Category: Miscellaneous

Trailblazers: Stans Cafe, Birmingham City Council and Young People

Stans Cafe ( globally successful Birmingham theatre company) has been working with a 120 young people for last few weeks to help the City Council connect in new ways.

Groups from different schools have been walking their neighbourhoods and walking the wider city.  Some of their reflections are captured in a set of animations (find them all here) ….

 

Today they came from their neighbourhoods into the world of the council house, council chambers and council procedures.

Watching them talk about a range of issues raised a few things for me.

  • People are experts on the places they live in.  Respect them for that.  Talk to them about that.
  • Putting people in places that are new can be tricky – asking them to have a view on what the city centre should be like if they don’t use it may be intimidating.
  • But above is only partly true.  I learned years ago watching Dutch, Belgian and German, UK community groups share stories that giving people space to talk about their world creates hooks for them, gives them away into each others worlds.  “What you’re saying sounds a bit like how we… ”  “I’ve never thought of it that way”  “You should meet…” are the sort of sentences that demonstrate understanding.
  • Politicians need to listen to a lot of people, but they don’t have to heed us all.  It is their job to make up their mind.  Communicating that I’ve listened to you but won’t do what you’ve asked is important.
  • If you are 15 the number of people employed to do intangible things is puzzling.  Why have another meeting about litter when those people could pick it up?
  • No one likes cold uninviting empty parks – they want them busy warm and welcoming.  That alone should be the kernel around which parks thrive – and that’s not the same as providing parks as a service.
  • Shyness is often a product of uncertainty. What are you looking for from me?  Can I do that? One way to overcome that is by being interested in them, not asking them to be interested in your or your organisation.
  • It is really important for public services to keep trying new ways to talk to people.  It’s also just as important to be  involved in that conversation, not delegate it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to link to Paypal using the Facebook Donate Now button

Adding a Paypal donate button to your Facebook page has never been easy – and as Facebook has changed over the years it’s become impossible without adding third party apps and that’s only of you know where to start looking.

Thankfully with the role out of the integrated Donate Now button to non profit facebook pages there is now a fairly simple way off taking Paypal donations via your page and we’ve even put together a quick guide to help you.

Before you start though, if you want to use Paypal to collect donations you need to have an account set up just for that so that you don’t fall foul of their charges, information can be found on their site.

How to add Paypal to your Donate Now Facebook button.

Search Paypal for the “Donate Button” page, or alternately click this link here, it will take you directly to the page you need.

Log in with details of the account that will be receiving the donation.

NB: It is important that this account is set up for your organisation, using a public email address as this will be visible on the donate page.

You will then see the following screen;

add paypal to facebook donatebdutton

Work your way through the following settings: Read more

How to use the new Facebook “Donate” button for your Charity in the UK

facebookandpaypaldonate

In 2013 Facebook rolled out a “Donate” button  limited to specific charity partners.

Now Facebook has made it possible for all charities to add a  Donate Button on their facebook page (if you’re still using a profile or a group for your organisation’s main Facebook activity this won’t work for you).

HOW TO SET UP YOUR DONATE BUTTON

We’ll talk you through how by using a local Birmingham Charity – the fantastic Birmingham Conservation Trust with the their Coffin Works – as an example.   (Transparency – Nick Booth used to be a trustee of BCT)

The donate now feature works through the pages call to action button, but the donate option is only available to pages that are set up as non profits. So to begin check what you have your page set up as.

Log into facebook and visit the page you want to set up a  “donate now” button for. You must be an admin of the page to have access to this.

Underneath the page title it will tell you what your page is set up as, in the case of Birmingham Conservation Trust (in the example below) they are already registered as a Non-profit – but if you’re not it’s easy to change.

Screenshot_090315_110332_AM

Go to your pages about section: Read more

Useful things from the NCVO annual conference Evolve 2015

We’ve been spending the time providing a social media surgery at #evolve2015 –  we get to charities and voluntary organisations use social media and open data bit better and in return meet fab people and learn good stuff.  Here are some of the things I found through wandering and conversations… that interest me…

Circle  Central.   My unstoppable mum is involved in a wellbeing group of “older” women where she lives. They meet up and organise to do things to keep all of them moving, involved, interested/active.  This http://www.circlecentral.com/  is a sort of paid for approach to the same thing.  Not quite caught fire but interesting none the less.  For a working example go here: http://rochdalecircle.org/become_a_helper.php

lamplight

Open data can fry your brain(s).  We’ve been learning how to introduce some open data skills into the social media surgery network thanks to support from the Cabinet Office.  Frankly we’ve been keeping it simple, helping organisations use data tools or open data sets for problems they need to solve – and then sharing what we did together at www.bevocal.org and also at blog.socialmediasurgery.com.  One conversation reminded me of what we try to do at the social media surgeries – which is stay sensitive to someone’s experience, skill and tolerance.  It’s the same as not trying to force someone to drive round a three lane roundabout when so far they only managed to get into third gear in a car park.

Data Visualisation:  https://www.silk.co/   Google fusion tables, but more visual, for data visualisation

Mentoring and Befriending Foundation now part of the NCVO.

Keeping people with learning difficulties safer online –  I had a fab conversation with Tim Davies from Camp Hill Milton Keynes.   They are focussing on refining how they use social media both to promote their residential and support work and the theatre they run.  Paul Webster mentioned this from the Foundation for People with Learning disabilities  – as a resource on stayong safer online – i like it for it’s cealr visual layout.  http://www.learningdisabilities.org.uk/publications/safeonline/

It turns out that Gill from the brilliant tool @whooseshoes may have benefited from what we do…

Tips on micro-volunteering can be found here  http://knowhownonprofit.org/how-to/how-to-engage-people-into-microvolunteering.