Third Sector up North

Well, yesterday I spent some time looking at various funding sources and also training days for third sector organisations in the UK. We have been developing a funding map and looking at the trails of funding from Europe or central government through to local fundholders. Well some of it is a trail and some of it is a web!

Location makes a big difference to funding eligibility. I noticed 4 trends.

We live between two highly funded areas, one because it is a national park and attracts visitors and tourists and the other because it is one of the worst areas of deprivation in the country. Both of these areas are likely to attract funding for different reasons. I noticed that many of the arts or cultural pots of funding are much more likely to be available to those living in or around big cities. Thirdly, I noticed that the closer to London you live, the more likely it is that you are to find decent training and support courses specifically on internet marketing to help you either get funding or sharpen your business skills. Lastly, I noticed that there is a definite movement towards helping charities and social enterprises exploit the use of the internet to raise or make money online in the south, but much less so here in the north.

So, I have decided to do something about this. I contacted my Business Links advisor and told him that I would be running some courses teaching third sector organisations how to carry out effective internet marketing campaigns. He was very supportive and immediately gave me some links and suggestions and a call to action!

I can't release the exact date yet because I haven't confirmed it with the training rooms, but I am very excited about putting it together. I will be inviting 15 people to bring their laptops to a one day training and workshop about internet marketing. Each person will create up a free blog or a website and we will explore 5 ways that it can make money. We will look at the search engine optimisation, how to make money from writing and various ways of selling things online. It will be a fun interactive action day as opposed to a talking shop and the delegates will go home with new ideas and skills that are ready to go straight into practice.

I am very excited about this and looking forward to teaching and empowering others to get up and running. I had a great one to one session with someone yesterday who is just starting a business. I so love working with people to help them to identify where they want to go and how to get there. Today I'm off to do some learning on a course run by the CVS about business planning. The guy that is teaching is said to be a crash hot business planner so I am really looking forward to working with him. Teaching and learning are so important in this day and age where everything changes so fast and keeping up to date is crucial. We all have something to teach and lots to learn and learning environments are fantastic places to meet new people and network. Until tomorrow!

Kay