Greenbrook

So this is Christmas

Christian Laugesen — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:49:00 +0000

Even though I have moved to Sheffield and now live one whole hour away from my Danish contacts, we still use the same calendar here and it says: “Christmas!”

Therefore I am now giving away 20 gift cards for Kiva’s microloans!

The first 20 who sends me their name and email through the form below will receive a Kiva gift card with $ 25 on it. It is completely up to you if you want to withdraw the money after the loan has been paid back or be a part of Kiva and reloan it. It is up to you, but you know what I would have done ;o)

Merry Christmas!

Oh sorry! I am out of gifts!

But thank you for being nice this year!

Read more about Kiva, microloan og gift cards here.

Communitas 2.0 – a free community resource for gathering encouragements

Christian Laugesen — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 03:48:54 +0000

Have you ever been in need of a way to encourage your many volunteers or just adding the memorable feature to your conference? If so, you should have a look at “Communitas”, a free resource from Greenbrook built as a WordPress theme.

The principle behind is very simple. Install Communitas, add your contacts and invite them to click in and encourage each other. After a few weeks the outcome will be a vast amount of personal encouragements, ready to print and deliver to each person. Think of it as a collective gift, given to each and every person.

To add your contacts to Communitas you could download your networks profile pictures from Facebook or Twitter, or just take some new pictures with your smartphone and upload directly to the site through the WordPress app. It is very simple ;o)

The newly updated version of Communitas is improven in both design and functionality, as you can see in the images and the demo below. One of the main features is the responsive design, making it possible to use Communitas from desktops, tablet and smartphones.

You can read about the previous version of Communitas here.

Take a closer look

Smartphone

Tablet

Desktop

Take an even closer look ;o)

Add a very simple booking form to your website!

Christian Laugesen — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 02:58:54 +0000

One of the needs I am most often asked to solve – when producing new websites for unions, churches and volunteer organizations – is the possibility of adding a simple booking form, e.g. to the post about the upcoming event.

If you would like several different booking forms, I will recommend using the forms in Google Docs (see video) since it is very simple built and applied to your website!

If you in contrast only need one kind of booking form for one or several pages, the Google Docs solution is too much work. Instead you should go for the “Response” plugin, recently built by Greenbrook. Response will automatically add a form to your Page or Post, if you have added a receiving email-address to the given Page or Post. And that is all there is to it! Below I have displayed a demo of what it could look like (in Danish though).

Download “Response”

Build a mobile resource or online handbook for your organisation

Christian Laugesen — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:12:21 +0000

The emergence of small nicely fitted mobile websites and smartphone applications have compressed the entire internet’s vast amount of data down into pocket size, so it is available anywhere and any time. All you need is a smartphone and 3G network. And with the growing attention to tablets in mind it is clear that mobile content are here to stay.

As with many other things businesses are the first to move and exploit the new market, leaving volunteer organisations, charities and unions behind trying to figure out how they can join the game.
Well, here is my suggestion.

The online handbook

Besides designing your own application, the classical approach is to create a mobile friendly version of your existing website. And it is definitely not a bad solution, but before we simply copy what businesses are doing we should figure out what our particular community needs “here and now” with the portable device in hand. And maybe the solution is far easier, way cheaper and much more on the spot.

With the portable device in mind, ask yourself if your community really needs the heavy graphics, the complete menu structure and the entire article archive, more than a fast and simple overview of the latest news, contact details, links to social media and a shortcode to Google Maps that brings your visitor to you as fast as possible?

If you prefer the latter the solution is right here. The title is “Spokesman” and it is a free theme for WordPress. You can download it from here and install it on your own installation of WordPress.

Take a closer look at “Spokesman”

Because there is several ways of using the internet and communicating with ones community, Spokesman can be used in three different ways. In short it can work as an independent online handbook containing the relevant materials, basic information and links to here and there. So next year instead of printing your handbook, use Spokesman and share the link in your circles.

Spokesman can also be used as a mobile friendly version of your existing website, either by displaying the full content of your website or by showing some basic information such as a short introduction to your work and contact details.

If you want to test Spokesman feel free to visit spokesman.greenbrook.dk and minimize your browser, or you can visit greenbrook.dk from your smartphone or tablet.
Alternatively you can go through these screenshots:

Homepage

Blogpost

Widget

Video

Image

RSS feed

The installation of Spokesman is very simple and only requires an installation of WordPress to get started. When activated, you will find an introduction in the dashboard of WordPress.

Download “Spokesman” for free

If you decide to use “Spokesman” I would like to hear what you think! Or if you would like me to install this or something similar for you, you are welcome to contact me as well.

Give your team a private forum for cooperation and knowledge capture

Christian Laugesen — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:41:26 +0000

Greenbrook has just released a new free resource, and as always, it is especially designed for charities, churches, social businesses and volunteer initiatives.

The resource is a WordPress theme called “Square” and turns WordPress into a tool for cooperation, just like the prior theme from Greenbrook (“Communitas“).

Square is built to give groups, teams and leaders a private and secure, but still easy accessible forum for discussion and knowledge capture. Therefore everything is hidden for non-members, but when logged in, you can use Square from both your computer and smartphone (iPhone and Android).

The theme is a so called ‘Child Theme’, meaning a modification, of the well known and well used theme “P2“. You can get an introduction to P2 below and read more about it here. You could say that P2 offers open and easy discussion, and Square makes sure it is only your invited members who have access.

Screenshots

Share thoughts... also from your smartphone

Use Dropbox as your online archive

The lock secures your discussions

(Click for a larger view)

About Square

Square is locked so only your invited members will have access to the content and the discussions on Square. Every member must be given a specific 15 digit invitation code, which only can be used once and will expire after 30 days if not used. This secures Square against unwanted members, but should someone manage to steal an invitation code, it is very easy to expel the penetrator, since the webmaster will be notified about any new member on Square.

The conversation and knowledge capture happens through your members’ contribution by commenting and sharing status updates, blogposts and links. It is optional if members should be able to post new content for themselves or only be able to comment on the existing content published by the administrators or editors.
The content is easily indexed through tags so it is easy to separate the different subjects, and every new tag creates an independent RSS-feed so you can export the specific content to an external system.

Are you ready to use Square in your team?

If you decide to use “Square” I would like to hear what you think about it, and same goes if you want me to set this up for you. Just write me at christian@greenbrook.dk.
Cheers!

The Dropbox Plugin for WordPress

Christian Laugesen — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 02:06:31 +0000

Have you ever struggled with odd FTP-servers when just wanting to share a few documents on your website?
Well, this is no more with the Dropbox Plugin for WordPress!

With this free plugin you can connect your Dropbox account with your WordPress installation and thanks to this small, but effective, friendship, you can automatically display the present content of your Dropbox.
You can either give access to the entire account or well chosen subfolders, so why not forget about accessing your FTP-server, when you can share your documents by just saving them in Dropbox?

Demo of the Greenbrook Docs

Greenbrook Docs -


Business	0 bytes	Oct. 2011
Church	0 bytes	Oct. 2011
Leadership	0 bytes	Oct. 2011
Miscellaneous	0 bytes	Oct. 2011
SocEnt	0 bytes	Oct. 2011
Web	0 bytes	Oct. 2011
WordPress	0 bytes	Oct. 2011

ropbox Plug

Keep track on your donations and cash flow with the Donor Database

Christian Laugesen — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 02:08:35 +0000

As you may have realised, every good initiative can be killed by the wrong financial management and especially when working in areas that rely heavily on volunteer donations and support problems in liquidity always hurt! Therefore I have developed the Donor Database as an attempt to help the first few steps in the financial management in new social projects, charities, churches, unions and other good initiatives.

The Donor Database is in short a bundle of financial tools that will help you register donations, manage the cash flow and estimate your future liquidity. To make it easy to use, I have built it entirely in Excel with a few simple functions. So basically, if you understand spreadsheets, then you will be able to work with the Donor Database! This presentation shows you how to get started.

The Donor Database from Greenbrook is released under a Non-Commercial Creative Commons Licence which means that it is free and can be copied, developed even further and distributed, as long as the same licence is applied.

Have a look at it, try it, use it… and please share!

Download the Donor Database

– and please let me hear what you think!

About the Donor Database

The Donor Database was developed in 2008 by ”Københavns Frimenighed” (a Danish church), RO Regnskab (a recommended accountant) and Greenbrook (a soon-to-be social entrepreneur).

Crowdsource encouragements within your community with this free WordPress Theme

Christian Laugesen — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 08:00:54 +0000

Communitas - a WordPress theme

Now presenting the very first free WordPress theme from Greenbrook!! Oh well, actually it’s not entirely made by Greenbrook, but a mere modification of “PHOTO-BIYORI” built by Japanese Tomoko Matsubayashi. The original theme is free, very minimalistic, user-friendly and ideal for running a photoblog… so if that’s you, you should really go and have a look at his theme!

My modification of PHOTO-BIYORI has turned the theme into a tool for crowdsourcing encouragements in your community. The reason being that Greenbrook is not focused on developing webdesign, but (web)tools that lifts and strengthens the social equilibrium either in your club, church, company or neighbourhood…

The actual reason for modifying the original theme was that I needed some sort of social crowdsourcing tool that would make it possible for the community around my church to encourage one another personally. Therefore I customized the original theme to fit our needs and the results were great!

In just one month the website gathered more than 400 personal encouragements, and some of them were very long ;o) Afterwards we printed all the different encouragements and gave them, as collective gifts, to each of the encouraged persons. Of course, everybody was thrilled and here’s how you can do it too!

Here’s how!

The first step is to find and download all the participants’ profile pictures from social websites (like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace). Next step is to upload them locally on this website and just add their first name. It takes a little while, but the outcome is definitely worth it! When you’re done it’s time to invite your community and let them encourage one another. After a certain date you should close the website and find a way to give the encouragements to each person… Be creative ;o)

Maybe it’s a good idea to have one person read through all the encouragements just to make sure it’s only positive things that is shared. You should also make it very clear to your community, that they now have their picture on this website and that it can be removed if they want it! Likewise people should be welcomed to share their picture if they are not on the encouragement list.

Try it yourself!

The truth about youth

Christian Laugesen — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 17:31:57 +0000

Did you know that authenticity are the most motivational factor for youth in term of both volunteering and consumption?

It is not that much the slick first impression as the commitment to a cause. This is a least some of the things McCann Worldgroup points out in this essay:

The challenge of Powerpoint

Christian Laugesen — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 09:00:56 +0000

If you are a teacher or speaker I encourage you to see this slide: You Suck At Powerpoint!. It says that 25% of you guys does not spend more than two hours on your Powerpoint presentation even though it is said that 86% of your carrier depends on clear communication.

See it and share it with someone you know that might need it ;o)