Anyone that knows me will be aware of my concerns around the suitability of advice and support levelled at very small charities and community groups.
Often they already know it anyway, they just don’t have the capacity or resources to do it. Making them feel inadequate isn’t going to help.
I was at a charity networking event recently where one delegate said to another: “You’re not on LinkedIn?! You really need to be on LinkedIn!”
Do they, I thought? How do you know? You’re not their manager and you don’t have their priorities in front of you.
Yet, now, that poor person is possibly thinking: “Oh no, not something else I really have to do so I don’t fail at my job!”
That’s why I put together a short series of posts for Small Charity Week that made some suggestions for triaging communications priorities, to help people work out what really needs doing and defend against unhelpful advice.
I also tried to demystify some common pieces of jargon – because there’s a lot of language that people in the sector assume other people know, and it can be embarrassing to admit when you don’t.
(That used to be me, in fact, so I started collecting it. I’ve recently put it online here, so do feel free to use it.)
You can read all my Small Charity Week posts individually here, or download a pdf of them.
I hope they’re useful.