The introduction of the Community Interest Companies (CIC) was intended to provide a way for people to get involved in social enterprise projects intended to benefit local communities. A CIC can be setup and grow safe in the knowledge that what is built for the benefit of the local community will remain in that community.

There is one other factor that distinguishes a CIC from most other organisations. That is the need for people within a community to get involved in the projects. Most people would not volunteer to help a company which has it’s shareholders as it’s primary focus!

But a CIC is different. Volunteers can get involved and help knowing that what they create is for the benefit of their community.

We need volunteers in our local communities. The charities have always needed people to help and the Community Interest Companies will not succeed without people from the community getting involved.

Explosion Entertainments is a CIC with a difference. We provide a way for volunteers from local communities throughout the UK to help their local charitable causes with their fundraising.

We have entertainers of all levels of skills and talents registering on our website making themselves available to help on a voluntary basis. Yes they get publicity for themselves, yes they get a chance to perform in public (all aspiring entertainers need that), but the primary purpose is to help the charitable cause so that it can benefit the local community.

I must add that Explosion Entertainments does not charge anyone for registering, or using entertainers from the website, or anything. We ourselves are volunteers and our primary purpose is to help charitable causes. What we are building is not for ourselves but for the community.

All local communities need volunteers! Find a cause that you are interested in or who need your particular skills and expertise. Offer to help, a few hours a month is better than nothing.

Be a volunteer. Your community needs you!

October 15th is ‘Blog Action Day‘, aiming “to get everyone talking towards a better future”, posting on the environment. Well, one day of talking isn’t going to crack the range of environmental issues we face but our blogpool, bringing together feeds from a variety of charity blogs , does feature a fair few with a slant in that direction and is around for more than a day.

In passing, increasingly Facebook has a range of issue groups with a presence on the social network. Whether it is any easier to keep up with development in areas you are interested in is dubious, but I guess having them in one spot could help.

It may not be news to some of you but I am pleased to tell you you that the CSE from Google works well and is easy to set up with no ads on Google for a charity. This existed previously and was changed without letting the user know. So I had the search for non-profit organizations still running with the old settings and wrong links to the site. I also had no way of changing anything! It had taken so long to Google to notice that they were offering this to US non-profit only. I was worried to change the search (what is not broken…) but the improvement is that you can design your own result page!

I am pleased to show this to you:

1. search for “rehabilitation” on MS Research search page (this is not what we have at the moment; the idea is still good to use 10/01/09)
2. see the results page.

I said it was simple to use but it took a while for the penny to drop as you need to write the url of the results page in the search page code.

Last week I have published a new design for the MS Research charity website. It is using a free template from D. Carter who gives away some of his designs on his own site or with others on the Open Source Design. I provide the work free and I have been a volunteer for many years. At the same time, things are changing at the MS Research and Resources Unit and a new volunteer is writing a newsletter which will give no doubt some details about the Project on Fatigue started last month…Then there will be another round of updates.