I recently wrote about NCVO’s Constructive Voices project, which is aimed at ensuring the positive impact of charities is publicly heard and harnessed for the benefit of society.
Constructive Voices has now gone live – you can find out more about how it can help you and how to get involved.
The project will be using various means to amplify the voices of organisations and individuals who are contributing positive solutions to the pressing issues facing us today.
- There’s a new twitter account – @ConstructiveVox – to alert followers to breaking news which they can piggy back on and to enable charities, social enterprises and others to flag up their own constructive solutions.
- We’re compiling our own databank of case studies in specific key areas so we can quickly and easily link up with relevant journalists.
- We’re collaborating with CharityComms.
Collaboration in the sector
CharityComms currently offers a useful service called AskCharity for journalists searching for a comment, case study or someone to interview. Reporters can search for charities operating in a particular area and can also issue very specific requests that are emailed directly to relevant charities.
This can be anything from ‘I’m working on a national TV breakfast show and am looking for a strong human interest story’ to ‘I need to speak to a man in his 20s who’s suffered domestic abuse’ or ‘I want to interview a woman who’s carried a baby for her daughter’.
Charities who have registered as working in a particular area then receive these requests, which they can respond to – or ignore.
Now we want to take things a step further and are collaborating with CharityComms so that the positive work of more charities reaches more journalists.
Constructive Voices will be working to get more charities and more journalists to sign up to AskCharity. We will encourage journalists to use AskCharity as a way of finding and integrating a constructive twist into their reporting as part of our remit to promote constructive journalism, a more solutions-focused approach to news coverage. And we will encourage charities to use it to showcase the positive impact they’re having.
Charities are a brilliant, often untapped, resource of ready-made solutions to problems being highlighted by journalists.
Constructive Voices will also use AskCharity to alert charities to breaking news so they can react quickly to stories relevant to the area in which they operate.
Find out more and sign up if you’d like help getting your story heard.
Giselle is in charge of 'Constructive Voices', an NCVO project aimed at ensuring the positive impact of charities and social enterprises is heard and encouraging a more constructive, solutions-based approach to news coverage in general. Giselle is a former BBC News producer on The World at One and PM. 
