Breast Cancer Care in Facebook-style website revamp

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 2 Jul 2008

Breast Cancer Care is to relaunch its website with social networking functionality at its core.

The revitalised website is the result of consultation with the charity’s service users and the product of six months development.

Speaking at a round-table on the charity sector and digital media in London on Tuesday, Breast Cancer Care head of new media Bertie Bosredon said the charity had been surprised to hear its supporters and beneficiaries calling for social networking functionality.

According to research just out from Datamonitor, the UK has the highest rate of online social networking in Europe and is predicted to grow to 27 million users by 2012. However, given that the target audience for Breast Cancer Care is women in their fifties and beyond, requests for the ability to create profiles, tags and to ‘poke’ one another were entirely unexpected – but heeded.

“The users surveyed wanted tools to tell their stories,” said Bosredon. “There is great opportunity within the charity sector to give a voice to users; to stop just giving information to users and start listening to what they want.”

‘Move on from e-commerce’

Bosredon said that charities needed to move on from “e-commerce mode” and start “using the web to deliver their mission statement”. This, for Breast Cancer Care, will include making forums a central part of the new website and integrating fundraising, campaigning and information services into one cohesive site.

Bosredon said he hesitated to refer to his new vision for the site as “communist”, but added: “We used to be a monarchy and now we are a democracy.”

Thanks to the recent addition of functionality such as forums and podcasts, the site has already experienced remarkable growth, reporting a monthly increase of 4,000 posts on forums this year.

Bosredon said the change has been possible due to the eagerness of the charity's management to see new media as integral to the future of their work. “The [digital] revolution is happening in charities that are empowered to innovate,” he said.

Who's Who: Celina Ribeiro

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