My plan is to use humour, self-deprecation, observational juxtaposition, stereotypes (responsibly) and mix them up with facts and truth to create this beautiful, delectable word soup that would make you smile, hopefully.
This is me writing the first post for the Doing What Really Matters Blog – a long time coming, but better late than never. The task of representing an organisation is a big one – you may decide based on this one impression that you never want to hear of us. Or this very post may invite you into the wonderfully broken world of the prison estate, the ‘system’ that doesn’t work, the processes that are frustrating, the unwritten rules and pseudo-political climate that runs this world; and make you want to contribute to solving one of the many problems for humans who simultaneously are trapped behind bars and find themselves confined behind them.
As the new Finance and Development Lead in a small (growing) not-for-profit (please sir, may we have some more, funding?) social enterprise (who defines society, though?) enterprise (are all corporates doomed to become evil?), I get to wear many hats. One of those hats is the hat of a greedy social media technologist who wants the views, the clicks, the tweets, the buzz and all the dopamine that apparently gets generated when someone says something nice about your work on a digital platform that you cannot touch, cannot feel in the physical realm and treat as more real than tangible reality itself!
Born in the dinosaur era of 90s in India where the 80s of the “western world” didn’t reach us till the late 90s, I find myself coming up to speed with the innovations in search, metrics, analytics, impressions and thanks to sage advice from Nate Sheridan at Citizen Click, I was reminded that content is still king, queen and most of the kingdom. Ipso Facto thereforeto, blog and newsletter (coming soon!) before we take to the TikTok and them Instagram* Reels.
On here we will give voice to frustrations, anonymously if we must, of those working in the sector. You can expect to hear from that really senior officer in Probation Services. Or that infamous Prison Governor. Or that really good charity that had that success story. Or a newbie into the sector daring to tell you what they think is broken in this sector. Or anyone who wants to contribute constructively to the discussion, even if it means starting the very discussion.
I am hoping there are at least as many solutions as problems discussed.
And I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t do some ‘sales and marketing’ of what’s new. We have just completed a rebrand – which is much more than obsessing about hex codes for colours and deciding just the right font. It is also more involved than agreeing upon the subset of the Queen’s English we all agree to speak and more than a list of values and ethos and objectives. All of those are ancillary activities that go along with taking stock of where we are, if we can still justify being who we said we were going to be, understand who we have become and agree where we are going so we can continue doing what really, really matters.
This means that you will see the new logo, the new website, this blog, a newsletter, refreshed language to express who we have become after 3 years. This also means that we get to be nostalgic about our current logo, which we hold dear even if we ourselves can see how that looks a bit like a school project. It is a reminder to us of a simpler time, when we were sure of the idea and how we can make a difference but didn’t know if we will get the access, opportunity and support to.
That’s all for now. I am keen to hear what your experience of DWRM has been, what you think of rebranding organisations in general – do you think they are all ‘fur coat and no knickers’, do you think they are worth the hassle and the resources spent on it? In your experience, when has a re-brand gone right and when has it gone horribly wrong?
I hope you provide us with the privilege to read your thoughts.
Until next time,
Anurag Gulati