembly or to a youth group about your cause why not take a minute to explain about the people in your organisation and about the variety of exciting worthwhile jobs they do - even if the children don't choose to work in the sector increasing public awareness of how charities work could be really valuable. Who knows, maybe the next generation of charity professionals won't be asked if they get paid to do their job quite as much as we do!


I'd love to hear your stories of how you came to work in the sector. Until next time 

Getting LinkedIn

I've been using LinkedIn a lot more recently. Since they updated their iPhone app it has been much easier to access content on the go. I think the groups are particularly helpful to help you stay connected within your sector. If, like me, you aren't currently looking for a job then it's a great tool to build up your connections and if you are looking for work it could prove invaluable.

Last week a new volunteer experience section was added to profiles. Even if you don't work in the sector your volunteer experience can really help you differentiate yourself; if it's directly related to your line of work it shows your commitment and if not it shows how well rounded you are. Of course, all volunteering shows that you are compassionate, socially aware and engaged in your community.

I for one know that my CV is much stronger when I include my volunteer experience and it's good to be able to showcase this alongside my paid work. In a tough job market, with record youth unemployment, I think Gen Y-ers 

can particularly benefit from their volunteering being presented as a key aspect of their experience. I only graduated three years ago and am in my second job but there are voluntary projects which I worked on whilst I was a student that are a key part of why I have come to work as a fundraiser - our volunteer experience is what makes us stand out from the crowd.

At the same time as this new profile section LinkedIn have also given everyone the chance to show off which causes they support so whether or not you work for a charity you can tell people what is important to you - I think the causes we support can say a lot about us to it's another way to inject some personality into your profile.

I'd love to know what you think of the new features so check it out and get in touch (plus you can connect with me on LinkedIn here) 

How busy is too busy?

So, I haven't blogged for a while... I have just been so busy! Not woe is me I've got so much to do boo hoo but lots of exciting things going on, how can I fit all this stuff in and still get a few hours sleep kind of busy.

I think Gen Y can have a bit of a bad name for having a poor work ethic and expecting everything to come to them for the minimum amount of work. I'm sure there are people who fit in to that category but I know a lot of people my age from all different sectors who are all super busy doing lots of things to further themselves and their careers. It's a privilege to do a job that you love but there is a flip side to "finding a job you love and you'll never work again". It's hard to maintain any semblance of a work/life balance when your leisure time, work time and volunteering all blur in to one.

In February I started a new Guide unit which has been a really rewarding experience but more work than I envisaged. Until a couple of weeks ago I was also volunteering as coordinator for the opening ceremony of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts 34th World conference which was hosted in Edinburgh. As the ceremony itself approached the work load for this commitment escalated from a few hours a week at the start until it felt like I was working another full time job in the few weeks beforehand. Add to this myriad other little projects I have been helping friends with and getting involved in and my diary for the last couple of months has been a little too overcrowded.

I guess one of my problems is I never want to feel like I'm missing out. It was probably a bit much to volunteer on the IoF National Convention during the same week that I had to go to Edinburgh but I couldn't bear the thought of missing it and having to wait until next year for the next one!

I hadn't realised quite how stressed I had got with my overloaded diary until on my return from Edinburgh I kept having to tell myself to relax; I had got so tense that it took a few days to get myself to chill out. I also realised that I saw some of my London based friends more when I lived in West Sussex than I do now I live in London again and that I actually can't remember the last time I visited my Dad :( The up side is that now my diary has eased up over the summer, only having a full time job to contend with feels like being on holiday.

The next few weeks will be spent catching up with people I haven't seen in a while and enjoying any sunshine that comes our way, until the next project begins. I'd love to hear how you maintain a work/life balance, get in touch.

Get Women on Board

I have been going over some ideas to write a post on the issue of gender equality and then I watched this video from Amber “Nineteen Percent” which really spurred me on!

Whether or not you take issue with Beyonce's song, I think that Amber's over-arching point is a very real one; that many women in the west are lulled in to a false sense of victory where gender politics is concerned. Yes, we have made great strides over the last hundred years and are much better off than women in some other countries, but that doesn't mean that we should ignore the fact there is still a very real 17% pay gap in the UK.

Lord Davies' report “Women on Boards” recommends that FTSE 100 companies should be aiming to have 25% female boards by 2015. It seems shocking that women are currently so under represented and the report says that at current rates of change it will take 70 years for gender balance to be reached. In the third sector we are doing a little better with women making up 31% of top 100 charity boards, but in a sector where the majority of the work force are women this still isn't acceptable.

In the UK government only 22% of MPs are female. What is interesting is that of the 144 female MPs 81 of them are Labour; this constitutes 31% of all the Labour MPs currently in the house of commons. This is because Labour use women only short-lists to select some of their candidates. Whilst I feel that in an ideal world candidates would be selected on merit alone I think that this shows that in order to escalate change and cause a real shift in culture sometimes measures, such as women only short-lists, have to be put in place.

I wonder what measures charities could put in place to make their boards more representative. I often see that organisations are looking for certain skills sets to make their board more well rounded; should they be seeking more women to make their board more well rounded as well?

With shifting attitudes and more life-choices and opportunities for young women, Gen Y could be the first generation to really put gender inequality in the past. For the second parliament in a row the “baby” of the House of Commons is female. Pamela Nash and her predescesor Jo Swinson where both 25 when they were elected in 2010 and 2005 respectively. Maybe this is a sign that Gen Y women are rising up to take their rightful place on a par with men.

So maybe it's not so much a case of girls running the world, Beyonce, but girls believing they can run the world and being given the opportunities to do so. I guess that's not as catchy though...

The Oxfam Curiosity Shop at Selfridges

I went to visit the Oxfam Curiosity Shop in Selfridges at the weekend (2nd April). I thought it was great so I want to get my one negative point out of the way; it was really hard to find! I have to confess I am not a fan of the experience of shopping in huge department stores any way. I think it is fantastic that Selfridges are supporting such a great cause, but they could do with making a bit more of a song and dance about it. There seemed to be no signage and none of their staff seemed to know anything about it - one lady advised me it was on the second floor which led me on a while goose chase but I am glad I persevered!


The pop-up shop definitely lived up to my expectations and I really enjoyed my visit. I love the way the selection of designer and vintage clothes were displayed and the whole design of the space balanced fitting in to the high-end store with the charm of a charity shop well. The attention to detail made the whole thing a great experience; the individual hand written card tags on the clothes and with QR codes taking you to information about the project were my favourite touch.


The project is led by some well known celebs and this endorsement works very well; it seems that the people involved, such as Annie Lennox and Jane Shepherdson, are really instrumental in its development and fit well with its ethos. They certainly haven't tagged the celeb endorsement on to the project solely to get publicity. 


I have been thinking for a while about an interview I read in Third Sector in December with Thomas Schultz-Jagow, Director of Communications at Oxfam GB. He says that Oxfam are looking to establish themselves as a lifestyle brand (Read full article here). Whilst the comments on the Third Sector website are pretty dismissive about this I think there is something to be said for the space between consumer brands and charities. You can't ignore the growth of social enterprise and of for-profit companies whose popularity is a result of their ethical and social credentials (such as TOMS shoes and Innocent Smoothies which I have previously mentioned/featured). If this is the route Oxfam are looking to explore then this project certainly won't damage their progress. 


The core elements of this project: fashion, celebrity endorsement and its temporary nature, will definitely draw a Gen Y audience but in fact the appeal is quite broad.


The Oxfam Curiosity Shop is open until 10th April. It can be found in the Ultralounge on the Lower Ground Floor of Selfridges, Oxford Street. Find out more here or if you can't make it, why not have a look at the online auction here. Enjoy! 

Y Volunteer?

With all the talk around community involvement and volunteering I have been questioning for a while my own motivations for volunteering. It's such an everyday thing for me that when I am thinking about how to motivate people to volunteer more I am prone to asking "Why not volunteer".

A lot of my volunteering is with Girlguiding UK. As I have been a member since I became a Rainbow at age 5 a lot of the usual answers of "I don't have time to volunteer" etc just don't apply because I have always spent one evening a week at Guides so it doesn't seem a hardship. In fact, I think I would be pretty lost without it. Girlguiding afforded me such amazing opportunities as a child that it was important for me to stay involved as I got older to make sure other girls had the same opportunities.

Even so I have chosen to get involved with additional projects outside of my regular commitment to run a Guide unit, for 10-14 year olds, each week. For three years I was on the planning team for The Young Women's World Forum http://www.wagggsworld.org/en/YWWF. This event bought together young women from around the world to discuss and plan action on the UN MDGS. It was great when all our planning came to fruition and we got to meet all these incredible young women from around the globe. This was an brilliant opportunity which taught me a great deal. It has played a big part in my career decisions and I definitely feel that as well as putting a lot in to this project, I got an awful lot out.

Other volunteering I have been involved in has included campaigning for different causes and helping at various events - I enjoy these opportunities as I get to make new friends, learn about difference issues and go to cool events. So there's a lot of reasons why I volunteer -  to champion causes I'm passionate about, to give back, to boost my CV, to do something productive with my time, to meet new people and because it makes me happy! I'd love to know other people's motivations for volunteering and whether different generations' motivations vary so let me know why you volunteer!

Sponsoring hope - sounds pretty good, eh?

A major campaign that has been launched recently is The British Heart Foundation's Mending Broken Hearts campaign. What I like about this campaign is that is lets us in on a secret - that zebrafish can heal their own hearts - and speaks to us in open way. It made me feel that there could be real hope in regenerative medicine and that by supporting the campaign I would really become part of something quite monumental. I must admit at this stage that I am (or rather was) a lapsed regular giver to BHF and they have helped a member of my family in the past. This appeal made me revisit their work and I am now, once again, a regular donor having signed up to the "sponsor hope" aspect of the appeal. 

I do, however, have a couple of thoughts on the campaign. When I signed up I was told that there are several benefits to becoming a sponsor but I think it would be good to allow people to opt out of some of these to allow for a more personalised approach. Whilst I will proudly wear a campaign pin which has been designed by Sir Peter Blake, I have no interest whatsoever in watching a series of DVDs or having a certificate. I would also like all communication to be by email, and whilst I sent a message via the website to say so it would have been nice to be given the choice. I don't know about other age groups but as a Gen Y-er I like to have control over how I engage with things, I like to feel it's on my terms and I would have appreciated a little more choice.

BHF do have a very active twitter and facebook presence which is run well but they don't so far seem to be doing anything outside of their regular commentary and utilising social media in a different way. In fact the methods which have been chosen for the campaign feel quite traditional (TV, charity record etc). The aim of the campaign is to raise £50 million over 10 years so it will be certainly interesting to see how it grows and develops as it's audience grows and shifts. I hope they find ways to get other Gen Y-ers on board and take us with them because we might not be the biggest donors now but in 10 years time we might be the ones you really need... 

I'm excited about 2011!

So, January is over... I always think it's a bit like the "Monday of the year" so I'm not too sad to see it go, although it does seem to have happened rather quickly!

There are plenty of things to cause concern for the sector in 2011, with the economy and the coalition government's attempts to recover it being pretty high on the list. I have been lucky/unlucky (delete as desired) to hear both Nick Hurd and David Cameron speak on the issue of "Big Society" and whilst I obviously support the idea of strengthening communities and building social engagement I have not heard anything that leads me to believe that they know how this will happen and whether they intend to have any part in it doing so! There are a great many people out there doing brilliant things in their community but how are they going to get even more people involved instead of spending tax-payers money on teaching grandmothers to suck eggs? (figuratively speaking of course)

The reason why I am excited about 2011 despite the doom and gloom is there are some great things happening already this year and that shows the resilience and passion of the third sector. Action Aid's "What a Feeling" Campaign for instance is very interesting; the campaign focuses on what supporters get out of being involved in Action Aid's work rather than the services it delivers - the campaign itself has been very well orchestrated with multi-channel advertising and PR stunts. We all try to indicate what our donors and volunteers can get out of being involved with our causes but I think it is pretty brave for Action Aid to focus their whole campaign on this. Being a massive fan of Action Aid's "Bollocks to Poverty" youth channel and a previous volunteer with them I hope that their campaign achieves their organisational aims rather than just being a boost to the sector as a whole.

In fact, it's probably the kind of campaign that should be run to explain to us all what "Big Society" is all about....

Gen Y does WI!

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Who are Generation Y?

Defining someone by their generation undoubtedly uses pretty broad brush strokes as so many other factors can effect how someone behaves (gender and socio-economic background for example). All the same, as I have decided to write this blog with a "Gen Y" slant I thought I should examine the accepted characteristics of this generation and explore my own understanding of the term. 

Definitions of Gen Y vary quite a lot - we may also be called Millennials, Echo Boomers, Net Generation or Boomerang Generation. There is also quite a lot of debate over what birth years are part of Gen Y - I think 1977-1994 is quite a good span and would say that generally I would relate to people in that age range as the same generation as me. Of course some people are on the cusp, particularly when you take the varying definitions in to account. Perhaps Gen Y is still too new a term to have a more accepted definition in the way "Baby Boomer" and "Generation X" do.

What with the name and age range being a little blurry I think that it is more useful to define Generation Y by it's characteristics, which everyone seems more in agreeance on. The two inter-related characteristics of Gen Y which particularly interest me are that of technology dependence and the need for instant gratification.

It goes without saying that we are an extremely technology literate generation and the gadgets and gizmos available to us are interwoven in to our every day lives. However, I think it is key to remember that we have seen a great deal of change in our life times and it may be this which sets us apart from the successive generation. I was born in 1986 and I'm fairly certain that if you described an iPhone to someone then they would have thought you were bonkers. I remember the BBC test card, I can remember what the MS-DOS interface looked like and I remember when the Nokia 3310 was cutting edge and technological advancements are happening at such an exponential rate that I am sure we will see many more unimaginable changes to come.

The multi-channel communications now available to us have been embraced by Gen Y and allow us to create and share in a way which was never before possible. Creative practices in particular have been opened up to the masses - anyone who wants to can make a short film or record a track and then publicise it to the world instantaneously and for relatively low cost. I think this gives Gen Y a strong characteristic of entrepreneurship and the desire for autonomy, which is related to the trait of instant gratification.

I'm always doing a million things at once with lots of different windows open on my PC. I know I'm pretty impatient too; "Bored now!" is one of my most overused phrases and I can be heard shouting it at frequent intervals such as when I have had to queue for more than 2 minutes at the supermarket or wait for a tube for more than 3. I have high expectations for myself and sometimes wonder why I'm not MD of my own international organisation yet. This is definitely symptomatic of my generation but I don't think it is necessarily a negative thing either; I am able to juggle many tasks, look at problems from lots of different angles and I don't accept any less than the best. Gen Y want it all and we want it all now and I think that makes us a force to be reckoned with.

In my next posts I will begin exploring Gen Y and the third sector; until then...