The Charity Place

Count Malaria Out on World Malaria Day

It's World Malaria Day on 25th April, and I was asked to show support by displaying a button on this blog, linking through to the campaign.  (You'll see it on the right, next to this post.)

Even though I haven't blogged here for some considerable time, I'm happy to oblige if it helps to raise awareness even in a very small way.

Half of the world's population are at risk of malaria and, according to the World Malaria Report, published by the World Health Organisation, there were 243 million cases during 2008, resulting in 863,000 deaths.

According to the charity Malaria No More, more than a million people die of malaria every year.  Most are young children under five years old.  In Africa, the disease currently kills one child every 30 seconds.

But virtually all of these deaths are avoidable.

In countries such as Ethiopia and Rwanda, where mosquito nets, medicine and insecticides have been distributed, deaths from malaria have already been reduced by over 50%.

So, what can you do?

• Pledge your support: 'Count yourself in to Count Malaria Out and join the global community in working to ensure that every man, woman and child in malaria-affected regions has access to essential prevention and treatment services by 2010.'
• Make a donation to a charity that works to save lives from malaria?  Malaria No More, as the name implies, focuses on putting an end to the suffering and death caused by malaria.
• Help to raise awareness by displaying the button on your blog and/ or website, by joining the Facebook page and sharing it on your profile, and following World Malaria Day 2010 on Twitter and retweeting to your followers.

It's a beautiful world

You might have noticed that it's gone a little bit quiet at this blog lately (quieter than usual even).

The reason?

I've recently launched an agency called Beautiful World.  We do fundraising, marketing and communications for charities and other organisations that want to do the world some good (no surprises there, I'm sure).

I've started Beautiful World with two beautiful business partners, Simon Frank and Adam Waller, both of whom I've done great work with with before at other charity specialist agencies.

Social media is one of our specialisms (naturally).  We've already helped a number of charities get started with Twitter, get better at Facebook, get buy-in across their organisation, develop integrated social media strategies, build communities of support, and begin to leverage them to fundraise, and engage with volunteers, campaigners and other stakeholders.

We're also helping charities integrate their online and offline activities - because giving stakeholders and supporters a genuine, joined-up experience of your brand, across all media channels, is more important than ever now everything (and almost everyone) is joined up online.

We also know a thing or two about how to measure and evaluate your fundraising, marketing and communications activities, and how to use data (the information charities hold on their databases, including how donors were recruited, how many times they've donated, how much they've given, when and how often, what other types of support they have engaged in) and web metrics to improve results and return on investment.

We've just helped one charity more than double their projected income AND halve their mailing costs - which has tripled their return on investment.  I can't tell you how happy and proud we are about that.

Anyway - and returning to my original point, finally - I'll be posting content over at the Beautiful World blog from time to time now, as well as from time to time here, although you'll still mostly find me on Twitter!