KnowHow newsletter 16/12/10

Dear friend of KnowHow,

It’s been a tough year for the voluntary sector, but we hope you’ll enjoy this bumper edition of our newsletter. There’s something in here for everyone. Merry Christmas!

Caroline Diehl and Sir Stuart Etherington add their voices to e-learning drama ‘Millcaster Tales’

Charity leaders have been discussing the latest drama in ‘Millcaster Tales’. Our Christmas three-parter follows the trials and tribulations of Age Aid and their hapless Chief Executive, Joan. The episodes explore the crucial issues of non-profit/private sector tendering, the impact of the cuts, crisis management, risk assessment, leadership, governance and sustainability in tough times.

Caroline Diehl of Media Trust, Sir Stuart Etherington of NCVO and Professor Paul Palmer of the Cass Centre for Charity Effectiveness are some of the sector leaders who have been drawing parallels between the drama in the story and the difficulties that charities in the real world are currently facing.

Watch all three episodes of ‘Contract, what contract?’ and listen to the thoughts of our experts.

Contract, what contract? (part one) - the video
Contract, what contract? (part two) - the video
Contract, what contract? (part three) - the video

To receive all episodes of Millcaster Tales as they are released please subscribe to our new RSS feed

Eileen Hammond and Max Clifford on working with celebrities

Celebrities are often ambassadors, fundraisers or a high-profile public voice for your campaign. Used in the right way, they can help charities gain widespread media coverage and become a valuable asset to communications work. 

To help more charities understand this important issue, KnowHow has worked with Eileen Hammond (author of 'Patrons, Presidents and Personalities: Working with High-level Volunteers' - and mother of Top Gear's Richard Hammond) to share her insights. We’ve also spoken with leading charities and publicist to the stars Max Clifford to find out how to meet, connect and engage celebrities with your charity.

The celebrity training materials are available for £9.99 (inc vat) and will help you discover:

• why you should use a celebrity in the first place
• where to look for them and how to approach them
• how to deal with them once they’re already involved
• how to work with celebrities that do and don’t fit your brand
• what  'Disney dust' is and how to beware of it.
• Purchase the KnowHow celebrity management training pack

Buy the guide

Publish your own ‘how to’ guide straight to KnowHow

We’ve just launched an exciting new platform for you, our registered members, to publish your knowledge direct to the site. Ready to try out in our Lab, we hope you’ll use the how to platform, add your own how to guide and let us know what you think.

So what are how-to guides? In a nutshell, they’re written articles written in a step-by-step format that are both practical and easy-to-understand. They could cover anything from how to manage volunteers to how to write a great press release. 

Any and all ideas welcome! And if you don’t want to write one, but want some help on a particular issue, you can use the platform to request a how to guide from someone else.

So, in the spirit of Christmas, give a little bit of your time to help your peers in the sector and we promise to promote your guide through our networks.

Try creating a ‘how to guide’ and help someone else in their job

Charity effectiveness podcast on leadership

In this month's charity effectiveness podcast we look at the qualities that make a successful leader in the charity and voluntary sector and what we should be doing to foster the leaders of the future. We hear guest speaker’s predictions for 2011 and Ian Bruce CBE, President and Founder of the Centre for Charity Effectiveness, takes a look back at 2010. 

Discover what makes a good leader in our charity effectiveness podcast

Free subscription available to new magazine ‘Charity Insight’

Charity Insight is a new charity leadership and management publication geared towards providing charity managers with data to help them benchmark and measure performance. The magazine is offering free yearly subscriptions to UK charities. We recommend checking it out.

Get your free subscription to Charity Insight

Event Highlights:

Internal Communications and Employee Engagement Workshop, 17 February 2011, London

Good internal communications will unite your organisation and boost staff morale. How can you implement, evaluate and improve your internal comms strategy to motivate and engage staff?

Attend CharityComms’ intensive workshop and find out how to:

• Engage staff as brand ambassadors
• Measure and map levels of engagement
• Identify obstacles to engagement
• Use brand positioning to create pride and productivity
• Better align HR, Communications and Fundraising teams
• Put systems in place
• Deliver difficult news
• Communicate in times of change

Find out more here

Outstanding Leadership Breakfast Seminar, 20 January 2011, Cass Business School, London  

For the past two years researchers at The Work Foundation have been conducting an in-depth, qualitative research project, investigating the links between leadership and high performance across a range of successful organisations. The launch seminar of this series, taking place on 20th January 2011, will enable participants to appreciate the key messages from this groundbreaking research, including an answer to the question: What does it take to achieve high performance leadership?

To ensure you don’t miss out on achieving outstanding leadership in 2011 book now.

Use our free event listing service

If you organise events for the non profit sector, you can upload them free of charge in our busy events section.

Upload your event for free today!

Reach over 70,000 regular visitors on KnowHow NonProfit

Searching for new routes to reach the voluntary sector? KnowHow provides support to over 70,000 unique visitors per month and we are now offering affordable advertising opportunities. If you would like to find out more please email knowhow@city.ac.uk

Stay in touch!

As always, if there’s something you want to share with us, send us a message at knowhow@city.ac.uk

Warm regards,

Damien, Luke, Cristina, Madeleine, Matthew, Linden,Tom, Kim (the KnowHow team)

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