Goodness in the Future

By Ian, on March 9th, 2007

I’m in charge of the Beers and Innovation events at NMK. It’s a stream that was first started by my predecessor, the excellent Deirdre Molloy, in response to a post from Tom Coates about why we don’t seem to be particularly innovative in the UK. Oh yes, we are!

Anyway. Our plan for the next event in the series is Goodness 2.0 (April 10th; here on Upcoming). It’s about how charities and campaigning organisations can innovate and utilise Web 2.0 tools to transform the way that they organise themselves, and also the way that that they communicate and engage with supporters.

I’ve dealt with a few charitable organisations in the past, and, quite often, they had an enormously charismatic leader who effectively drove the whole thing. That person personally met with funding bodies, they recruited workers and raised money. A very top-down model which is clearly hard to scale. Another development is the arrival of chuggers: those unwanted, unpleasant charity molesters on the street that earn a few quid for every direct-debit they manage to extract from unwary punters. Has charity become a dirty word in the UK?

So, to step back for one second, I think we’re all perfectly aware of how the Web 2.0 revolution or evolution has affected publishing. The major growth area for newspaper websites is their blogs, not their news pages, for example. Unofficial, unqualified reporters are claiming scoops over the traditional press. And we’re more interesting, I reckon.

And how is that affecting the third sector? My hopes: that charities can engage the people who brush past the chuggers and leave the charity envelopes resting under their letter boxes because they become communities rather than brands. That the people who support charities get to participate in their campaigns and formation. My fears: new tools that give the illusion of participation without any real culture shift within the organisations that commission the development of those tools will do more harm than good. That the supporters of charities are not ready for new-generation sites and might be alienated by this technology.

It would be great to meet up with you at the event.