Category: Communications

It's Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈 and we're celebrating at #TeamLightful by talking to wonderful people and organisations who work with Pride throughout the year.

Last week we’ve hosted the first digital drop-in session for our new BRIDGE cohort. Participating charities all over the world joined us to discuss their internal and external communications during coronavirus and the challenges they are facing.

If I asked you what your charity’s tone of voice is, I bet most of you would say something like: friendly, warm and supportive. Or, informal but professional. These are all well and good but if every charity has the same tone of voice, how can you stand out in a sea of noise? One way is to have a distinctive tone of voice that’s consistent and instantly recognisable.

This week is all about celebrating small charities and the amazing work that they do. Small charities make up 97% of the third sector in the UK, yet they often struggle to have their voices heard and raise funds to keep their doors open. In this post, we want to highlight some of the resources out there to help small charities thrive.

Let’s face it, no one wants to be embroiled in a crisis and have to deal with it via social media. Particularly when it hits the headlines, as in the case of Oxfam, and doesn’t appear to be abating anytime soon.

If you work in any kind of professional communications role, you’ve probably heard of something like ‘authentic communications’ or maybe ‘authentic voice’. What does this mean? How can I find it? And is it a good idea?

Last week a good friend posted something unusual on Facebook. Buried among all the celebratory, self-congratulatory and yes, life-affirming content, he had written about feeling lonely following a move from London to Cape Town. Rarely do we see such honest expressions of vulnerability and emotion in the competitive ‘my life is amazing’ world of social media. I admired his ability to be openly vulnerable and reach out for support, and obviously others did too as his post provoked several supportive responses from friends.

If you were to purely take national newspaper headlines or the evening news as your guide to what’s going on, you might conclude that the world is a very scary place. Equally you may conclude that newspapers and TV channels tend to favour headlines that are shocking or dramatic. Terrorist attacks, political scandals, impending economic disasters. So where does that leave the issues that many of us work on at charities and social enterprises; those issues that sit in the category important, but seldom urgent? How can you engage journalists in your work?

A lot has changed in the online world in the last 20 years, as we have gone from experimental MIT researchers with dial-up connections to teenager vloggers with millions of fans on smart phones. There is a lot to be proud of in the ‘beyond-profit’ sector as charities have responded to this e-evolution and have taken advantage of technology to improve service delivery and transform communications and fundraising.