Neighbourly

If you’ve set up a project on neighbourly – great stuff, that makes you a 'project lead' and we’d hug you if we could. If you have a community or charity project that needs help and you haven’t yet set up, head on over and create your free project page today. If you can just spare a bit of time using your social networks to help out good causes in your local area then we call you a ‘follower’ and we welcome you with open arms. People like you make our neighbourly world go round :-)neighbourly is a site that matches up local projects with helpful companies that want to donate time, money or things to good causes. It’s a new idea, but one that everyone we speak to is pretty excited about. We have hundreds of projects on the site, with 29 of these already backed by companies that care.As more companies come on board in the next few months, it’s the projects that are the noisiest and in the best shape that are likely to get noticed first. Everyone can do their bit, project lead or follower, in making this a success. Here’s our top tips for being neighbourly (in the online sense):

• Follow projects, and ask friends to follow. Once you’re connected to a project, just click the share button to post a link to Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Add a note asking friends to come and join you.
• Start the conversation. If you like a project, drop them a note and say hi. If you set the project up, tell people how it’s going each week. With our new notification system, anyone connected to a project will hear right away when there is an update or a new follower.
• Upload photos to bring the project to life. Keep adding these as you go along to make the project real for people who visit the page. This could be the outside of a building that needs painting, a fundraising event or a team selfie – whatever you’ve got!
• Add a profile pic. As with other social networks people like to see real people rather than blank boxes. Next time you login, take a few moments to upload a friendly photo and a few words about yourself. Companies will feel more comfortable offering help to folks that they can see.

Any activity on the page will nudge up the project’s ‘noise meter’ which is what companies will look at first when working out how active you are as a group.Good luck & check out our blog posts below for tear-jerker videos of our most noisy projects.-Jane