PR Volunteer Lands Help From Home in Daily Mail

 

Support from PR expert Jan Schapira has enabled at least 10,000 potential new participants to find the microvolunteering website Help From Home.

Help From Home was the first microvolunteering site to launch in the UK and they have an impressive array of quick, easy and low commitment volunteering opportunities, everything from mapping wild fruit trees in your area to writing letters to prisoners.

In May 2012 they reached out to the Pimp My Cause community to find help in getting media coverage and have been astounded by the results. Mike Bright, Founder of Help From Home, posted a help wanted ad asking for PR support and was quickly contacted by experienced communications specialist Jan Schapira.

In Sept Jan achieved recognition for Help From Home as the Daily Mail You mag website of the week. Here is their entry:

Website of the week helpfromhome.org
Micro-volunteering is a genius idea for time-poor people of all ages who want to do something charitable. The award-winning site Help From Home offers links to over 800 different micro-volunteering activities, which take under half an hour and you can do from your own home, when you want, with no specialised skills required. You could, for instance, send a message to a sick child, be an English ‘tutor’ by chatting on Skype, help to beat bullying or send a pre-written email for Human Rights Watch.

Typically modest, Jan has been reluctant to be acknowledged for her contribution to Help From Home because she feels that she still has work to do and more she would like to accomplish for them, but from Mike's prospective her support has already been enormously helpful. Mike said, "she is a great professional to have on your side, she goes beyond her brief to achieve results."

In the last six months Jan has had several articles about Help From Home published in local newspapers. And she is currently chasing up interest from the Guardian for an article on microvolunteering.

Help From Home has also been receiving valuable marketing advice from sustainability marketing consultant Ceri Putman. Ceri got in touch shortly after joining Pimp My Cause and she has been providing useful advice about using social media effectively. Mike and his team have already implemented much of her advice and are experiencing a significant increase in web traffic. "Small but important tweaks in our social media engagement have led to big changes in our site traffic," Mike shared. "Ceri has also provided advice on making inroads into the CSR world, as well as what initial steps to take to set up and promote a Global Microvolunteering Day."

Mike and the Help From Home team look forward to continuing to work with and learn from Jan and Ceri and feel that their contributions are making a big difference to their organsation.

If other marketers are interested in supporting Help From Home they are looking for help with setting up a global microvolunteering day, developing a ‘skills 4 you’ project to enable people to gain skills from micro-actions, and web development support is always appreciated.