Recently, my attention has been drawn towards the UK's leading anti-bullying charity - Bullying UK - and their attempt to use social networking to raise awareness and support over half a million people a year.
Bullying UK is a web-based charity run by founder and Chief Executive John with the help of Liz and Stuart. They promote their services through their website and by using social networking:
on Facebook - as Facebook.com/BullyingUK
on Twitter - as @BullyingUK
They are reliant totally on public funding and fund raising activities with their running costs at just £50,000 a year. Hang on a minute... that means they are supporting each person for approximately 10p per person. That is amazing!
However, we all know that the recent recession has hit everyone hard and it's not easy to find the spare cash to donate to worthwhile causes such as this. Nor does their budget doesn't stretch to fantastic television campaigns or hiring extra staff to help with local promotion and any monies raised goes to supporting as many people as possible.
Here is what John has to say:
We support 500,000 people a year and need only £50,000 a year to do it. We were founded 11 years ago as a 100% web powered charity where the aim was to help as many people as possible for the lowest cost we can.
I think we proved that a different form of charity one that dosent suck up millions of pounds to help only thousands of people can work. Sadly we have always struggled to bring in donations from the general public and the government refuse to fund any of our work because we have asked tough questions of their policies.
This year what with the financial crisis has really hammered what little money we had coming in, we only have one member of staff (ME) and i just think that given that how efficient we are and how little money we need to do it some people out their must be able to help.
Problem is one person can only knock on so many doors per day and chase down leads never know if it’s the right use of time.
Any donations no matter how small will really help and if theirs a business out their that wants to make a tax efficient donation that would be really good as well.
So what can YOU do to help?
1. You can donate directly by clicking the DONATE button on this widget
2. If you're on Twitter use the hashtag #savebullyinguk in a couple of your tweets to raise awareness
3. Retweet this blog post or share it across the internet using the gadget over there -->
4. Write a blog post of your own (or copy mine) to spread John's message. If just 10 people read this blog post and share it with ten of their friends, and so on, the message is read by thousands of people in a short space of time.
Simple, isn't it?
And finally, if you've ever witnessed bullying or have been a victim of bullying then you'll know that the type of support that John and his team offer is invaluable. Isolation and helplessness can be a thing of the past by using resources and help like this.
If you work in the media and would like to get in touch with John and the team, please tweet them at @BullyingUK
Related Links:
http://social.bullying.co.uk/
http://www.facebook.com/BullyingUK
http://twitter.com/bullyinguk
http://conversational-uk.co.uk/2010/03/18/you-can-help-bullyinguk/