Volunteers Week is almost over for another year and what better way to celebrate than … volunteering Doing Good for Nothing with Ecclesiastical… you heard it doing good for absolutely nothing!
Around 35 people have been brought together in Birmingham to achieve incredible things in only 1.5 days. We have three charities who have each come prepared with briefs for us to solve. With a range of challenges from branding, website design and development, financial planning, recruitment, promotions and communications there is a lot to do, but I am confident that with a room filled with passionate and skilled individuals… miracles will happen!
Planning is underway
If anyone has any ideas or contacts we would love to hear from you… let me introduce you to our charity challenges…
Continental Star is a Sport and Community Club that seeks to help those within the community that are often marginalised and considered by others as hard to reach. Alongside football teams for the under 7s to the over 35s Continental Stars also run homework clubs and provides valued support for lone parents and the unemployed.
The Challenge!
- Completely run by volunteers they run on very little funding, but providing all their services for free they need to find ways to cover costs and become financially sustainable.
- Any ideas or contacts on corporate funding sources, ways to develop financial sustainability or crowd funding ideas for the club are hugely welcome.
- The website needs work as do their external communications to create a better community spirit…
- Any thought on how we can improve the website and their communications ??
Web Design has begun...
The Jericho Foundation is a charity foundation which has developed a group of social enterprises that work with disadvantaged individuals and helps them overcome barriers and become fulfilled, skilled and employed. They run 8 different enterprises including Community recycling, Wood recycling and Re-use or Funky Junk!
The Challenge
- How can they make their products more saleable? Who are their biggest competitors? How can they communicate more effectively … not small challenges, but we can help them with new branding, sales plans and unique communication formats.
Funky Junk
The Stritchley Food Coop provides fresh and affordable food to over 40 households in Stritchley… not a small task but their role is about to increase massively. They have been offered a physical shop space on the high street… those that know about my hatred for Tesco’s will know I WANT and NEED this organisation to succeed! Can you help?
The Challenge
- They need to put together a solid business plan and financial forecasting to enable them to grow.
- As with all these organisations volunteers are a key part and going down a similar path to The People’s Supermarket the members who offer 4 hours volunteering to run the coop in exchange for at cost and discounted food are integral to making it work successfully and sustainably.
So folks … can you help at all? We have just over one day left and are looking for contacts, ideas and general speedy whizz bang action to help us achieve these challenges in the time we have available.
Who wants to help us do GOOD FOR NOTHING?!
