I’ve just finished the Revive Your Inbox programme from Baydin, “a 21 Day course to help you restore email sanity”.

“Invest 20 minutes a day for 21 days. Revive Your Inbox is designed to reduce the amount of email you receive and learn to deal better with the ones that matter.”

I’ve always been quite good at managing email – one thing a good PR person needs to be great at, which is doubly true now I’m freelance and don’t have colleagues to chase me when I haven’t answered a message or just a quick nudge to say “can you get back to the client on that?”

Lots of the tips, tricks and process I already have as part of my daily routine, but there were plenty of useful tips and exercises that I’ve learnt and am now sticking to as well. Even just doing the first 4 or 5 days will make a big difference to your inbox.

You can sign up to Revive Your Inbox here or below is the complete list of courses if you feel like picking and choosing ones that sound best for you.

Give it a try – it might just make you believe in email again!

• Day 1: Turn off Email Notifications
• Day 2: Unsubscribe from Junk Email
• Day 3: Learn How to Search for Email
• Day 4: Inbox Philosophy
• Day 5: Cleaning up a messy inbox
• Day 6: Deferring a message for later
• Day 7: Delete It
• Day 8: Five Sentence Emails
• Day 9: The Ultimate Email Workflow
• Day 10: Timers and Feedback make Email Clients better
• Day 11: Dealing with difficult email
• Day 12: How to use templates to automate email
• Day 13: Advanced Email Etiquette
• Day 14: Schedule Emails to Be Sent Later
• Day 15: Habit Reinforcement Day
• Day 16: How to Mute an Email Thread
• Day 17: Folders and Labels Revisited
• Day 18: Filters and Rules
• Day 19 – Keyboard Shortcuts
• Day 20 – Productivity Boosting Add-ons
• Day 21 – Sticking with the Program

The Holstee Manifesto is a call to action to live a life full of intention, creativity, passion, and community.

The LifeCycle Film came about as a desire to bring the energy and passion behind the Manifesto to life through something we love biking. As we seek to live mindful lifestyles that leave a positive impact on the people and world around us, biking has become a passion that is much more than a transportation alternative. It is a way of fully experiencing the city we love and all of its details.

This Film is a celebration. It is a celebration of gatherings, of diversity, of life, and of the beauty of shared experience. We hope you enjoy.

holstee.com/manifesto

Below is a constantly updated list of the social media and social commerce trends and predictions for 2012 that are worth reading.

If you have one to add then drop me an email or leave a comment below.

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David Armanao, Harvard Business Review: Six Social Media Trends for 2012

BazaarVoice: Social Commerce Trends Report Europe 2012

Econsultancy: 2012: The trends every marketer should be aware of

Trendwatching.com’s 12 Consumer Trends for 2012

JWT 10 Trends for 2012

Social Media Today: 2012 Trends and Predictions from Blake Cahill, President of Banyan Branch

Social Media Today: Social Media Intelligence Trends for 2012

eMarketer: 2012 Trends: Social Media Metrics Take Center Stage

33 Digital: 10 Driving Forces of Digital Marketing 2012

Contagious Magazine: Digital Predictions for 2012

Quora: What will be the top 5 trends in social media for 2012?

Quora: What are the top B2B marketing trends for 2012?

Instagram, the mobile photo sharing community, are doing a great job of showcasing how different charities are using the platform to engage with a new community of users, all through sharing photos.

They list 3 examples in their post on Nonprofit organizations using Instagram: Robin Hood NYC, Oceana and Charity: Water.

Here’s the tactics being used by those 3 charities to tell their stories:

• Use Instagram to live stream fan photos from a fundraising event
• Develop a custom photo visualization using Instagram’s API.
• Encouraging Instagrammers to share their photos of engaging with your cause ocean.
• Hashtag photos appropriately to get them included among the other relevant photos already on Instagram
• shares photos from the field to show the impact of your work
• Take snapshots from around the office to show what the team is working on

Know any other charities using Instagram in innovative ways? You can send an email to contact@instagr.am and might even get featured by them!

I’ve recently been working on a funding application for Bright One and Bright Works to Nesta’s Innovation in Giving fund, which aims to invest in, support and grow innovative ideas that bring about a step-change in levels of giving and exchange and which have a credible route to being self-sustaining in the longer term.

Part of the application required a 2-3 minute video outlining your idea, how it meets the fund’s criteria and why it is innovative in the giving and exchange of time, money, skills and resources.

The great thing about this part of the application is that you’re able to see all of the other applicant’s videos up on Vimeo by following the Innovation in Giving fund tag. Not only do you get an insight into how other organisations are solving the challenges set out by the fund, but also it’s an inspirational overview of philanthropic innovation across the UK.

So it’s daunting being in the running for a fund against some of the most innovative ideas I’ve seen for a while, but also encouraging to see that others care as much about the challenges that we face as a society as we do and view how they are tackling them.

I’ve spent a bit of time looking through some of the videos and here are some of my favourites:

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Simpl:Local
Simpl:Local, derived from Simpl – the social innovation marketplace – will allow councils to personalise the Simpl platform to their own needs,creating a space where they can offer and exchange public sector resources, call for ideas to solve local issues, and run innovation fund challenges. We’ve uploaded Bright Works to Simpl and have made some great connections from it. Would be interesting to see how the concept can develop further, especially as Dominic Campbell and the FutureGov team recently secured funding for their Patchwork service.

The DoNation
One of Bright One’s clients, Hermione and her team at The DoNation have hit upon a great concept and have the passion and determination to make it happen. The first version of their platform is nice, so it will be good to see them develop.

Wowsociety
I’ve had the privilege of working with Wahome on a separate project and he’s let me know about him and his business parter Ben’s plans for Wowsociety. It’s an ambitious project and if executed well could change the face of how we share offers and get help for our needs.

Do a Bit App
Andy’s pitch sets out a problem that we at Bright One experience. Namely, managing volunteers. I agree it can be frustrating for people who are willing to give their time and expertise not to have that need reciprocated due to the seemingly slow response from the organisations they’re trying to help. While some of this is down to lack of capacity and resources, a technical solution would really help. I look forward to talking about Do a Bit with Andy and seeing if Bright One could use it.

Spots of Time
Another Bright One client, I love the passion and enthusiasm that Anna puts into her pitch. It’s been a pleasure to work with her to get Spots of Time more awareness and I’m sure that there’ll be hundreds of organisations across the UK who will really value the support of her project. Also great to get a sneak preview of the new platform!

Givey
David has a solution that, while not original, has been executed well in the first version of Givey, his mobile giving app. David is also a great entrepreneur, reaching out to people and projects he finds interesting. I’ve been in touch with him about what we’re up to with Bright Works, so we may well find something to collaborate on in the future.

Bright Works

And in case it’s of interest, here is our video application for Bright Works, the micro-volunteering app for charity projects that lets volunteers create tasks, allows others to claim them and helps track the community’s progress:

Bright One

And the video for Bright One, the volunteer-run communications agency for the third sector that I run:

You can take a look through the Innovation in Giving Fund videos over on Vimeo. which ones do you like the look of?

From The Daily Telegraph:

“Only a third of people took part in civic events such as a demonstration or petition, or contacting a local politician – also the lowest for a decade. The declining public involvement is a set back for the Prime Minister who won power on a campaign for give people more say in how their communities are run. However, the survey, published by the Department for Communities and Local Government, found cohesion and the fear of crime is improving in towns and cities.”

The Telegraph believes that the biggest disincentive to volunteering – setting aside the personal stresses and strains caused by the economic downturn – has been the increasingly onerous regulatory impositions on those who wish to give of their time.

So do we have more time but not enough money to volunteer? Or do we have less time as we try and counter the personal strains of the economic downturn?

Nice innovation by Citizens Advice as they add 40 tips to locations around the country (mostly London) to Foursquare – the location based social network – to tell people the often hidden, human stories behind their foursquare ‘check-ins’.

From their press release:

“Each year the Citizens Advice service advises over 2.2 million people with 7 million problems, working from over 3,500 community locations across England and Wales. It uses the insight and evidence gathered to campaign for better policies and services. Now, for the first time, Citizens Advice will use a foursquare brand page (foursquare.com/citizensadvice) to match this local knowledge with the places members of the public ’check-in’ at. 

In an attempt to help the people who usually just pass through the cities they’re visiting, the campaign will begin over the next few weeks with tips and insight into the three political party conference host cities and London. Along with 20 tips across London, this weekend’s Liberal Democrat Party Conference in Birmingham will see tips added to city centre locations to help delegates explore the human stories behind the city. Similar insights will be added for the Labour and Conservative party conferences in Liverpool and Manchester over the next few weeks.”

You can check out the Citizens Advice Foursquare page at foursquare.com/citizensadvice.

The NSPCC wants to do something about this and have produced this infographic to help illustrate the problem.

You can find out more about NSPCC’s campaign over on their campaign website or by following the #RebuildingChildhoods hashtag on Twitter.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz, the social innovation lead at Twitter, has just written a guest post on Social Edge looking at real life stories of individuals and organisations using Twitter to make a difference in the world around them and for fundraising.

In her efforts to explain her TWEET model for success on Twitter, Claire wanted to address the main concerns non-profits and social enterprises have, especially around fundraising: How it works, why it works, and when it doesn’t on Twitter:

“The real ROI of fundraising on Twitter is the relationships. Again and again, I found in my research that the success of fundraising on Twitter highlights what we more or less have always known: In life (and on social networks) it’s all about the relationships we cultivate.”

It’s a good introductory read to the wider concepts that her new book explores. You can read the whole article on Social Edge, follow @ClaireD or download the first chapter of  her book Twitter for Good for free.

The tips are geared towards charity sites, as most of the come from the experience of launching Bright Works, but they can be equally applied to launching any website.

Would love to hear what you think, your own experiences of what works well / what doesn’t work so well, as well as any other tips and trick, so check out the post on askCharity.