Update from Munster meeting – Rochestown Park Hotel, Douglas, Cork on Tuesday 30th June
We had a reasonable turnout of 16 people for our first Munster meeting for families & friends of Jack & Jill on Tuesday 30th June, the objective of which was to share our national 2009 plan for Jack & Jill and to ask the people on the ground how best to localise it and make it work. We’d like to say a big thank you to those who turned up and this update summarises what was discussed that night, so that others can tune in and stay connected too.
The new deal for schools whereby they can swap 300 old mobile phones (in any condition) for a new Promethean interactive whiteboard for the classroom was discussed and explored. (See www.phonesforboards.com for more details.) All agreed that the best way to promote this deal was to talk about it at the school gates and to approach schools in the local area and ask them if and when they were registering for the new campaign. It’s easy and it really makes financial sense for schools and if we get enough schools interested we could raise a huge chunk of our budget through this.
We reminded people that mobile phones continue to be the biggest source of income for Jack & Jill with 250 phones buying home nursing care for a sick child for one month. We are a charity that can demonstrate why charity begins at home and we have a county by county breakdown of the number of families we support and the annual and monthly care bill – which we always push through media interviews. We are hoping that what we’re calling our “Jack & Jill County Champion Programme” will evolve whereby companies in every county in Ireland will step up to support the Jack & Jill families in their community and absorb the home nursing care bill for 6 to 12 months at a time. Any family members who work in companies with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes should let them know about the county by county breakdown from Jack & Jill and get in touch with the office. One or two attendees from the meeting are interested in finding out more about the Champion Programme and we’ll keep you informed about progress.
Goldrush.ie the new fundraising initiative which encourages people to cash in their stash of gold and help Jack & Jill in the process was also discussed. The great selling point about this is that Jack & Jill’s Goldrush.ie offers a really good price for unwanted gold and a donation of 21.5% is built into the price. People are encouraged to check out the rate by logging into www.goldrush.ie We’ve already had a very good response to the initial photocall whereby we painted our patron Eddie Hobbs gold (thank you Eddie) to launch Goldrush.ie and people are already in contact and asking for the special Goldrush bags. We’ve had good success with our publicity programme around Goldrush and the advertising campaign has also commenced.
One of the main ideas to come out of the meeting was the suggestion that Jack & Jill should keep families and friends connected through a simple newsletter to be produced on a quarterly basis. This is a great way of explaining new fundraising initiatives but also to share the experiences of families up and down the country and to really promote that sense of one big family and beating the isolation factor. Our first newsletter will be out in September 2009.
Approaching the medical community, which includes consultants, nurses and social workers, and ensuring that they know about Jack & Jill and the services we provide was presented as a real challenge for 2009. There are mixed messages out there about Jack & Jill with some consultants promoting the Foundation proactively and positively and others just mentioning it as almost an afterthought, if at all. We need to develop a way of influencing this key medical target group as they are the people who introduce Jack & Jill to our families. Publicity in Irish Medical Times is one route and identifying key speaking opportunities for Jonathan Irwin to reach this community is another.
Some of our parents are happy to help with the schools programme and to make presentations about Jack & Jill and our mobile phone fundraising campaign in their local schools. We are assembling a list of interested parents for this exercise and we will have a training session with this group to ensure they have the right material and are confident about talking to the schools in due course. Anybody interested should contact the office and put their name down.
Helping families out with local publicity is something we do from the office and we have developed a PR template to help people organising events to make the most of free local publicity for the event and to build Jack & Jill’s reputation. Check lists, goodie bags etc are something we will be developing over the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, anyone who needs help with their publicity drive should contact the office and we will put you in touch with Carmel Doyle who is our public relations officer.
At Jack & Jill it is the families who can best tell the story of what we do and how that impacts positively on their lives. Therefore over the coming months we are looking for more families to be used as reference points for the local media and this is something we do through the liaison nurses. We are also conducting a research project with Trinity College that will help us to make the economic argument for Jack & Jill by producing the success story behind the organisation in the shape of hard facts and figures, that show how we save the tax payer money.
On a practical note, we recognise that regional meetings should be held on a county by county basis, rather than a whole province, as Cork was simply too far to travel for many families in Munster who we know would like to attend a closer meeting. This is something we have taken on board for the next meeting.
Update from Munster meeting – Rochestown Park Hotel, Douglas, Cork on Tuesday 30th June
We had a reasonable turnout of 16 people for our first Munster meeting for families & friends of Jack & Jill on Tuesday 30th June, the objective of which was to share our national 2009 plan for Jack & Jill and to ask the people on the ground how best to localise it and make it work. We’d like to say a big thank you to those who turned up and this update summarises what was discussed that night, so that others can tune in and stay connected too.
The new deal for schools whereby they can swap 300 old mobile phones (in any condition) for a new Promethean interactive whiteboard for the classroom was discussed and explored. (See www.phonesforboards.com for more details.) All agreed that the best way to promote this deal was to talk about it at the school gates and to approach schools in the local area and ask them if and when they were registering for the new campaign. It’s easy and it really makes financial sense for schools and if we get enough schools interested we could raise a huge chunk of our budget through this.
We reminded people that mobile phones continue to be the biggest source of income for Jack & Jill with 250 phones buying home nursing care for a sick child for one month. We are a charity that can demonstrate why charity begins at home and we have a county by county breakdown of the number of families we support and the annual and monthly care bill – which we always push through media interviews. We are hoping that what we’re calling our “Jack & Jill County Champion Programme” will evolve whereby companies in every county in Ireland will step up to support the Jack & Jill families in their community and absorb the home nursing care bill for 6 to 12 months at a time. Any family members who work in companies with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes should let them know about the county by county breakdown from Jack & Jill and get in touch with the office. One or two attendees from the meeting are interested in finding out more about the Champion Programme and we’ll keep you informed about progress.
Goldrush.ie the new fundraising initiative which encourages people to cash in their stash of gold and help Jack & Jill in the process was also discussed. The great selling point about this is that Jack & Jill’s Goldrush.ie offers a really good price for unwanted gold and a donation of 21.5% is built into the price. People are encouraged to check out the rate by logging into www.goldrush.ie We’ve already had a very good response to the initial photocall whereby we painted our patron Eddie Hobbs gold (thank you Eddie) to launch Goldrush.ie and people are already in contact and asking for the special Goldrush bags. We’ve had good success with our publicity programme around Goldrush and the advertising campaign has also commenced.
One of the main ideas to come out of the meeting was the suggestion that Jack & Jill should keep families and friends connected through a simple newsletter to be produced on a quarterly basis. This is a great way of explaining new fundraising initiatives but also to share the experiences of families up and down the country and to really promote that sense of one big family and beating the isolation factor. Our first newsletter will be out in September 2009.
Approaching the medical community, which includes consultants, nurses and social workers, and ensuring that they know about Jack & Jill and the services we provide was presented as a real challenge for 2009. There are mixed messages out there about Jack & Jill with some consultants promoting the Foundation proactively and positively and others just mentioning it as almost an afterthought, if at all. We need to develop a way of influencing this key medical target group as they are the people who introduce Jack & Jill to our families. Publicity in Irish Medical Times is one route and identifying key speaking opportunities for Jonathan Irwin to reach this community is another.
Some of our parents are happy to help with the schools programme and to make presentations about Jack & Jill and our mobile phone fundraising campaign in their local schools. We are assembling a list of interested parents for this exercise and we will have a training session with this group to ensure they have the right material and are confident about talking to the schools in due course. Anybody interested should contact the office and put their name down.
Helping families out with local publicity is something we do from the office and we have developed a PR template to help people organising events to make the most of free local publicity for the event and to build Jack & Jill’s reputation. Check lists, goodie bags etc are something we will be developing over the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, anyone who needs help with their publicity drive should contact the office and we will put you in touch with Carmel Doyle who is our public relations officer.
At Jack & Jill it is the families who can best tell the story of what we do and how that impacts positively on their lives. Therefore over the coming months we are looking for more families to be used as reference points for the local media and this is something we do through the liaison nurses. We are also conducting a research project with Trinity College that will help us to make the economic argument for Jack & Jill by producing the success story behind the organisation in the shape of hard facts and figures, that show how we save the tax payer money.
On a practical note, we recognise that regional meetings should be held on a county by county basis, rather than a whole province, as Cork was simply too far to travel for many families in Munster who we know would like to attend a closer meeting. This is something we have taken on board for the next meeting.
