Social media campaigning on my own doorstep

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Louise

Boy, it’s been a busy few weeks. On top of work I’ve also been involved in a local campaign to stop a large Sainsbury’s being built in the heart of Stoke Newington, North London.

The campaign is not an anti-Sainsbury’s campaign or an anti-big name brands campaign. The area is recognised for its diversity and independence and we (residents, workers and business owners) are worried that a development of this size will destroy the neighbourhood. There’s more at http://stokeylocal.org.uk if you’re interested in the issues.

The thing I wanted to focus on was the campaign’s use of technology. Once the proposed development went public, a meeting was hastily organised by a concerned local resident. 40 people turned up at that meeting and from there the technology took off.

Using technology to coordinate the campaign has really worked for us. It’s helped to overcome the issue of needing to be in the same place at the same time and even in just bringing people together as most of us didn’t know each other before.

The campaign has a long way to go and I’m sure there’s a lot more we’ll do using technology but here’s a bit of a starter:

Google group

After the first meeting was over, a Google group was created to carry on the discussion. At the beginning it was a useful way of everyone chipping in their ideas and thoughts and recording actions. After about two weeks there was over 200 posts and following the content was getting difficult. More on how we tackled this in a bit.

We had talked about restricting access to the group so that no one from the developers or associated companies could get into it but it was felt that the effort of policing the group just wasn’t worth it, and we wanted to be as inclusive as possible.

WordPress website

After a few days came the website. I think it looks great http://stokeylocal.org.uk. As the developers were very slow in putting any information about the development on their own website we tried to make sure that everything residents and business owners would need to know was on Stokey Local. (Even when an official website did go up it had been copied and pasted from another development with lots of the important info unchanged, including a photo of the site).

There’s also a really great Google map, showing (at least) 62 shops within a 0.5mi radius that sell similar goods to those that would be sold at a new supermarket. A powerful way of demonstrating the potential impact.

The website has grown even in these three weeks to include a forum, contact details of all the key players and as a place to start discussing possible alternatives.

The forum was important because the Google group just started getting too big. Having a forum meant we could split the conversations into distinct subjects, making it easier for other people to contribute and follow what had already been discussed.

[ETA - The main person that's been updating the site pages has told me that he's using the WordPress for Android app to keep it up to date on the road.]

Twitter

Twitter has been really important in this campaign. There’s quite a strong local community of tweeters so it has been one of the key ways we’ve shared information about what’s going on. There’s an “official” @StokeyLocal account, we use the tag #StokeyLocal.

There was a funny moment about a week into the campaign when we discovered that the key developer had his own Twitter account and had been using it to moan about the NIMBYs over at one of his developments. He’d also been using it to reply to people’s rants about the developers/ Sainsbury’s without saying who he was. Once we found out it was him, he foolishly pretended it wasn’t and then deleted his account. A Google search of the Twitter user name clearly came up with his real name. He never reappeared. I’m tempted to offer my social media services

Facebook

It was important for us to create a Facebook page to reach the people not on Twitter and perhaps not around to see our “real life” campaigning. Facebook.com/StokeyLocal was easy to set up and we use it to put up new blog posts from the main Stokey Local site, articles that appear in the press, photos of the development and whatever else we come across.

There are 3 admins of the page at the moment so we’re always able to respond quickly and cover if anyone’s away. The Facebook page isn’t the main home of the campaign by any means but is a really useful way of letting people know about the campaign and where they can go for more detailed information.

Videos

People have started to create videos, showing very powerfully just how people feel about the development, like this one that was filmed outside the consultation presentation:

How can you use technology to be more effective trustees?

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Louise

[This was originally posted on the NCVO website in December 2010]

What’s the usual structure of your trustee meetings?

You get sent the papers a few days before, everyone has been too busy to look at them, you waste time reading documents and going over old ground, there’s disagreement about who was meant to be doing what and in the end no major decisions are made?

If that sounds like your board then there is help out there and technology might be the solution.

So what are the typical things you do as a trustee board and how might technology help you to do this more effectively?

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Before the meeting

Find a date

How long do you spend going backwards and forwards trying to find a date for your meeting?

Use an online tool like Doodle (http://www.doodle.com/) to find the best date for everyone. Simply put in all of the possible dates, set up a poll, send the link around to everyone required and ask them to tick the dates they can make.

Share papers

Rather than sending around the minutes, agenda and other papers by email and risking filling up peoples’ inboxes, why not use an online document store?

An online tool like Google Docs (https://docs.google.com/) is free to use and could be a place to store all of your documents in one place. Having them online means that there is always a definitive version and you know they haven’t been lost. You can also allow people to collaborate on creating the document, for example adding their own agenda items or updates.

Why not create a Google Account (https://www.google.com/accounts/) for your trustee board? It will help you do some of the other things below.

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During the meeting

Run meetings

If one of your trustees can’t physically make the meeting then why not try setting up a web call? Skype (www.skype.com) is free (when the two or more people talking all have Skype on their computer) and easy to use. All it requires is the users to download something from the Skype website, which will need to be done in advance of the meeting.

Record minutes and actions

Use your Google Docs account to create a document at the time of the meeting to record any action points. They will be available immediately for everyone to access.

If you prefer to record your actions in a spreadsheet format then you can do that in Google Docs too.

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Outside of the meeting

Discuss issues

There are a number of ways you can discuss issues before (or after) a meeting:

Adding comments to a document: With documents saved on Google Docs, anyone with permission can add their comments. All versions of the document will be available.
Set up an email list: You could set up an email group for the trustee board (http://www.ictknowledgebase.org.uk/emailmailinglists) so that by sending an email to one address it automatically sends the message to everyone in the group.
Taking part in an online chat: You could set up a discussion group to discuss any issues. If all of your trustees are on Facebook then set up a private group (http://www.facebook.com/groups/) or alternatively invest in something like Huddle (http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/ncvo-huddle), which will store documents as well as host discussions.
Face to face/virtual chat: Use your Skype account to have a chat with your fellow trustees outside of the meeting. If you don’t want to have a call with them then you can make use of the typed chat facility or even use the chat on Facebook (www.facebook.com) if you have an account.

Network with other trustees

The Charity Trustee Network (http://www.trusteenet.org.uk/) has lots of online resources to support the work of trustees. Sign up to their free e-newsletter or take part in the chair-to-chair e-networking.

Keep up to date with the latest sector news

There are lots of e-newsletters you can subscribe to for all the latest sector news, such as those from NCVO, Third Sector magazine or Charity Times. You can also use RSS feeds (http://www.whatisrss.com/) to have updates from websites sent straight to you, when they have the small orange RSS logo. RSS saves you time and gets you ahead of the game.

For a more general internet search, set up Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) to look for keywords (such as the name of your organisation or issue you’re dealing with) as they appear on the internet. Connect with people talking about your work or find out about the latest funding opportunities and policy issues. If you’ve already set up a Google account for accessing the document store then the alerts will be easier to manage.

Research funding opportunities

Funding Central (http://www.fundingcentral.org.uk/) has over 4,000 grants, contracts and loans to search, you can save your searches and get updates emailed directly to you.

Seek the views of others, outside of the trustee board

There are probably lots of people out there who are interested in the work you do and have useful ideas to offer so why not try using social media to connect with them. Twitter (http://twitter.com) is great for connecting with passionate and intelligent people, you could set up an account for your organisation, connect with similar charities, ask questions, post ideas, seek opinions.

Recruiting new trustees

There are a number of online tools to help you advertise your trustee vacancies, opening up opportunities outside of your usual catchment area. The Charity Trustee Network has an online trustee finder (http://www.trusteenet.org.uk/jobs-search) and there is also NCVO’s Trustee Bank (http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/trusteebank).

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