sounddelivery

We can’t believe it’s almost Christmas again. It may be a cliché, but time has really flown for sounddelivery this year.

Yet if there’s one thing we know about charity communications and training, it’s that you can never stand still. For us and the amazing organisations we work with, the last 12 months have been all about moving forward.

From our humble origins (working at my kitchen table!), we have now moved into our own lovely offices in East London where we run many of our courses. In a year we have also doubled the number of trainees who pass through our doors, and produced more podcasts, video slideshows and audio features than ever before.
That said, we are very aware of the feelings of uncertainty in the sector as we head into 2011. With budgets under severe review it’s clear that things are not always going to be easy for the organisations we work. But as former BBC producers with more than 25 combined years in the business, we know how to capture the attention of your supporters, stakeholders and most importantly your donors through great storytelling. We also believe in harnessing free and low-cost technologies and building skills and confidence in-house that will enable you to tell your stories and achieve the maximum impact with your projects and campaigns.

For me the theme of “moving forward” has also been very literal this year. For the first (and, I’m quite prepared to say, the last) time, I ran the London Marathon. Eight months on and the pain of winter training and the 26.2 gruelling miles have definitely been outweighed by raising over £5,000 for charity.

In this review you’ll be able to read a host of inspirational sounddelivery stories from over the last year.  One of the thrills for us has been to work with organisations of all shapes and sizes. From small community groups and social enterprises to local authorities and national bodies such as the Big Lottery Fund, we’ve proved that our work can make a real difference.

We’ve also been reaching out to more people than ever. This year we partnered with the Third Sector PR and Communications Network to host a series of meet-ups and events and have led workshops at more than a dozen communications conferences around the UK.

We’ve also been building exciting media partnerships producing podcasts for  SocietyGuardian and the sector community voice, KnowHow NonProfit. I have also started a blog column for Third Sector magazine, writing on everything from wealthy charity donors to the World Cup.

So where do we do go from here? We’re planning to keep moving forward – and we hope that you’ll be joining us along the way. Whether you’ve commissioned us to deliver your training or to produce your multimedia content, attended our training workshops or events, or invited us to provide consultancy, thank you for your continued support.

From everyone at sounddelivery we hope you have a very happy festive season and New Year.  Enjoy our highlights of the year.

Jude, Mark and Eric look forward to working with you in 2011.

“This was one of the best courses I have ever been on in terms of trainers, relevance to the organisation brief and programme outline.”
Ailsa Herd, Head of PR, The Brooke

From podcasting to online video and social media training, we’re proud to have helped some amazing charities to start producing their own digital content. How do we do it? The key is to understand that every organisation’s training needs are individual – and that charities typically have very different ideas, expectations and goals to commercial organisations. At sounddelivery we know that a standard training package just won’t work.

We offer a range of options: from in-house training sessions and regular workshops to speed-learning days like our Social Media Exchange Express.

This year, we’re pleased to have added new courses to our wide-ranging digital media portfolio. Answering to the growing need for charities to exploit emerging technologies, we have introduced advanced social media workshops focusing on efficiency and the future. We pride ourself on our “learning by doing” style of training and have seen real results.

Bringing stories to life

Of course whether you’re tweeting, filming or just talking, the key to all effective communications is always great storytelling. The power of stories transcends media, technology and even nationalities, as we discovered with The Brooke.

The international animal welfare charity commissioned us to deliver two bespoke video for the web courses for their staff from the UK, Africa and Asia. It was a highly entertaining and creative experience for everyone involved. You can read more here.

This year, we’ve delivered personalised training workshops for a host of organisations and providers, including: podcasting for the Big Lottery Fund’s regional communications teams; podcasting and video for the web training for the RNIB; social media training for the London School of Business and Finance; video for the web workshops for the North London Adoption Consortium and the reading charity, Booktrust. We also carried out two special social media for business training sessions for small businesses and social enterprises at the British Library.

We end 2010 delivering a series of one-day social media workshops and post-training support for a range of community groups in Sutton. This work forms part of the Take Part Pathfinder initiative, which encourages individuals and communities to become more involved in local decision making – the Big Society in practice! Through Sutton CVS, we are providing tailored communications training to organisations including Sutton Mencap, SCILL and Sutton 1 in 4 Network into the new year.

From fundraising and brand building to innovative volunteer recruitment and campaigning, we’ve been delighted to see the different ways that our charity clients have used the multimedia content that we’ve produced this year.

One organisation that has exploited the versatility of our services is London Youth. The charity, which represents more than 400 youth clubs across the capital, had two very different production needs. The first was to create a short evaluation of their youth worker training scheme, YouthWorks. As well as recording trainees’ experiences through film and audio interviews, we also helped the young people in question to learn about interviewing and audio recording techniques. This content was subsequently picked up by the national press.

The second part was to create a series of audio and multimedia reports for Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation, an initiative which aimed to capture young people’s views of age and ageing. As well as organising workshops with young people, we carried out a number of interviews, produced a series of audio montages on CD, and created an audio slideshow for the funder.

You can find out more about our work with London Youth here. With young people’s services increasingly under threat, the efforts of organisations like London Youth, who provide a voice for young people, cannot be underestimated. The work that we’ve done with them has helped to bring young people’s opinions to a wider audience.

Young people also featured heavily in the video-diary style volunteer recruitment video that we produced for YHA’s (Youth Hostel Association) Do It 4 Real summer camp season.

A very different approach was needed for Leicester Hospitals Charity, which commissioned us to carry out a series of powerful interviews on the subject of dementia for their Forget-Me-Not Appeal.

As well as technical expertise, this required a lot of sensitivity when speaking to carers and medical staff in the hospitals. The end result was an audio slideshow which the charity’s head of fundraising has called “a great product” and has helped to raise awareness and boost fundraising.

With advances in digital communications there are now many ways to engage with your supporters and stakeholders. This year we helped to kick-start just such an open dialogue for the Big Lottery Fund, who asked us to deliver a series of podcasts to support a live webchat with its Chair.

Before the chat even started, the podcasts helped to generate a buzz through Facebook and Twitter. You can read more here.

Charity Effectiveness

sounddelivery was commissioned by Guardian Professional – the commercial arm of the Guardian – to produce an innovative series of podcasts featuring some of the most influential characters in the charity and voluntary sector. The eight ‘Charity Effectiveness’ podcasts were sponsored by KnowHow NonProfit and covered a fascinating range of topics addressing third sector issues. They’ve proved to be a huge hit on a special SocietyGuardian microsite, and most importantly have sparked some interesting conversations and debates online.

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Latest Charity Effectiveness podcast: “What makes a good leader?”

You can listen to the complete series here.

We’ve had a lot of fun running our PR campaigns this year and achieved some great successes for our clients. Our work has been taken up by the national media, including the BBC across multiple platforms, the Guardian, and the Daily Telegraph.

FAB Camps

Run by the Ministry of Defence in partnership with the YHA (Youth Hostel Association), Families’ Activity Breaks (also known as FAB camps) are short holidays for families who have lost a loved one in military service. The aim is to provide a safe atmosphere for them to deal with their grief and meet with other families who have been through a similar experience.

To showcase the very first FAB camp in 2009, we were asked to interview mothers and their children about their holiday and find out what it meant to them, turning this into an audio slideshow and series of audio interviews.

In spring 2010, we were delighted to be asked again to support the project, this time by securing regional press coverage for a 6-day sponsored bike ride by YHA staff and military personnel. From BFB to BBC Radio Cornwall to regional newspapers, sounddelivery provided media outlets with local case studies, pre-recorded audio content and access to the bike riders throughout their trip

Listen to Chelsey’s moving talk about how the holiday restored her confidence below and read more about our work with FAB camps here.

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Do It 4 Real campaign

Following on from our volunteer recruitment video production work for the YHA, we were also asked us to spread the message about the Do It 4 Real summer camps for young people.

Interviews secured included BBC local radio, coverage on GMTV and Martin Lewis’s amazingly popular MoneySavingExpert website. We then helped to build the buzz using Facebook and Twitter, and very soon the YHA booking lines went into meltdown! Every camp sold out for the whole summer.

Listen to the interview that mum Tracy and son Joe did with BBC Radio Leicester and read more here.

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Tracy and Joe tell us about Do it 4 Real

“I thought the recent Katine Guardian event at sounddelivery was great in terms of the format, timing, length and of course the subject matter was really interesting. It was good to have time afterwards for questions and networking. And of course great that it was free! Thanks a lot and more of the same please.”
Nia Charpentier, Press Officer, TreeHouse – the national charity for autism education

We love running digital media events – it gives us a chance to find out about interesting projects and meet lots of new people. This autumn, we hosted a series of evening events in partnership with the Third Sector PR and Communications Network and Happy Computers. These hugely popular evenings have enabled staff working within the not-for-profit sector hear from individuals working in different media.

In the first event Liz Ford editor of the Guardian’s Project Katine website, gave a fascinating talk discussing the newspaper’s new approach to reporting development using the web and digital media. We ran a live stream of the event through Christian Aid’s broadcast channel and had several people tweet in their questions from the comfort of their own sofas. You can read one attendee’s review of the evening here.

Our second event was a Q&A session with journalist Paul Kerley, audio slideshow producer for BBC News Online who talked through each stage of planning, recording, editing and promoting. To find out more, read this blog post by Claire Welsby, Senior Producer (Digital Media) at Kew Gardens or watch our summary on Storify.

We also held a screening of Shed Your Tears and Walk Away, a very personal documentary about drink and drug addiction in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire. Read Jude’s blog about the film here.

We’ve got lots more exciting events planned for 2011. Follow us on twitter andFacebook for our latest news.

As a company with a strong commitment to social values, our aim has always been to work with organisations and on projects that tackle issues such as social exclusion and deprivation, and to help give a voice to people who are not heard in the mainstream media.

Through our soundinnovation initiative, we have raised over £15,000 in funding to delivery projects for those who are isolated in society. In addition, each year we give a percentage of our profits to charities we believe are doing great work. In 2010, we have chosen the Child’s i Foundation and the Kiloran Trust.

We take a more than profit approach to running sounddelivery. As well as donating money we also give our time. This year we’ve: produced a podcast for One in Four magazine’s conference on mental health; provided training days at the British Library for small and medium sized businesses; run a social media taster day for community groups and spoken at various events throughout the year.

For us, this is definitely not about the money but when we calculated the amount of time we’ve given without charge, it added up to in excess of £11,000 – which is a lot for a small company like ours! We like to think this contribution has had an even greater knock-on effect, creating real value for some wonderful organisations.

I would also like to thank our own team. sounddelivery is a small but growing organisation, which relies on word of mouth recommendations from our clients. We simply wouldn’t be where we are today without our fantastic team of trainers and producers who ensure that we provide the very best service. Special thanks to Mark and Eric who have worked so hard throughout the year.