Ambassadors Assist in Achieving Share Capital Target

Posted by Ashleigh

October 8, 2009

On Friday 25^th September, Shared Interest staff got together to celebrate the fact that our share capital topped the £26 million mark.

Paul Sharpe, our Supporter Relations Manager, emailed staff from his work trip in Kenya to say, ‘thank you to everyone for your contribution in meeting our target for this year. It is a fantastic achievement to have raised an additional £500k on last year’s performance, particularly during a global recession.’

Paul went on to say that, ‘I would like to extend particular thanks to our unpaid army of volunteers, our ambassadors who work tirelessly on our behalf. If it weren’t for them spreading the word of Shared Interest day in and day out, we would not be able to have the success and therefore impact that we have. Thank you to all of our ambassadors who should feel rightly proud that they have played a big part in helping us achieve this target.’

Some of our ambassador activities this month that have helped us to achieve this target are:

Susan Murphy’s Ambassador Profile in the Sept/Oct edition of Raise Magazine. Patrick Dodd, our Marketing Manager commented that, ‘it’s a fantastic piece and does a great job of promoting the volunteer opportunities at Shared Interest. Thank you so much Susan for all of your support!’

Margaret Vernon gave a talk to a group at the St. Luke’s Mothers Union in York on 14th September, which resulted in several questions and a lively discussion about Shared Interest.

Margaret Newens wrote an article, ‘Trading through the credit crunch’ for the October edition of the Women in Enterprise newsletter. Our PR Manager Stina Dodds was happy to help with this and works regularly with Margaret and other ambassadors on opportunities like this in their local area.

If anyone spots any potential slots in their church updates or community group magazines, feel free to forward your articles to Stina so she can advise on their message.

Stina says: “As I focus on regional and national newspapers and magazines as well as aiming for television and radio coverage, it is really helpful when ambassadors supplement this mainstream media activity with articles in neighbourhood bulletins at a more grassroots level. A big thanks to all of you who send in material and take the time to work so hard on our behalf.”

Christopher Hall passed on my contact details and a brief about Shared Interest to a fair trade contact of his, in relation to holding fair trade events. Keeping Shared Interest in mind and passing on our details to anyone who is holding an event which we could become involved with is a great way of finding new opportunities to promote Shared Interest. Even if you are unable to be involved in the event yourself, it is worth passing on details of the event to me and I can contact ambassadors in the local area to see if they would like to attend.

Thank you to all of you mentioned above and the many others of you who have contributed to our effort this month. I look forward to hearing about what you are involved with next month, as we set our sights on reaching £27million!