…..the City Action blog story pt II

Last week I explored the benefits of RSS readers and explained how this was the start of the City Action blog creation process, so I will start from where I left off!

After exploring and adding to our CSR/Volunteering/Ethical blogs RSS reader page for a few weeks and crowing to anyone who would listen about how great it all was, I came to some conclusions about the information that is currently available:

Firstly, there is a good bank of knowledge about CSR, volunteering, the third sector and current ethical news out there, which is of great benefit to anyone who works within or is interested in these fields.  However, despite being a wealth of information, it can sometimes be challenging to search through all the news items/articles that are relevant to your area of interest or expertise, particularly as many have an international focus.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly for this blog posting, I recognised that many of the blogs out there do not provide an opportunity for members of their sector, whether it be business or charity, to provide a contribution to a blog other than a brief comment. 

Also, save for a few exemplary blogs including Addleshaw Goddards’s CSR blog, NESTA’s Innovation Exchange and YouthNet, I noticed the lack of real voices and honest commentary being featured.

This is where I hope City Action’s blog can help fill a gap - by encouraging you, the reader to provide a blog posting about your opinions and experiences from the world of volunteering and community involvement - we will be able to gain a greater understanding of the real stories and people behind the news headlines and the statistics.

I hope that next week’s posting will prove this point, as we hear straight from the horse’s mouth from a work placement student. Ayesha Malik, our talented City Business Trainee who has spent the Summer with City Action and our colleagues within the Economic Development team at the City of London, will be sharing her experiences with us.  Watch this space!

..the City Action blog story part I:

The idea for this blog came into being about six months ago when I was using the internet on my other half’s computer and I noticed that his default homepage was looking a bit strange - with small boxes of headline information from websites such as the BBC, the Guardian and West Ham United FC.

This page also had tabs across the top with different headings such as ‘news n sport’ and ‘non-profit blogs’.  Having had a little look around I was intrigued, particularly after he explained that I too could create my very own page, complete with all the websites that I like, by using a new technology called RSS.  Even more exciting, my page would be updated every day with each websites’ most up to date news headlines/blog postings/commentary etc. 

Inspired by this new level of what I called ‘internet geek’ knowledge, I set about creating my very own news reader page for City Action and our Corporate Responsibility team at the City of London Corporation with the help of netvibes.

Our team can access the private page via a password and then add their comments and more website ‘feeds’ as they wish.  However, our public page can be viewed by any of you, which we hope provides a useful round up of the volunteering, CSR, third sector and blog feeds that are available.

Despite my initial ‘internet geek’ thoughts, I soon became a news reader convert and here are 5 reasons why your organisation should think about setting one up:

1. It saves you time - by viewing the headlines of all your favourite websites at a glance every day.

2. It will expand your knowledge of the sector/s you work within.

3. It is free! Many news readers such as netvibes, my yahoo, google reader and feed reader are totally free to set up and use.

4. It can give your organisation a public ‘face’, which you can link into your current website.

5. It is accessible and most well established websites now have an RSS facility.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on news reader technology. Does anyone else out there have a public page we can see or some top tips on how to manage your reader? Please do add a comment or contact us with your examples.

Have a great Bank Holiday weekend everyone - next week I will post the next instalment of the City Action blog story part 2…..

Welcome to the new City Action blog, hosted by City Action, the City of London Corporation’s free employee volunteering broker service.  This blog is an important, additional service for the many members of the business and charitable sectors who are working together on valuable programmes that benefit their local communities. 

The City of London Corporation is committed to developing opportunities for City businesses to support the surrounding local communities that contain high levels of social and economic disadvantage.  Worthwhile activities such as employee volunteering, gift in kind donations, local procurement and recruitment programmes are undertaken by many businesses - but there’s plenty of room for more involvement!

As an inclusive online service, this blog has the added benefit of reaching businesses and charities beyond the boundaries of the City.  Whether you are a charity manager, a CSR professional, an employee volunteer or an individual who has benefited from a local programme, I encourage as many of you as possible to contribute a blog posting so we all can share and learn from your experience.

With your contributions, this blog will become a useful resource for anyone active in community involvement programmes - I hope to read your stories, understand your opinions or perhaps learn some ‘best practice’ tips over the coming months.

I am also looking forward to seeing many ‘hot topics’ covered such as the effect of the credit crunch on community involvement activities; the true value of employee volunteers to community organisations; and the increased focus on environmental issues within businesses and their Corporate Social Responsibility programmes.

So, it’s now over to you - with your help City Action is hoping to shape this blog into an informative, honest and open forum.  To make the blog easily accessible it has a dedicated area within the City Action website as well as an RSS feed service - so there’s no excuse not to get involved!