Sharing Your Story – How to Get Free Local Publicity for your Charity
At The Belforte Foundation, we know how hard small charities work to make a difference and how important it is to share your work, your insights and your need for support with the wider local community.
Whether you’re a small grassroots group or an established organisation, getting your story into the local media can help raise awareness, attract volunteers, and inspire donations. And, best of all, it’s free.
Whenever we give a grant, regardless of what it is for, we now always offer to write and release a press release on the charity’s behalf. The good news is that they usually get picked up in the local press for the charity’s area.
But you don’t need to wait for us, so here’s our guide to help you get your charity noticed in the local press.
Top Tips for Getting Your Charity in the Local Media
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Think Local
Local media outlets are always looking for stories with a community or local angle. Journalists want to hear how your charity and its work is helping people and animals in their area. Always highlight your local collection – this can be where your charity operates, where it is run from, where an injured animal was found or where a volunteer or fundraising event took place. It’s easy to find a local angle if you look for it!
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Build Relationships
Take time to get to know your local journalists. Follow them on social media, comment on their work, and keep a list of contacts at newspapers, radio stations, and online platforms. If you do this, when the time comes to share your news, you’ll have a ready-made audience and this will help your press release or photo call cut through the many that these journalists receive each and every day.
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Timing is Key
As a rule of thumb, it is usually better with local media to try to send your story at the start of the week and early in the day. This is because reporters are more likely to pick it up when they’re planning their content. It may not always make a difference but where possible you should aim to do this, and even if it has no effect, at least it will be in their inboxes and off your list early in the week!
Another good tip is to try to tie your story to key dates, national awareness weeks, or relevant news to make it even more newsworthy – e.g. a press release about a rescued rabbit at Easter, or a press release about a rescued owl called Snowy in Winter and so on! Be creative.
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Use Great Photos
A good image can make the difference between your story getting noticed or ignored. Make sure your photos are high quality, well-lit, and feature real people where possible and always the animal if the release relates to an animal.
It is fine to take theses pictures on a high quality, relatively new phone such as an iPhone, but ensure they are quality pictures, well framed and show the subject clearly so it helps you to tell your story and helps the journalist, and ultimately the readers, to understand and connect with it. It is worth remembering though, that typically an animal looking cute or a smiling volunteer or an event in action will be liked by your local media. Local media tend to not like gruesome pictures of an injured animal, they will much prefer the ‘after’ rather than the ‘before’, so bear this in mind also.
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Make It Easy
Just like you, journalists are very busy people so make things easy for them and you will have more success. There’s also a lot less of them than there used to be, so don’t think that you are being ignored, they may just be overwhelmed and not have time to reply to everyone.
With that in mind, make your press release short, clear and complete. Provide contact details, a clear headline, and all the essential facts (who, what, where, when, why, how). See our blog on writing a press release here.
At The Belforte Foundation we love to help small charities – after all, our tagline is ‘helping humans help animals’. So, if you are a small animal charity and you ever need help getting local media you can always contact us for a chat and we’ll be happy to help where we can with tips and advice.