Blogs

All last week's Storify posts from CharityBlog Monday to Friday:

We have reactivated the CharityBlog website to trial a new feature.

Your editor's trawl of social media networks, charity news and other web links throws up various content which could be of interest to readers of VoluntaryNews. Some items will be of sufficient practical relevance to appear here, but most won't - they could be too theoretical, too time limited or not sufficiently new or full, for instance.

There is now more than just a handful of vidoes available on YouTube and elsewhere which might be of general, or particular, interest for those in the voluntary sector. This should be one of those blog posts which is updated with new items as we are told about/discover them.

With various voices around the voluntary sector having said that merger isn't considered seriously enough as an option by charities, it is interesting to see how many mergers are now mentioned in the sector press. We'll have a go at rounding these up here, from a general interest point of view but also to see if any trends or lessons emerge.

The post will be updated from time to time, and comments/additions are welcome.

The Safe Network – England’s National Safeguarding Unit – has recently produced a new resource which aims to enable trainers and group leaders to raise awareness about keeping children safe.  Specifically aimed at those working with or in black and minority ethnic communities and available in a range of languages, the Keeping Our Children Safe CD Rom is free for voluntary or community organisations. 

The Homes & Communities Agency's place-making recognition scheme aims to identify quality products that improve skills and knowledge in the
sustainable communities sector. Recognition will help organisations
promote products that improve people's understanding of place-making and
encourage different groups to work together to create great places.

For a limited period, we're offering a 50% discount on the standard
administration fee.

For more information visit http://recognition.homesandcommunities.co.uk

Derbyshire based social enterprise, Genesis Enterprise Foundation successfully launched The Genesis Academy on 23 January at the prestigious Alfreton Hall.
The launch event attracted over 60 people from across East and West Midlands, Lincolnshire and the North West and included presentations by David Kelly of Social Enterprise East Midlands (SEEM) and Philip Bramhall from East Midlands Development Agency (EMDA).

Following the item covering organisations using the Drupal content management system to manage their website, time to look at updating our list of WordPress powered. These can include those hosted on wordpress.com - my recommended way for a small organisation to get online easily and keep content up to date without having to worry about the technology.

WordPress is mainly seen as a blogging platform, but you can set up static pages and include images, video, and more, and it makes an effective mini website.

Just a couple to kick this off.