Theo Socmed's Musings

Storytelling & Fundraising in a Digital Age

One of the basic fundamentals of good fundraising is the ability to share a story that’s full of human interest. It is often the personal stories of people that motivates a donor to give. This is particularly true if the story is told by a real person, the person it is about and not second hand via a fundraiser or copywriter.

OK, now take the art of storytelling and couple it with the technology of the digital age. What do you get? A whole new way to reach out and share these stories with a wider audience, locally and globally.

This is the basis of some exciting projects currently taking place in the UK, thanks to an organisation called “Tales of things and electronic memory” (TOTeM). TOTeM is a collaboration between University College London, University of Dundee, University of Edinburgh, University of Salford and is funded by the UK Research Council’s Digital Economy Program.

The basis of TOTeM’s work is to create “spimes”, objects that can be tracked through space and time throughout their lifetime. For example, I have a casement clock that belonged to my maternal grandparents. It’s a very ordinary clock with a nice chime, probably not worth very much, but to me and my family it is a part of our history. During the second world war it hung under the stairs in my grandparents home, until the night of the air raid. A bomb fell in the street outside their house. My mother, aunt and grandparents were, thankfully, unhurt, having taken refuge in their sunken air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden. My mother, now 80 years old, remembers as a child scrambling over the debris of what had been their house and as she did, the clock, which was hanging on the one remaining wall, struck 6am!

Over the years the clock has hung in various homes until it succumbed to a weapon far more lethal than a Nazi bomb - teenagers! A game of “let’s be silly and throw a tennis ball indoors” led to one of the glass panels breaking and the pendulum being damaged. (It is now awaiting a clock repairer to fix it) If you saw the clock hanging there, it would just be a nice casement clock, a bit old fashioned, but pleasant to adorn a wall in many a home. Imagine being able to know the story behind it, the history of the clock, what it survived, who owned it, etc.

One of TOTeM’s first projects was to record and tell the stories of items in a Scottish museum. Not only to tell their stories, but to develop them too, but inviting the public to share their own experiences of these objects, by adding to it. People can share how they used similar items in their home, work, etc, or interesting stories about the item, etc.

“So what’s this got to do with fundraising?”You may be asking? Well, TOTeM has started to work in partnership with Oxfam. In a pilot scheme currently running in Manchester, Oxfam are asking donors of goods to about 15 shops to download a free iPhone app, “ShelfLife”, to record the stories behind items that people are going to donate. The items are then displayed in their shops with a unique QR Code attached to the label of each item. Shoppers can then use their smart phone to scan the QR code and see what the story is behind the article.

So far, they are reporting large rises in the sale of the ShelfLife labeled items, compared to those that are not labeled. It would appear that the art of fundraising by sharing human interest stories applies just as much to inanimate objects as it does to people! Also, the ShelfLife items are realising higher resale prices than non-labeled goods. So a provenance can be good for business, even in the charity shop world!

OK, Oxfam is huge, has lots of highly skilled staff and budgets to experiment with. But what about the local hospices and other small charities? Can they get onboard with this?

My resounding response is “Yes!” there may be a small outlay, but I’m talking £100-£150 and a bit of time and training. What would you need to get started?

• A cheap digital camera (or a smart phone)
• An inkjet printer A free blog or website (e.g. Tumblr, Wordpress, etc)
• A free QR Code creator app
• A staff member, or better still a few volunteers, to run the process

A donor comes in with an interesting item and is asked if they would like to share a bit about it. The item is photographed and the story recorded (it doesn’t have to be typed, it could be an audio recording using the Audioboo app, or even videoed using a phone or the camera). These are then uploaded to the blog or website. A QR Code is then made of the blog page and then printed off onto a sticker or tie on label and affixed to the item in the shop. Voila!

Virtually no techie knowledge is needed, more just the confidence to use the Internet and a computer, as well as a digital camera and/or smart phone. Maybe a national umbrella body like Help the Hospices could get someone to develop an app like ShelfLife that hospices throughout the land could use, or a commercial developer create one for independent charity shops?

If you wish to discuss how I could help you set up a scheme like this, or maybe you’re a museum, historic property or cathedral and want to see how you could develop something to share more about your exhibits and artefacts, please get in touch with me.

SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN: Church’s commitment to children & young people called into question

For his New Year 2012 message, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, warned against hostility towards young people. He focussed on their needs and on the work being done by charities and the Church to support and encourage young people today.

Jump forward a week and it is announced that the General Synod Board of Education of the Church of England is proposing to cut the two national adviser posts for children’s work and youth work to one joint post.

Now call me cynical if you like, but doesn’t that smack of an institution that, despite numerous nods and winks over the past twenty-odd years to the importance and place of children & young people in the Church, really couldn’t give a toss? (I acknowledge that lower down the structure, many dioceses do invest in this work, but the message from the top is a very negative one.)

Certainly at the national level there has been a constant erosion of resources and staff since the 1980s in the Board of Education. I know, because for several years I sat as a member of one of it’s sub-committees, overseeing children’s, youth and adult education. Time after time we had to fight to keep officer posts, although not always with success, to the point where now there are just two people supporting 42 diocese, all the diocesan advisers and liaising across the board with the Government and it’s departments, voluntary sector bodies and charities, etc.

The proposal shows a clear lack of understanding of the two separate natures of children’s and youth work. The idea that one person can be an expert in both of these fields reveals not only ignorance by the wider Church, but also very poor professional understanding by those at the top of the organisation responsible for advising the Board of Education about its policy decisions.

At a time when the Church and voluntary sector needs to be investing in developing work in areas such as children and young people, to make up for the devastating cuts by the Government and local authorities in these areas, we see yet another “business rationale” (as the document is headed). Business rationale shouts “financial cuts” to me, not something constructive related to professional and theological practice and driven by a desire to say “We value our children’s and youth work and want to see it grow through investment in and encouragement to our existing staff.”

The rationale document is an insipid document. It contains no factual evidence for or against the proposals, just some rather slight comments about some of the department’s work being completed successfully and other bits not being completed. It talks about “some activities require specialist skills that the Division does not have within the existing permanent staff and therefore consideration is being given to creating a more effective staffing structure that is better able to deliver these priorities.”

So, let’s get this straight. You have two national advisers working their butts off to keep up with all the demands put upon them. They are also working in an ever changing environment, where new skills might be required as well. The existing work continues apace, but there are some gaps that the existing staff are unable to fill, because they’re children’s work and youth work experts. In most organisations you’d recognise the gaps and bring in experts in those particular fields, to work alongside the existing staff and provide the needed skills to plug the gaps. Job done!

Now take the Church of England’s Board of Education. You put two people’s jobs at risk. Reduce two full time, demanding posts to one. Ignore the specialist nature of each adviser’s post and meld them into one post and use the money saved to bring in temporary consultants “to provide short term consultancies to deliver specific aspects of the work…They would not form part of the permanent requirement of the Division.”

The biggest laugh (if that’s not the right term, please forgive me) is that these people then think that the new joint advisor is not only going to continue to do two demanding full time posts in one, but they are also going to oversee the growth and development of the work with children and young people! (I’ve seen more logic in a Brian Rix farce than this!)

I withdrew my membership of the CofE some years ago, following my own redundancy as a giving adviser in a diocese that still is struggling not to go into liquidation. (I went on to a very successful career in fundraising where I raised over £10m in six years!) I failed to understand their logic (or lack of it) then & still do. I did eventually drift back in, but sit very uncomfortably within it.

I wonder what the Archbishop of Canterbury’s reaction will be to this proposal, especially after making such a high profile appeal to support young people?

If the Church of England is serious about its work with children and young people, let’s see them prove it and instead of making the usual response of cut and slash when faced with things that might require building up further, make a real investment in the staff they already employ and in extra support to enable them to be even more effective!

Parish enables “silver surfers” to learn social media skills

I got this really encouraging Facebook message from a Curate, Claire Maxim, whose parish is providing a service to older members of the local community to come to grips with PCs, the Internet and social media:

One of our Readers started Silver Surfers - aimed at people who have been presented with laptops, and are scred still of them - she knew a couple of retired people who’ve spent a lifetime working in computing, so got them to come and “teach”, plus a few of us who help out from time to time. We already had wireless and broadband, although we’ve had to increase our download limits a bit - especially when we taught them how to find iPlayer and 4OD etc!

We aim to get them able to use the internet for the stuff they are interested in (and have done some “shopping” classes for them), get them able to use email, and best of all, Skype - we’ve got folk chatting to great-grandchildren in Australia which is just fantastic.

Although we run the group in church, it isn’t an overtly “Christian” group - we run it as a resource for the community. Started with one morning a week, now two sessions because so many were interested, and it has become more of a “group” with everyone helping everyone else. It has given the odd overtly Christian pastoral opportunity too.

They have their own website - http://www.nbss.org.uk/

Recreational sex versus marriage? I don’t think so Sir Brian!

I have to  take task with the statement by Sir Brian Souter this week with regards to the question of the law changing to allow gay marriages to take place.

During an interview with The Sunday Times Sir Brian said:

“We are arguing here about what kind of society we want to live in.

“Are we going to be in a Babylonian-Greek type of society, where sex is primarily a recreational activity, or are we going to stick with the Judeo-Christian tradition, where procreation is something that we want to put within a marriage context?

“These two different philosophies are beginning to emerge and quite honestly the issue about gay relationships is a small side-product from that discussion.”

Now I may be wrong, but I thought the whole point about gay marriages was not about recreational sex, but about two people who love each other sufficiently that they want to make a public commitment of fidelity to that other person?

It seems to me that Sir Brian is getting his Babylonian/Greek/Judeo/Christian cultures wrongly used in this argument. If it’s about recreational sex v fidelity, then this applies to heterosexual couples just as much as gay couples.

Marriage is marriage. It’s about relationships, commitment, love, selflessness. And if within that solemn undertaking couples enjoy having sex without the intention of creating children, then that’s great. (Even hetersexual couples who do have children enjoy having sex for just the damn fun of having sex!)

Yes, I accept that part of the basis of the religious Judeo/Christian marriage is for the procreation of children, but that implies that anyone of any sexual orientation who knowingly gets married whilst being aware they cannot – for whatever reason – have children, should not really be allowed to marry. So a heterosexual couple who know that they can’t have kids would fall foul of Sir Brian’s argument too, if they want to marry.

I think Sir Brian needs to revisit his argument, or stick to running drama clubs or buses (whichever Stagecoach he made his £ millions at)!

Coping with disruptive children (& bigger people) in Church

Following a couple of reported incidents recently, in one of them a young man with cerebal palsy was asked to leave a service and sit in the creche room, because his uncontrolled “Amen” was putting people off their worship, the US publication “Christianity Today” asked for church leader’s views on this.

A few took the line that they try to preserve a calm, peaceful atmosphere at all times, so hive groups like children and young people off into other venues, so as to preserve the atmosphere for people to concentrate on the preaching of the Word.

I was please to also read a few more theologically and humanly balanced pieces from people who saw the bigger picture, from God’s perspective, as it were:

“I’m all for good manners—I shush my kids like crazy during church. And I’m all for cry rooms and church nursery and children’s church. But churches that put a ton of energy into avoiding disruptions at all costs bug me. Partly because I’m not sure God cares all that much about disruptions (he has a long history of disrupting things himself). But also because I think God’s more concerned with us welcoming folks into his house—and extending love and grace—than he is about making sure people mind their p’s and q’s perfectly while they’re there. It seems these churches we hear about that shuttle disrupters out of a service care more about the comfort of the people in the pews than they do about the glory of God.”

Caryn Rivadeneira, author, Mama’s Got a Fake ID and Grumble Hallelujah

“People shouldn’t be viewed as disruptions. Disrupting moments provide opportunities to demonstrate patience and gentleness. People must be treated with dignity and respect. How leaders respond in the moment can speak louder than any prepared sermon. We must learn to navigate the fine nuances between discouragement, distraction, disruption, and danger in a service.”

Mark DeYmaz, directional leader, Mosaic Church

“Usually disruptions in services are regarded as coming from children. I really appreciate churches that regard the typical children noise as holy noise. One church I visited has taken cries of a child and said to the congregation, ‘Turn that cry into a prayer that you’re praying for the underserved people of the world whose needs are not being met.’ But if a disturbance comes from someone in a tantrum, a child is having a tantrum, then I think that child needs to be removed from the service so that child is not embarrassed by their out-of-control behavior. So it depends on the nature of the disturbance, but to say there should be no disturbances in a worship service creates a very Western, cognitive-oriented worship service. Holy noise that is even sometimes distracting can be a great, beautiful sound to our God.”

Scottie May, associate professor, Wheaton College

“The apostle Paul insisted that worship be done ‘decently and in order,’ because God is a God of order. In the context of his rebuke of the Corinthian church’s practice of communion (1 Corinthians 11), he is particularly upset with the narcissistic attitude of those who attend the agape meal thinking only of themselves (e.g., cutting to the front of the buffet line, showing up drunk). I suspect he would say much the same to many of our contemporary churches that have taken their cues from modernism’s emphasis on the individual to the point that, with capitalistic salesmanship, we encourage folks to seek out their preferred style of worship and their favorite preacher in the same manner in which they scour the grocery aisle for their favorite brand of cereal. So it’s no wonder that some find their preferences upset by a child with special needs (who actually may have been the visitation of Christ among them, a la Matthew 25), or show up and leave when they want based on musical tastes. The willingness to be shaped by a community into which God has called us—to be formed into Christ’s likeness by folks we’d not have chosen to be with if it had been up to us—is lacking in the lives of those whose preferences in worship are disturbed by their preferences. And that is what seems to have happened at Elevation Church and NewSpring. So when Jesus shows up with cerebral palsy, let him stay; and insist that the folks around him stay with him, even if the preacher or the music isn’t to their liking (unless, of course, they’re hemorrhaging or the building is on fire), because disruptions due to individualistic preferences (such as getting up in the middle of worship to get a latte) are precisely the kinds of actions that Paul reprimands in Corinth.”

Dennis Okholm, professor of theology, Azusa Pacific University

JustGiving extendes text donations to individuals

Really good news today that JustGiving and Vodafone have extended their text donations facility to individuals who are raising funds for their chosen charities. This is a real leap forward, bringing text donating to people like you and me. The best thing of all is it’s a free service, so no longer does mobile phone company take a hefty cut of the donation.

To read a fuller report on this development, check out Third Sector magazine’s article: Third Sector

Examples of churches embracing social media

Here are some examples from churches who are beginning to use and introduce social media into their communications. I asked people for honest examples, even where things weren’t going as planned or had been a failure.

I am grateful to those people and churches that responded.

St Mary’s, Buckden
We are just starting to embrace social media at St Mary’s, Buckden (Diocese of Ely).  We’re a fairly traditional church, and we don’t use much technology in worship, (no screens, no powerpoint etc), but we do have a growing number of families who come to church either regularly or occasionally, and we also found that quite a lot of our older members use facebook to keep in touch with their own families, so are more social media savvy than one might think! 
We are also strategically located close to the junction between the A1 and A14, and get a fair few visitors who are passing through, so our internet profile reflects the fact that we see ourselves as the A1 Church.  We’re just beginning to work out ways of raising our profile both locally and nationally through social media, but so far we have (in addition to our very ‘standard’ church website) a blog (http://a1churchbuckden.wordpress.com) and a twitter account (@a1churchbuckden) and a facebook page (which is so new we don’t have enough ‘likers’ to warrant a small url, so at the moment it’s http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/St-Marys-Buckden/219099594787252). 
I’m the vicar, and I’ve been using social media for much longer than the church has - what I haven’t managed to do yet is cash in on my own internet profile in order to raise the profile of the church. But hey, it’s a work in progress. In case anyone wants to know, I’m @reverendally on twitter, posterous, and wordpress.
What helped us most to get started?  A very nice chap in the village who doesn’t come to church but is a professsional social networker and social media trainer and is passionate about using social media to build community, so he gave us an evening’s consutation for free! He’s a great bloke.
What is most challenging? the fact that many in the regular congregation (and indeed on the PCC) have internet access but aren’t willing to learn about new ways of using the internet (persuading some of them even to look at the church website is a tall order - the idea of the church’s internet presence being interactive is a whole step further than most people can get their heads round).
Ally (@reverendally)


St Peter’s Church, Walworth, South London
We tweet as below and basically do the following:
a) we retweet a lot of local information, hoping to raise the profile of our local area and the parish church’s place within the community b) we advertise service times and describe them as explicitly as poss for non-church-goers c) we occasionally tweet bits of scripture or prayers to chime in with times like Christmas, Easter, valentine’s day that will be in the national consciousness d) we put out or RT calls for help, or lost objects, etc e) we comment on issues of local significance f) we sometimes ‘report’ news g) when local tragedies or events occur we tweet that we are praying for those involved h) we sometimes engage in individual conversations with one of the (few) members of St Peter’s who are on twitter i) we advertise or RT non-church events going on locally j) we tweet about what’s going on and share bits from life in church and (church) school, parish, etc.
Father Andrew Moughtin-Mumby Rector of St Peter’s, Walworth


St Marys Bramall Lane, Sheffield
In response to request on greenbelt blog, here’s what we’ve tried with social media:

1.  twitter
We have a large proportion of young Africans in our church family who appear to use mobile phones as a primary means of communication.
Partly because of that we’ve got a twitter feed which is designed mostly to work without neccessarily needing web access as a means of reminding the congregation about rotas, jobs, and general church news.
 We’ve published details of how to sign up via SMS in the church newsletter several times and it seems to work quite well.  its really very easy to get people to “Send a text to 64466 with the contents ‘follow stmarysnews’” even if people don’t really get twitter. They can of course sign up online and get into twitter in a more sophisticated way, but they can use it usefully just by receiving SMS messages from the feed.

2. delicious
I’m a big fan of delicious.  Our church website now looks pretty clunky (and I’m rewriting it in wordpress at the moment) http://www.stmarys-church.co.uk/church/  but one of the nice features is that the headline news is generated using embedded java connected to a particular delicious account (marysnews).  So, for instance, each week when i upload the church newsletter, I bookmark it using builtin delicious tools (available for IE, firefox, chrome etc) giving it a specific tag (latest), give it a text comment, and that’s it - the ‘latest news’ on the website updates itself automatically.  without having to modify any static html or anything.  And of course anyone could use the RSS feed from this if they want (probably no-one does - pretty luddite congregation!).

3. google calendar
An obvious one, but the Vicar and the Curate can write to a google calendar I’ve shared, so its up to them to put the church services and events online.  This becomes part of the church website, and again, can be followed by RSS, or email using google’s tools.
http://www.stmarys-church.co.uk/church/diary/
In our new wordpress version, this will autogenerate a feed showing ‘This week’s events’ on the website.

4.  google documents
For the church jobs rota.  Again, various people have write-access to a shared spreadsheet with the ‘master’ rota for church service jobs.
Its a job of work to get everyone to trust it and to use it as their primary data source, but we’re getting there.  Again, this becomes an automatically-generated part of the church website http://tinyurl.com/stmrota many advantages to this - I (and others) can monitor changes easily and roll them back when mistakes have happened (they have!).  Easily readible on mobile gadgets as well as computers.

5. flickr
A flickr group exists which is a useful repository of pictures relating to church events.  Currently used often to generate a nice slideshow before and after the service.

Steve Tozer-Loft
Church website and newsletter editor
St Marys Bramall Lane
Sheffield


St James, Gerrards Cross with St James Fulmer
At St James, Gerrards Cross with St James Fulmer (www.saintjames.org.uk) we have had a website for a number of years. The latest version is WordPress based and has been our most successful to date in terms of several staff updating it, visitor numbers, and in Google ranking. However, in a recent survey of the congregation fewer people than we would have hoped said they visit it regularly. We do from time to time become aware of people who have visited our church, or signed up for our Alpha course purely as a result of finding the website.

We also use WordPress to drive our podcasting service. The number of listeners is also lower than we would like given the effort involved but they are quick to alert us if there is a delay in posting talks.

Our Facebook page has been our most successful venture into social media but this was somewhat accidental. The page quickly had a following even though initially created as a place-holder, so we started posting to it. It has a wide demographic coverage from teens to retired. We get good responses and occasional, usually positive, comments. Several staff update it, with only very rare duplication.

We have a Twitter feed (@stjamesnews) but this has a limited, and largely static following. We cross-post tweets and Facebook updates between the two platforms, and all new podcasts are advertised on Twitter, but we have seen little motivation within the staff team to tweet news, comment or photos on this feed. Several staff tweet individually but we have not come to a view yet on whether or how we should publicise these.

We have used blogs for special projects, e.g. when a group of people are travelling abroad, but the traffic rapidly diminishes as soon as the posting stops.

One area that has been successful is the use of MailChimp (mailchimp.com) to send out daily prayer emails each morning. These reflect the monthly printed prayer diary but give us the opportunity to update with more timely prayer requests, e.g. for East Africa famine and UK riots. We send out to approximately 160 members daily which is well within the monthly free quota. We are exploring the option of setting up weekly mailings using this technology for notices and announcements.

We have found it very important to print URLs on publicity and continually to remind people to look online for further information.

Andrew Laughland

Social Media Websites – Crib Sheet

Thanks to Tim Davies - http://www.practicalparticipation.co.uk/ for the links to the ‘One Page’ guides and to the http://www.ictchampions.org.uk project for other resources and information.

‘Social media‘ is the term commonly given to websites and online tools which allow users to interact with each other in some way – by sharing information, opinions, knowledge and interests. Social media involves building communities or networks, encouraging participation and engagement. It is sometimes also Web 2.0, New Media or referred to as Social Networking. Collaboration and participation is positively encouraged - unlike older websites where content was shown on static pages with no ability to interact.

I’ve grouped the tools into ten broad categories which summarised below; words in BOLD are examples of tools providing that service.    

1. Audio Sharing. A podcast is a news feed with a media sound file attached that can be picked up by a feed reader for listening on a PC, MP3 player or iPod at your convenience. Specialist recording equipment or a mobile phone can be used to record and then upload to websites such as Audioboo or Odeo. Editing can take place using free Audacity software. Using Ipadio to record a podcast from a mobile phone also produces a transcription.

2. Blog – (weB log). Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject, cause or issue; others function as personal online diaries with entries displayed in reverse chronological order. A typical blog includes images, and links to other blogs and media. Popular blogging tools include Wordpress, Blogger and Weebly. Tumblr or Postorous generate a blog from short media snippets. (More Info: http://bit.ly/One-page-blogging)

3. Video Sharing. Websites such as YouTube, Vimeo or BlipTV. Upload and share videos from a digital camera or mobile phone. They can be included on your own website and tagged for sharing and easy searching by visitors. Conversations develop from comments about video content or message. Ustream or Qik can be used to create a live video stream from an event (More Info: http://bit.ly/One-page-Video)

4. Microblogging (Twitter). A social networking service that allows users to send up to 140 character “updates” as SMS text-based posts. It is ideal for keeping in touch with groups of people, feeding information from events, canvassing a peer group about a particular topic or just asking questions. (More Info: http://bit.ly/Twitter-for-support-orgs)

5. RSS and Feed readers. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is just a technical way content is formatted ready for a feed reader or news feed program (such as Google Reader) to pickup and deliver to your reader, your browser favorites or as an email in your inbox. Feeds are delivered automatically to be picked up and read at leisure without you having to visit each website individually. RSS feeds are often denoted on websites with an orange RSS symbol. (More Info: http://bit.ly/RSS-Support-orgs).

To be instantly notified by e-mail when your organisation or a particular keyword is mentioned you can set up a Google Alert. (More Info: http://bit.ly/One-page-alerts)

6. Photo Sharing (Flickr). An online photo storage website which also includes tagging and commenting so photos taken by many people but tagged with the same terms can be viewed in a single pool. (More Info: http://bit.ly/One-page-flickr). Also see Google Picasa.

7. Social Networking. Websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace. These community websites link people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. They provide various ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, discussion groups, blogging and more. Bebo and MySpace are similar with an appeal to a younger audience.

Using Ning, Grou.ps or SocialGo you are able to create your own social network, but check as there are charges to use all features and some premium content. 

8. Social Bookmarking. Websites such as Del.icio.us or Digg. These are a way to access bookmarks you save or that others have tagged and saved about a subject that interests you. (More Info: http://bit.ly/One-page-bookmarking)

When content is tagged (which can be with a hashtag in Twitter, or by keywords in other social networking sites) it makes searching and aggregating content so much simpler. (More Info: http://bit.ly/One-page-tagging) Bit.ly is used to shorten long web addresses and also allows you to view how often the link has been clicked.

9. Social Collaboration and Productivity Tools. Software such as Google Docs, Huddle or DropBox enable a dispersed group of people to work collaboratively towards shared aims, sharing a document or presentation and instantly being notified of changes. Toms Planner is useful for planning activities and producing Gantt charts. Mailchimp is a powerful email newsletter and email marketing website which is free for small mailings   

Events and meeting administration are easy to organise using Doodle to plan a time, Eventbrite to manage bookings and handle ticketing and CoverItLive to host live streaming and interaction. Using Jing, screen captures and webcasts can be produced and distributed, a great way to share short screen based video tutorials.

Other applications enable you to share in discussions and meetings on-line (WebEx or Tokbox), hold audio (Skype) or video conferences (ooVoo), share slide presentations (Slideshare) or share printed format documents (Scribd, Issuu or myebook).

10. Wiki. Websites such as Wikispaces or Wetpaint allow users to easily create, edit, and link pages together. Twiki can be used to build collaborative community websites or allow a dispersed group of people to work collaboratively on building documents. Perhaps the most popular example is Wikipedia. (More Info: http://bit.ly/One-page-wiki)