Yesterday in the fundraising office we were preparing our budgets for the next financial year. Like everybody that has to do this knows, you start to plan the future by looking backwards.
Whilst looking backwards over the last financial year, we realised how many wonderful business people had supported us with pro bono work. This makes a huge fiscal and immeasurable PR/communications difference to our organisation and therefore to those that we support.
I would like dedicate the rest of this post to the technology based companies that have helped us over the last 12 months and recommend them to anyone that needs support with web-based services. Naturally, we’ll be thanking those who’ve given in other ways, from other business areas, in further posts.
Firstly I would like to thank and recommend Greg Cooper from the Search Marketing Group. Greg contacted us around 18 months ago with a desire to work with a charity. SMG help push the Society of St James up the google rankings in order to help us attract new supporters and spread the news of the great work that our charity does. Greg’s team has been working on this, free of charge, for 18 months now and we have seen some fantastic movement in our rankings which has helped to grow our audience.
I would also like to thank and recommend Rachel from approachable technology. Rachel, as her website suggests really does make IT seem much easier to understand and her knowledge of IT related issues is second to none. Her initial contact with the Society of St James came through her willingness to work with and train some of our service users, and we’ve been grateful to have maintained contact.
Over the Christmas period our website was hacked which left us with some real problems. Rachel came to our rescue and not only fixed the problems, but educated us and assisted us to the point where we are able to make minor fixes ourselves. Thank you Rachel.
Towards the end of last year Ross from Skysoclear transferred our website over to a WordPress site. This has improved our use of the blog, given us more flexibility, and enabled the whole of our team to be able to update the site and add content. I cannot recommend Ross highly enough, his primary interest is in helping companies to tell their stories through film, and we look forward to working with him in the future.
Most recently Kate from KPI has completed some pro bono work for us improving our ad words account. I met the team when I was fortunate enough to be on a training course run by KPI, they put Kate in touch with us to offer this service. This again has made a huge impact on the number of people visiting our site and also helps direct people to the most appropriate areas of our site, whether they want to volunteer, donate, or find out how to access our services. Thank you Kate.
Finally I would like to thank and recommend Tom from soundyoucansee.com. Tom started working with us in 2009 when he undertook the rebranding of the Society of St James and built us a new website. The rebranding was altruistically given, the website work enabled both him and us to gain relevant and significant experience in web development.
It was this start to our new look that was a turning point in our approach to marketing ourselves as a charity. Tom‘s generous input has enabled us to develop all of the above relationships with these fantastic people.
Thank you all very much and we look forward to working with you further in the years to come.
