CharityBlog

MS Research has launched a Fan Page on Facebook in the non-profit category. Choose the category carefully: first click on institution then non-profit. Charities in the UK cannot yet use the Causes application for secure donations but there is always a way around this and I am very happy to share this with you.

Once the moment of creating the page is done with you may start adding some useful apps. Creating the page took longer as the webmaster email of the charity which is redirected to my own was not accepted. Did Facebook find out I was disguising myself? I settled this by using our spare email at Google as I always think the job of webmaster is not mine for life. So webbie got accepted in the end. Rabbit was made admin with no hesitation.

Some tabs at the top of the wall page were not so useful so they could be placed in the back (the >> and + tabs). Click on Edit page, settings need to be edited first, decide if you want the whole world to know or just the UK…Wall settings decide if you want post by fans as well as the charity. Set where the post will go if the fan and others cannot post on the wall. Boxes is quite good for that.

Now the Page has some donation buttons for Justgiving and CAF on the right. These have been added using the Static FBML is what I used I recommend getting Learn FBML visiting Learn FBML might help use Static FBML. Once anything is created using Static FBML it will be visible in Boxes. From there you can make it go on the Wall on the left. So the size of the button is important. The wider buttons will stay in Boxes. Update the Fans about your new additions. I did it like this because the Justgiving apps on Facebook is not yet workin on Fan Pages. That was very frustrating.

 A button code as the CAF one will not show at all without placing the code in <div></div> , some useful html coding works in FBML so I used <b> and <i> to stress what I was saying. I think that colour can be added using <span></span> so whatch it! Creativity can be released. At the bottom of the Edit Page the is the More Applications facility, click on the right and browse for more applications: other than Static FLML and Learn FBML I think I added Notes and the blessed Drop.io which is brilliant and can be used for uploading pdf documents to share with your fans. Reviews and Discussions are also useful but can be coming into action later. Extended Info is very good as the info tab is limited. There is Poll too So there is always a reason to update your existing fans and welcome the new ones. On the right of the Edit page you can find some helping information, the examples are not always useful for the UK. This is why I thought of helping you with this. Then I tweet about it too, follow me?

The website of the charity has a new layout, a new design and some new volunteers. The need for help is as poignant as ever. Reports of dramatic falls in charitable giving are overblown; volunteering should not be depleted as time and commitment are two things that are needed. That is also giving. Volunteers are always needed for collections, information days and there are two posts in particular that are vacant: Development Officer, Southern Region and Training Officer.

We have found a Development Officer for the Northern region. She is going to be extremely busy with facilitating Phil and Ian’s Coast to Coast Fundraising. Have you got what it takes to help us with something like this? That is  run (on average) 7 marathons in 7 days!!! If not, you could become a Development Officer for the Southern Region. It needs the same level of commitment. Please contact us or use this form.

So, MS Researh has made it easy for single or regular donations to be made on the Charity Aid Foundation (CAF) and with Justgiving the possibilties are endless to donate or create some pages for fundraising all over the UK and Northern Ireland.

The website is now on an easy to maintain  Content Management System (CMS). The webmaster has not retired! She still needs to train the researchers to publish some more of their news. MS Researh charity decided to upgrade to CMS as it was not wise to expect one volunteer only to know how to update and publish.

We’ve put off updating the web program running CharityBlog for about as long as we can. The next version has some significant changes in how categories are managed, which could be fun, and means that the design templates need updating too.

Apologies for any weirdness you encounter in the next few pages - well any weirdness here due to technical stuff anyway.

The time has come to announce the 100-strong shortlist of UK groups competing to earn a share of the million-pound Big Green Challenge prize fund.

The big green ideas shortlisted range from a ‘Carbon Watchers’ club to monitor CO2 emissions in Yorkshire and a Sussex prison’s bio-fuels production scheme, to the creation of a volunteer workforce in the West Midlands to help local people take energy-efficient measures in their homes and a virtual farmer’s market in Bristol.

You can find out more about the selected groups on the Big Green Challenge website. Hopefully you’ll find an idea among the shortlist that you could build on, or a nearby group to cheer on!

I included an item in this week’s VolResource email newsletter on the government’s ‘Power of Information Task Force’ before I had a chance to read the speech from minister Tom Watson. This amuses me for a number of reasons.

Firstly the effort that has gone in to giving web links to as many items in the speech as possible - so much that it is a little distracting when reading if you start following them!

Secondly this excerpt: “Take a motor industry analogy, in some ways the policy process is a bit like building a Morgan [External website] in Malvern [External website]: a handful of people taking years to create beautiful, hand-crafted model.” Apart from the fact that he then implies he wants boring mass-produced and short-lived policies to replace tailored quality, given a strong south westerly the Morgan factory is in spitting distance of VolResource towers. Pity the web link for Malvern doesn’t go my hobby site.

Despite that, the speech is worth a read. Also see the interim reports on progress on recommendations of the Power of Information review.

UPDATE: for some reason they moved the speech - link now corrected.

As pointed out in an email from Dan Macquillan of Internet Artizans, Amnesty International’s website is now running on the open source platforms of Drupal and CiviCRM.

I’ll add it to the CharityBlog link page of open source use by voluntary groups, but it’s getting such a common occurrence now that a) it would be difficult to keep track of them all and b) it’s no longer hard to find and learn from such examples.

The Big Green Challenge from NESTA is a £1 million prize fund that challenges people to work together to develop and implement new approaches that will lead towards a 60% reduction of carbon emissions in their communities.

The Big Green Challenge is only open to not-for-profit groups. Examples of eligible groups include community co-operatives or clubs, charities, voluntary groups, parish councils and larger not-for-profit organisations. The ten finalists, once selected, will have a year to show that they can turn their ideas into action, and the winner will be announced in late 2009.

Find out all you need to know at www.biggreenchallenge.org.uk

Entries for the first stage of applications must be in by 29 February 2008. Are you up to the challenge?

An American volunteering website made Time Magazine’s Top 10 list (of websites, that is) for 2007. Link to Volunteer Match.

I saw some turn of year mentions of UK volunteer opportunities, but don’t think any sites got quite that level of recognition over here. Can anyone prove me wrong?

(Time top 10 courtesy of ephilanthropy.org)

VOLUNTEERS URGENTLY REQUIRED
FOR A COLLECTION in AID of the MS RESEARCH CHARITY
at THE MALL CRIBBS CAUSEWAY near Bristol
on FRIDAY 18^TH and SATURDAY 19^TH JANUARY 2008

The collections will take place all day on both of these days, and if you are able to help for a couple of hours, please contact:

BRIAN PAGINGTON
on Tel: Home 01454 320141
Tel: Mobile 07776 341 601
Please forward this request to anyone you know who might be able to help with these collections.
Thank You

It’s not just government agencies which manage to lose important data.

Kablenet reports that a laptop containing client information has been stolen from the car of an employee of Citizens Advice in Northern Ireland, with up to 60,000 client records. However, the data is protected by three levels of security, including a high level of encryption.

Please note that the kablenet site was too busy when we went to double check the link (which can disappear after a few weeks).