BritMums Live! Reporters - Blogging for the Greater Good

Kate Davis Holmes listening to bloggers

Blogging for the Greater Good – Using your voice for a worthy cause.

Discussion led by Kate Davis-Holmes, Kate on Thin Ice; Camila Batmanghelidjh, Kids Company; Polly Gowers, Give as you Live; Kylie Hodges, Not Even a Bag of Sugar, Claire Hazelgrove, ONE org

Reporter: Anya at Older Single Mum

About 50 people attended this event. It was a colourful discussion with everyone on the same side, willing to go in the same direction and even handed suggestions all round of how best to do that together, from all members of the panel and many of the audience.

Claire Hazelgrove from ONE charity prefers to ask Bloggers for their voice – to get behind a cause that you really bond with and feel passionate about. It’s stories that move people rather than just asking for money.

Blogger Kylie (Not Even a Bag of Sugar) agrees these voices must be authentic, encourages bloggers to use their personal experience and approach a charity if they love what they do.

Camila – says the truth is be mobilised by the blogging community and it is the most honest fundraising.

Polly from Give as you Live gave us examples of how much more interesting personal stories can be rather than straightforward information about them or charity appeals.

Theirs is an organization which you sign up to once and which has an arrangement with thousands of major retailers who automatically donate a percentage of what you spend shopping with them to a charity of your choice, from the hundreds currently registered.

This is at no extra expense or inconvenience to the shopper. £70 was raised by booking a holiday, £50 by buying insurance and £5 buying plants, when using this scheme. Cheques for these amounts would never have been independently / voluntarily been written. She claimed it’s a waste of charities money not to join!

You can sign up at www.give.as/mums. Give as you Live is supported by Britmums #mums4good.

Regular Tweets about savings can keep up the profile.

Points emanating from the Bloggers / Panel discussions.

1) GAYL is for charities of choice so Action Aid can be added.

2)How to get a charity supporting childrens hospices from raising awareness through blogging onto a political agenda:

Being able to tell human side of story = intrinsic understanding = intellectual property.
Involve journalists and be aware that all Politicians are narcissistic and will Google themselves and like to Tweet – to use this to advantage and be pushy. Target decision makers.

3) Bloggers can choose a charity (or more) that they want to be involved in, whatever works for them personally.

4) Charities approaching bloggers – to research the blog first.

5) Both to be imaginative, for example one trying to get mums back into the workplace – needs people to volunteer their time.

Writing blog posts not always the answer – supporting and sharing a main, focal one is effective.
Breaking out of blogging circles – encouraging friends and family to volunteer and writing about that can have more impact – underlining the personal story theme.

6) A proposed Blogging for Charity Website – see Annie – Mammasaurus.

7) ONE org used Tractors at Marble Arch, London alongside a Twitter party as part of their THRIVE campaign – generated 200 Tweets in one hour.

8) A collective voice can make a difference – with passion, authenticity and sharing, we have the ability to change the world for the better.

All About Anya:

Anya writes at Older Single Mum – http://oldersinglemum.blogspot.co.uk/ and has been blogging for about a year, however considers herself to be neither old, nor single nowadays. She likes to say things as they are in the most straightforward manner possible, using humour at every available opportunity. She has a business background, working in the City as Money Broker all through her twenties and her thirties were spent exploring and helping people in the Healing Arts.

Her forties have, so far, meant having her longed for, worth-the-wait, gorgeous and gregarious boys, who are now seven and three, divorcing their famous Rugby player father and finding her feet as a writer.

She is never happier than when walking on the beach with her beloved kids and her live-in partner, although being alone with a laptop comes very close.

About Karin Joyce

Karin Joyce is the creator of Embrace Happy, an inspirational and motivational website where the focus is on celebrating the good in our lives every day. The Embrace Happy tagline is: Not every day is good but there is good in every day. Before starting Embrace Happy, Karin was one of the “old school” bloggers from the early days of what was then British Mummy Bloggers with her parenting blog Cafe Bebe. In between school runs, blogging and being a wife to Mark and Mum to Ella (6 1/2) and Sam (3), Karin also works as a freelance social media manager and consultant.