The Need to be Known

The need to be known

The work of a charity or charitable organisation of any sort is normally easy for the organisation to establish. After all they have set up the organisation to achieve a know purpose!

The same does not apply to other people knowing about the existence of the charitable organisation itself, even though the majority of charitable causes are totally dependent on receiving funding to allow them to operate.  That funding can come from government sources or from the lottery etc. which avoids the problem that charitable organisations have in being known by the public.

But being known by the public and receiving donations from the public is the lifeblood of the majority of charitable organisations.

One way to be known by the community is to hold events within the community that raise the profile of the organisation and, possibly, receive donations from the public. Jumble sales, asking for money in the high street, getting donations from local businesses etc are all traditional ways of collecting money.

However the dawn of the internet age is challenging these traditional approaches to fundraising. If a member of the public wants to know about local charitable organisations they can now simply type a few key words into a search engine and they have the information that they want.

Does that mean that a charitable cause that doesn’t have a website is going to be even more disadvantaged in their attempts to be known in their local community? I suspect that the answer is going to be Yes. People are not going to look further than the internet if they find an organisation that they feel is appropriate. 

But having a website may not do anything at all for an organisation if that website is not being properly promoted on the internet and does not get listed when people search the internet.

Of course the website will be useful if people want to know about a particular organisation and know what to type in to see the website. So keeping a website up to date and ensuring that the content is appropriate and answers peoples questions becomes an essential ongoing task for all organisations.