SEO QUICK WINS, 'FUNDER PLUS' RELATIONSHIPS & THE PROBLEM WITH CROWDFUNDING

Here's our round-up of some great recent charity sector blogs and articles - featuring unique insights and innovative ideas that you might've missed...

Tom Crowe: 12 Highly Effective SEO Tips For Nonprofits
Published by Tom Crowe Digital
First up, here's an amazingly useful guide explaining 12 search engine optimisation 'quick wins' for small charities and social enterprises. Tom, an SEO specialist, recently audited a number of charity websites and concluded that with a few simple SEO fixes, many charities could quickly rescue a declining website and significantly boost their traffic and donations. Packed full of practical tips and clear explanations, this article could really transform you online game...

5 Years of Funder Plus, 5 Things We’ve Learned
Published by Lloyds Bank Foundation
Lloyds Bank Foundation do an amazing job of supporting the small charity sector, from their valuable core funding grants, in-kind support and vocal advocacy and opinion pieces. So we were very interested to read their new report reflecting on what they've learned from five years of delivering their Funder Plus programme, which explains why funders should strive to truly empower charities, invest in leadership and build their long-term capabilities. If other funders can put this advice into practice, it'll be a big boost for the sector.

Andrew Purkis: An ‘inconvenient truth’ for the Charity Commission
Published by Civil Society
The Charity Commission has repeatedly said that its job is to tell charities what the public expects from them, not to educate the public about charities. But how reliable are those public expectations? When 2,000 members of the public were asked what the word 'charities' brought to mind, they only named nine charities between them (all household names) and showed virtually no awareness of local charities. This fascinating article questions how much charities should be expected to change their behaviour in response to criticism, when that criticism is based on such a limited and skewed understanding of the sector.

Dave Lee: GoFundMe: Hope, but no solution, for the needy
Published by BBC News
Proof of humanity's innate desire to help each other, or a monument to inequality? Crowdfunding has undoubtedly brought hope and relief to many people, but in the US, you could argue that it essentially props up a broken healthcare system. So can we allow generosity to become a substitute for justice? We'd argue not - particularly when crowdfunding is so patchy in terms of who it benefits, with this likely to be skewed by things like ethnicity and social class. This is a great reminder that however good our fundraising efforts are, they're only one part of the work we need to do to change the world.

Young Trustees – Are We Really Doing Enough?
Published by Cause4
This month, Tate appointed a 28-year-old as the youngest serving Trustee of a national UK museum or gallery. Great news for them, but it also puts the spotlight on how few young trustees there are in the sector - just 0.5% of serving trustees are aged 18-24, despite 450,000 people in this age group running their own business. This a timely reminder of some of the benefits of appointing young trustees, and of how far we still have to go as a sector in order to be fully representative of the people we serve.