Category Archives for "Miscellaneous"

5 Why Review Websites?

I’m planning to review some of the community development websites I posted about 2 weeks ago and last week.  Before I do that I shall explain why it’s helpful to review websites and next Friday I’ll post about how to do it.

There is always a possibility in reviewing a site in public, the site owners will feel their site is being ridiculed.  This may be difficult to avoid.  The truth is many sites can be easily improved without any technical knowledge.  If a review helps a website become more functional, then it is worth doing.  If a little humour acts as a spur to change, that is all to the good!

So, why review websites?  Let’s start with the benefits for the owners of the website.

So, let’s not be precious about our sites.  Changes can be made very quickly.  We all struggle to keep our sites topical and engaging and we need to learn from each others experience.  My hope is we all welcome comments, public or private because that way everything we do shall improve.

What is the most helpful feedback you’ve received about your site?

If you would like me to review your site (in private or public) please complete the form on my website.  Follow the link and croll to the foot of the page.

1 More Community Development Websites

Last Friday I posted about 10 Community Development Websites, Blogs and Forums.  Mark Woodhead in a comment to that post, has suggested six more sites.  I list them below with a brief description.  I’m planning to review some of these sites in later posts and so I have not commented on them here.

Forums and Blogs

ABCD Europe

This is similar to the Asset Based Community Development Institute, a site I covered in the previous email.  This is primarily a forum, similar to the Forum on the ABDCI website.  It may be more relevant for UK development workers.

Nurture Development Blog

See below for brief description of their website.  This is their standalone WordPress blog. It is certainly live; they post once every 1 – 2 weeks.

Websites

United Kingdom

Federation for Community Development Learning

I believe this was formerly the Federation of Community Work Training Groups, which I mention for the benefit of ancient community development workers.  They say:

“FCDL is the UK wide membership networking organisation that supports community development through advancing and promoting good quality Community Development learning and practice at local, regional and national levels. FCDL works to provide a network to support the development, evaluation and dissemination of good quality Community Development learning, training and qualification opportunities.”

Locality

Locality is a merger between BASSAC (British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres), an organisation that goes way back, and the Development Trusts Association.  They say they are “the leading nationwide network of development trusts, community enterprises, settlements and social action centres.”  Mark’s concern about their understanding of assets is possibly because they discuss buildings as assets, when they can just as easily be liabilities.  Asset Based Community Development uses assets to refer to the potential in local residents to effect change.

International

Nurture Development

This is another site that specialises in asset based community development.  They have a call to action to the effect that in communities the professionals need to step back and there should be a community builder in every neighbourhood.  In my day a community builder used bricks and mortar, presumably by builder they mean development worker.

Reflect Action

“Reflect is an innovative approach to adult learning and social change, which fuses the theories of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire with participatory methodologies.”  Perhaps I should add participatory methodologies to this list.  I’ll give it some thought and come back with more soon.

Please suggest community development sites I’ve missed and participatory methodology sites.  Thanks!

5 10 Community Development Websites, Blogs and Forums

Why is community development poorly represented online?  This is not a comment on the quality of community development websites, so much as an observation about how few websites about community development there are.

Today, I shall list the websites, blogs and forums I have found.  I plan to review some of them in future posts, once I get to know them better.  If you are aware of any I’ve missed, anywhere in the world, do let me know.  There must be more!

Blogs and Forums

NatCAN: National Community Activists Network

This site seems to be a follow-up to the closure of the Community Development Exchange in the UK; it is mainly a forum for its members.  The site supports all forms of activism and so it is fairly political, although non-aligned.  There are a variety of discussion groups, touching on various aspects of community development and some regional discussion groups.  Some of these seem to have very little going on.  Definitely worth a look if you’re based in the UK.  But watch out for the mysterious starfish!

This estate we’re in

So far this is the only personal blog I’ve found.  Written by a parish priest, this blog includes material about faith-based work.  There’s no pattern to posts but it seems to be live at present!

If you know of any other community development blogs, please let me know and I’ll add them to the list!

Websites

United Kingdom

Building Effective Community Ventures

This website is the work of the Association of Bridge Building Churches and promotes a workbook of the same name as the site.  People using the workbook can join a Forum.  The site claims to have blogs on it; I’m not convinced they’re blogs as we know and love them!  May be worth a look if you’re a church seeking involvement in community development.

Centre for Local Economic Strategies

These are the people who own the New Start magasine.  They say they are “the UK’s leading independent charitable research and member organisation, with a focus on economic development, regeneration and place-making.”  You can join them for £125 a year or else there’s a free newsletter.

Faith-based Regeneration Network

They say “faith-based social action happens when people of faith work together, often with others outside their faith community, to make real and positive change within their local community, or in wider society.”  I can’t work out where they have come from but the staff and trustees are from various faith traditions.

Common Purpose

I decided to include this one because “Common Purpose runs courses which give people the skills, connections and inspiration to become better leaders both at work and in society” and its reputation is good.

United States

The Asset Based Community Development Institute

This seems to be the keeper of the flame for asset based community development.  I shall be writing about abcd in the near future.  The website includes a forum which seems to be international.

Community Development Society

This site includes a blog, which is be posted a few times a week.  The society aims to support community development through “best practices, networking opportunities, tools, and other resources”.

International

Local First

Local First is a development approach that looks first for the capacity within countries before bringing in external expertise and resources, recognises that much of this capacity is found outside central government, and understands that local people need to lead their own development.

The site includes a blog with frequent posts.

International Association for Community Development

This site is “an international membership organisation for those working in or supporting community development and is open to both individuals and organisations.”  It has a blog which appears to post infrequently.

1 How to Avoid Website Catastrophes

[This post has aged somewhat but the material about website catastrophes is still relevant.  You can sign up at the foot of this post and details of my consultancy offer can be found in the navigation under “Services”.]

I leave Fridays free to respond to things that come up during the week.  Sometimes I write about how I’m developing my website.  The aim is to develop the site into a hub for people interested in community development online and I shall write about some of the changes as I make them and the issues I encounter.

Today I shall describe how something went wrong to illustrate the need to pay attention to your site.

Back in December I had a problem on my blog pages.  Material from the main left hand blog column was duplicated in the right hand sidebar.  Stumped, I asked WordPress for help. It turned out to be a rogue bit of code in one of my posts.  I set it right by rebuilding the post and everything was fine – or so I thought!  One lesson here is check your blog every time you post.  If a post causes a problem, you can identify it by taking it down to see whether the problem disappears.  If the post is the problem, creating a new post and copying the content should do the trick!

A Second Problem!

One thing that has puzzled me was the small number of people signing up for my blog.  A large number of people had said they would and absolutely no-one was following through.  Whilst I can be a bit paranoid from time to time, I was sure my blog wasn’t so awful that absolutely no-one was signing up for it.

Earlier this week, I spotted the problem.  It was one of those things that is so obvious, I couldn’t see it.  When I set the previous problem right, I had not noticed the sign-up form had disappeared from the sidebar.  The form still existed and appeared on a page buried deep in the site but had somehow become uncoupled from the sidebar.  I have no idea how this happened or, more to the point, that it could happen. So, WordPress can move stuff about without telling you.  Presumably it was another effect of the problem with the post I rebuilt.

So, I hadn’t been offering the option to sign up to the blog for over a month!  Arrrgh!!

How to Avoid Website Catastrophes?

First, by paying attention to your site!  It is not static.  Things change, sometimes at random!  Keep an eye on things and if you’re puzzled about anything, look for the reason on your site.  If people are not signing up, check over your system for getting them to sign up and check everything’s working!

Second, sign up for my blog!  The form is at the top of the right hand sidebar.  The blog will offer lots of guidance specially designed for small groups and businesses looking after their own websites.  Read it to learn how to avoid catastrophes and get your site working for you.

If there is something you’d like me to write about, leave a comment on any post. (I provide general info on the blog and charge for helping you with your site.)  Everything should be working now, so please sign up if you have wanted to and couldn’t work out how to do it.  (And sign up even if you haven’t!)  And please let me know if there are any problems when you sign up!

0 Two Ways We Understand Wealth

I’ve decided to hold back the answers to the Christmas Puzzles until a few more people have attempted them.

Today I shall follow-up an earlier post about Spirituality in Marketing.  In that post, I mention progress with a book, and I want to capture a part of the conversation. Many people in the voluntary and community sectors have reservations about marketing and accumulation of wealth.  Such scepticism is admirable!  We should be suspicious of any sales pitch.

But if we are going to re-build our communities we need to explore all the options available to us.  Given the failure of grants as an approach to community development, a failure I’ve written about elsewhere, see the posts in the position category, we don’t have too many other options.

Two Ways to Understand Wealth

One problem is, when we talk about wealth we confuse two different ways of understanding it.  So, here they are:

1. Personal wealth is where the focus is on the amount of money I have accumulated and the power I have using it.  The issue here is accountability.  We can all think of examples of (usually new) millionaires who lose all their money in a few years, through gambling or similar.  There are also those who salt away their wealth in off-shore tax havens.  They move their money out of the community, into places where it is no longer accessible.  The immensely wealthy, the 1% targeted by the Occupy movement, use their wealth to buy assets and lend them back to businesses at very high interest rates.  We don’t normally see this happening because it happens out of sight.  But we see its effects in low wages and unsustainable behaviour, damaging to the environment.
2. Social wealth is where there is some degree of accountability.  The focus is on money as it circulates in the local economy.  If I purchase from local traders and do not spend money in large chains and if local people do the same, then many people benefit from the same pound as it circulates.  Furthermore, I might find opportunities to invest my profit in other enterprises, thus growing the local economy.

Obviously the same person can experience both approaches to wealth but at least by being clear there are these two approaches, we can all be aware of how we spend and accumulate income.

Perhaps we could re-examine John Wesley’s three point economic plan.  In the eighteenth century, he traveled the UK, preaching to the new industrial poor.  His advice to entrepreneurs was “earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can”.  By save he meant not accumulation in bank accounts but spending money wisely, so that you have an excess than can be given to people in need.

This approach allows the wealthy scope to grow successful and ethical businesses.  Is it something we need to revisit?

1 Christmas Puzzles

I’m going to take a break for two weeks from today because readers are less likely to be around over Christmas and the New Year.  I’ll start posting again on Monday 6 January, picking up from where I left off.

I know everyone is always busy having fun over this period but just in case you’re at a loose end, here are a few puzzles! They’re along the lines of BBC Radio 4’s Round Britain Quiz, but easier!  They all have links to ancient TV and radio!

1. Who are these?  Jeff Scott Virgil Alan Stan Gordon John  Which one is the odd one out and who is he?
2. Who links these names but when (day, month and year)?  Jacqueline Hill, Delia Derbyshire, Carole Anne Ford, Verity Lambert  If you could add one name to the list to make the answer immediately obvious, whose would it be?
3. What links the BBC World Service, Rock a Bye Baby, The Old Pretender?
4. Where else might you find a river in Venezuela and Columbia, a town on the Island of Mull and an Eastern European Country.  The latter is a rather distant relative.
5. Who was nanti riah?  The answer is not beyond our ken.

No prizes but feel free to share your answers in the comments or ask for hints!

If you’re still at a loose end, subscribe to this blog.  As well as a weekly round-up of my posts, you will receive a series posts about my Campaign for Real Community Development.  Join the conversation!

1 Spirituality in Marketing

I’m working with some other people on a publication called “Spirituality in Marketing”.  We have a lot of material and it will take a while to sort it out.  In the meantime, here’s some thoughts.

Why Spirituality?

Who is the booklet for?  One possibility is the “spiritually aware or religious person”.  That’s reasonable, although I have some reservations.  Does it impose unnecessary restrictions on our readership?

A few years ago Father Christopher Jamieson, Abbot of Worth Abbey, introduced a couple of television series in the UK, The Monastery and a few years later The Big Silence.  Both series were about ordinary people living in a monastery for a month or on a 9 day retreat.

Father Jamieson says after both programmes his religious communities experienced increased interest from people, not associated with the church.  After the first series a number of business people made contact and so he published, “Finding Sanctuary”, under a secular imprint about the benefits of Benedictine spirituality for the modern secular person.

Spirituality is something all experience even if we don’t label ourselves as spiritual or religious.  So, how can spirituality support the business person whatever their formal religious affiliation.

Why Marketing?

Spirituality is about identity; how to become the person we are meant to be.  This is particularly important for the entrepreneur, who can easily lose sight of their purpose.  Business people make money and the question is, why?  They sometimes see their role as local benefactor.  In Sheffield, UK where I live you can’t walk very far without encountering names such as Graves, Firth, Ward and Osborn; all industrialists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Their names are still current because the city recognises their contributions.  Every city has them.  Whatever the detail of their business, they cherished their role as public benefactor. This is more than we can say for present day hedge fund managers, who salt away their fortunes in offshore tax havens.

But public benefactor was not the only role.  Real entrepreneurial value resides in the hundreds of unsung men and women behind the co-operative movement.  At one time co-operative business underpinned most of the civic infrastructure we take for granted today, eg insurance, building societies, banks, department stores, wholesale and retail networks, friendly societies and various educational institutions and libraries.

Contrary to what our current crop of politicians would have us believe, mutuals make a vibrant and creative contribution to the economy; both entrepreneurial and committed to social justice.

Mutuality is not confined to one form of business and its spirit was perhaps shared by some public benefactors.  Sadly in our modern economy it seems business is solely for personal benefit.  We need to refresh our spirits by understanding mutuality and reclaiming it for our broken communities today.

How do you understand the purpose of economic activity?  Do you think spirituality can help entrepreneurs understand their role?

0 The Community Web Consultant Website

If your third sector organisation needs to develop or review its online presence, the ‘Community Web Consultant‘ website is your first call.  I am an experienced community development worker and this site can help you find the most economic and effective way forward.  What you see on the site today is only the beginning of the story.

The Blog

I wrote about the blog Community Development Online last Friday.  This will build into a reference for your web presence, written with the community and voluntary sectors in mind.  The best way to follow it is to sign up for the email list.  The form is on the site at the top of the right hand column.  If you do this, you will receive three things:

 Community Web Consultancy

Community and voluntary groups often waste scarce resources paying for websites that don’t work for them.  They can’t afford commercial rates and so their sites are either developed by experienced designers, who don’t understand the sector and because they have a business to run design a low-cost site that is basic, or else they find a volunteer who doesn’t always understand what works.  The upshot is sites that do not work properly and can be a liability.

We need to approach developing a web presence on a shoestring in a different way.  Wasting scarce resources on sites that don’t work is hardly satisfactory.  If you have time to invest, then you can learn the basics, perhaps calling in professional help when you get stuck or want to try something new.

An assessment is a good starting point and you can find out what it involves on my website.  I’m planning a host of tools to help you develop your web presence and maintain it in-house as far as possible.

If after you’ve read about assessments, you’re not sure whether it is right for you, I’d be happy to take a look at your current website.  I can do this in a very short time and offer some ideas about where it is going wrong (and where it is going right!).  A site review might help you work out why your site does not attract support.

One last thing.  I do charge for some services.  If I say something is free, it is free and subject only to the usual constraints in law, eg copyright,  you are welcome to use the free material on the site.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for, tell me.  The site is nowhere near complete and so I will be delighted to add material to help you if I can.  We desperately need to develop online communities that will help us re-build our real life communities.  If we’re going to do this we need to learn how to buy and sell online.  Stay with me and find out what I mean.

It would be brilliant to hear from you.  Let me know what you think and what you would like me to write about.  And don’t forget to sign up to the blog!

1 A Guide to the Community Development Online Blog

Today I shall explain how I’ve organised this blog and so help you track down the threads you might be interested in.  If there are other threads you would like me to cover, leave a comment.

The blog has 4 main categories, each with several subcategories and these can be seen in the sidebar.  If you click on “Resources” in the main navigation, you will find pages about the subcategories.

Stay with this post and I’ll show you where I’m taking the blog for now.  As I receive feedback comments, I can change direction and focus on what interests its readers.

Many third sector organisations have poor websites and do not use their online presence to support their work.  There are several reasons for this but they mostly relate to lack of financial resources and a shortage of staff or volunteer time.  So, the challenge is how to use the available resources more effectively.  So, my emphasis is how to deploy your resources so that the techniques you use are subject to your overall strategy.

Mutuality

This category is about community development and how it can be supported online.  It is not just for community groups.  Many organisations working in neighbourhoods need to know what works and what doesn’t.  So, if your church wishes to develop work in its neighbourhood or if you are a local business seeking to build community in a neighbourhood or across a city, this category will help you.

Currently, I’m blogging about New Deal for Communities and the lessons learned in its final evaluation in Burngreave, my community.  I’m going to show you how grants often do not build community.  I’ll show you how the local economy is central to any neighbourhood work and how it can be supported online.

Marketing

Marketing is relevant to your work whether you have something to sell or do not!  If you have a cause and want to bring people together around it you need to understand marketing.  Your web presence is a powerful marketing tool.  If you’re not using it for marketing, for what are you using it?  Too many websites don’t do anything at all!

At the moment I’m writing about the structure of websites and the various types of pages you might find on them.  Each page should have a single clear purpose for your marketing strategy.

Purpose

This category shows how you can work out the purpose of your site.  It explores how you generate conversations online and build relationships.  The internet is a communications tool and if you’re not using it for that purpose, your organisation is missing opportunities.

This sequence explores some general principles for seeking donations online.  Donations are by no means the best way of generating income online but many organisations will recognise this approach and it illustrates important points about building relationships online.

Technique

This category demonstrates how to do things online.  There are plenty of sites that will show you details of how to use applications and techniques.  When I describe an application or a technique, I shall always introduce it from a strategic viewpoint.  How can we use this to be more effective?

These posts at present cover ways you can drive traffic to your site.  This is an important topic for many organisations trying to promote their cause or business online.

Could be Anything

The idea is to respond to your requests on Fridays.  I can write about anything and respond to your ideas without breaking the sequence on other days.  So, do let me know what you would like me to cover!

And don’t forget you can subscribe to the blog for a weekly update so that you can easily review the topics I’m posting about.  If you subscribe you will also receive a free email sequence about community development.

Next week I shall write about how I plan to develop this site to support brilliant online voluntary sector work!

 

3 Solvitur Ambulando

Last Friday I introduced solvitur ambulando (Latin: solve it by walking) and this time I shall develop it a little.  Whilst walking is  not a technique that will help you solve your community development problems on or offline, it can be really helpful.  Walking solves problems to do with your:

So, over to you.  Do you walk and if so what problems has walking solved?  If you don’t walk, what do you do?