Latest News
|
|
New! Wisdom Trust Weekly Open Evenings. The Wisdom Trust invites you to a series of open evenings at our new HQ in central London. Come along and join us to see how you can make a huge difference to charities, all over the world. These open evenings will take place every Tuesday evening, starting on Tuesday November 11th 2008. The Wisdom Trust open evenings provide a perfect opportunity for people of all age groups, backgrounds and experience to come along and discover how, as a member of The Wisdom Trust volunteer team, they can make a huge difference both in their local community and all over the world as well. Whatever your particular skills and experience, whether in PR, Marketing, Website-Design or Finance; Commerce, Law, Education or Environment; Health, Event-Management, Proofreading or Copywriting, we need your expertise now to help ensure the success of our incredible range of campaigns all around the world. In addition, anyone who represents a particular charity or good cause will find it useful to attend one of our open evenings, where they'll discover that not only can we help promote their issues and campaigns on a global platform, via our website, but we'll also assist in creating a new income opportunity - from their existing support base - but without the need for anyone to put their hands in their pockets any more than they do already. Over 550 charities and good causes are already listed on our website, including: NSPCC, Penny Brohn Cancer Care, UNHCR, ZoomIn Photography, Loughborough Students Rag Fund, Christian Aid, Kent Air Ambulance Trust, WWF, Footprint Trust, Wallington County Grammar School, Muslim Aid, UNICEF, Friends of The Earth, Camden City and Islington District Scouts, St Michael's Church Croydon, Shelter, War On Want, Cats Protection League, Diabetes UK, RSPB and Younger Generation Theatre Group. 70% of all our income is set aside for donations to support the work of other organisations, be they charities, schools, churches, community projects or local sports clubs. Provided your organisation's business model is not-for-profit, we can help you boost your fundraising potential today. So do come along, have a cup of tea and talk to our team about how we can help your organisation better engage your support base and the key stakeholders within your organisation or the local community, by showing them how, with minimal effort, they can make a difference. But we also offer help for individuals as well, through a range of special grants. Our Eco-Grants help cover the cost of things like solar panels or wind turbines to reduce their personal carbon footprint, whilst our Education-Grants are aimed at helping students offset the costs of their higher education. And for our all our volunteers, we also offer a free carbon-offsetting program and free enrolment for an NVQ in a subject of their choice. The open evenings are quite informal events, with doors opening at 6pm and the evening will finish at 8pm. The address of the new training centre and the venue for our new weekly open evenings is 256 Edgware Road (3rd Floor), London W2 1DS. It’s just 30 seconds walk from Edgware Road tube station (Circle, District or Hammersmith/City lines entrance). Map: Click here Please click here to confirm your attendance at either of the next two open evenings. Thanks. [Return To Top] |
|
Wisdom Trust Volunteers Qualify For Free NVQ. Another great benefit for The Wisdom Trust through our partnership with BOLTA and The Arabic Centre For Career Development is that we can also take advantage of their own range of training courses for our volunteers. Quite simply, any of our volunteers - registered friends of The Wisdom Trust - who achieve a given level of activity as a volunteer, will become eligible for a free online NVQ course, in a subject of their choosing. As you can imagine, this is an incredible opportunity for all our volunteers. By volunteering for The Wisdom Trust (even those who do most of their volunteering online from home on their own computer) and thereby helping to make a difference to the big global issues of poverty, environment and health, any of our volunteers can qualify for a course which will be both interesting and beneficial to the individual who takes it, because it will be another positive item to add to their CV. Courses will almost always be e-learning, meaning that they can be done at home, in your own time. For more information about this, please contact us by telephone or email. [Return To Top] |
|
New Central London HQ. Our friends at The British Online Training Academy (BOLTA) and The Arabic Centre for Career Development, have generously offered use of their newly-opened training and conference centre in Edgware Road, as a new central London HQ for The Wisdom Trust. From now on, this will be our base in central London and will serve as a meeting place for our focus groups and for our new weekly open evenings. The centre offers a small conference room for meetings, an office where some of our volunteers will be able to come and work at various time throughout the week, and a training room for larger meetings, presentations and training sessions. And all this is provided with a friendly cup of tea or coffee for all the visitors to The Wisdom Trust. So if you're based in central London or can get into the city centre easily why not come and visit us at our new base and find out more about how you can get involved with The Wisdom Trust and be a part of all our exciting campaigns for the future. We'll be in the office at various times during the week, usually between 11am and 6pm, Monday to Friday, and you can contact us on 07703 583545, or just ring our normal office number, 01883 341199, and you'll be transferred through to the new office. In particular, if you'd like to help us as a member of our editorial focus group,or as part of our fundraising, commercial, website or marketing teams, you'd be very welcome to come and work at our new office for a couple of hours each week. We hope to put together a rota of people who pop in and do their bit at different times of the week, so if you'd like to be considered for inclusion on the rota, let us know what days and times you'd be available. The address of the new training centre is 256 Edgware Road (3rd Floor), London W2 1DS. It's just 30 seconds walk from Edgware Road tube station (Circle, District or Hammersmith/City lines entrance). [Return To Top] |
|
Wisdom Trust - Annual General Meeting. The Wisdom Trust Annual General Meeting for 2008 will take place on Wednesday November 19th, at 8:30pm, at our Caterham office in south London. Everyone is welcome to attend and light refreshments will be provided. The address is: 5 Livingstone Road, Caterham, Surrey CR3 5TJ. Nearest train: Purley, then bus number 466 (from immediately outside Tesco front entrance and take it to the very last stop). [Return To Top] |
|
Latest Charities To Join The Wisdom Trust. Several new charities and good causes have joined The Wisdom Trust's list of supported organisations over recent weeks and months. These include Excel Global Training Scholarship Fund, Greenford High School and Sutton Cricket Club. You can find all these organisations listed on The Wisdom Trust website and you'll be able to link from there to their websites for more information about their aims, recent successes and current campaigns. If you know of a charity or good cause which is not yet on our list, why not nominate them to be added so that we can help promote their issues and support their work as well. [Return To Top] |
|
New User? Here's Some Notes For Getting Started. Once you're registered as a friend of The Wisdom Trust, these notes will help you get started, including. - 1. How to earn credits (Fundraising Credits, or FC's & Gift Credits) to divert money to your chosen charities and build your own personal wisdom Trust 'charity/grant' fund. - 2. How to vote to make sure your favourite charities get as large a share as possible of our main donations fund. - 3. How to contribute to our fund without any effort, and, more importantly, without the need for you to put your hands in your pocket. - 4. How to introduce your friends, family and colleagues to join us too. - 5. How to invite other charites and good causes to sign-up as one of our listed organisations and receive donations from our fund. There are also a series of powerpoint presentations on the website to help you find out more about how The Wisdom Trust works and how you can become an important part of our team, helping us make a difference all around the world, as well as supporting your own favourite good cause at the same time. a) AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WISDOM TRUST http://www.wisdom4all.co.uk/THEWISDOMTRUSTINTRO/fullscreen.htm b) HOW WE FUND CHARITIES & GOOD CAUSES http://www.wisdom4all.co.uk/FUNDINGGOODCAUSES/fullscreen.htm c) WHAT CAN YOU DO TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE http://www.wisdom4all.co.uk/WHATCANYOUDO/fullscreen.htm d) FORMING A NETWORK OF FAMILY & FRIENDS http://www.wisdom4all.co.uk/FORMINGANETWORK/fullscreen.htm e) GET INVOLVED - SEE HOW YOU CAN GET STARTED http://www.wisdom4all.co.uk/GETINVOLVED/fullscreen.htm What do you need to do? - 1. Try to log in every day, or three times a week, and use the education programs (particularly Wisdom Aware and Wisdom IQ - accessed from the Education menu) to earn credits (Fundraising Credits or FC's). Aim to get an average of 10 or 11 per day (you get one FC for every question you get right). Get into the habit of this so it almost becomes second nature. You can check the current value of your own personal Wisdom Trust 'charity/grant' fund online 24/7 using the stats link on the Members menu. And you can see your position in The Wisdom Trust hall of fame using the Hall of Fame link on the Members menu. Remember, your personal Wisdom Trust 'charity/grant' fund grows in value for every Fundraising Credit you get. You can use the value of your fund to a) make donations to any of the charities and good causes on our list; b) apply for a Wisdom Eco Grant to help fund things like solar panels in order to reduce your carbon footprint at home or at the office;c) apply for a Wisdom Education Grant (if you're a student or former student) to offset the cost of your education; d) use our carbon calculator and offset some of your personal carbon footprint. Every now and then, you'll get the opportunity to earn Gift Credits instead of Fundraising Credits. These build up on your account and you can donate them at any time, to any of the charities and good causes on our list. To donate your Gift Credits, go into Wisdom IQ (from the Education menu) and click on the donate button at the bottom of the screen. A voucher will appear and you select how many Gift Credits you want to donate and the charity you wish to donate to. **** IMPORTANT **** Start-Up Bonus Awards: Within your first 2 weeks, if you get 60 FC's and introduce 2 new members who each get a minimum of 15 FC's, you'll be awarded 10,000 extra FC's as a special start-up bonus. Then encourage the two new people you brought on board to do the same. And when they get their award we'll add a further 2,500 FC's to your total. - 2. Help us choose the charities and good causes we support by using the Vote link on the Members menu. You can vote for one organisation on each of the two drop-down lists. And if you should reach 10 FC's in a day, you'll get another vote. - 3. Every day, you can help put some money into our fund without putting your hands in your pocket.... a) You can run a few of your normal online searches on each visit, using our partner search engines (Search on the Resources menu). b) Or you can run a few price comparisons for things you might want to buy on each visit, using our partner price comparison engines (Pricecheck on the Resources menu). c) You can also simply visit the websites of some of our featured advertisers (Surf on the Resources menu). Every search, every price comparison and every visit to an advertiser's website earns money for our fund. Aim for 2 or 3 of each of the above 3 activities on each visit. And if you shop online, you can shop through The Wisdom Trust shopping mall (Shopping Mall on the Resources menu) and everything you buy will earn money for our fund, at no extra cost or inconvenience to you. - 4. Once you're in the habit of doing the above three things every day, reach out to some of your friends and family - especially those who already have a passion for helping charitable causes - because we can help them raise money for their favourite good cause. You'll find two standard emails using the Invite New Members link on the Members menu, one for individuals and one for charities. Use the appropriate links to send these to yourself, then forward them from your email address to any of your friends, family or colleagues who use the internet, especially those who already shop online, and even more so to those people you know who are passionate about raising money for one good cause or another. Once people start to sign-up and become part of your own Wisdom Trust network, you can check the state of your personal Wisdom Trust family tree using the Genealogy link on the Members menu. - 5. Use the standard email for organisations, detailed in point 4, to invite any organisations you know who need to raise money. Talk to them first, find out the right contact name and email address then send them the email from your personal email address. They can register themselves on the website and then invite all their supporters to join too in order to vote for them. **** IMPORTANT **** Start-Up Bonus Awards: Within your first 2 weeks, if you get 60 FC's and introduce 2 new members who each get a minimum of 15 FC's, you'll be awarded 10,000 extra FC's as a special start-up bonus. Then encourage the two new people you brought on board to do the same. And when they get their award we'll add a further 2,500 FC's to your total. **** SPECIAL INCENTIVE FOR SCHOOLS **** Every month, the student at each school who through their various introductions to family, friends and neighbours etc., produces the most online shoppers during the month, will receive a special prize. One prize will be allocated per month to each participating school and all winning students will receive a certificate in addition to their prize. So to summarise... on each visit, you a) learn something new; b) earn 10 or 11 FC's; c) vote for your favourite charities; d) run 2 or 3 searches; e) run 2 or 3 price comparisons; and f) visit the websites of 2 or 3 of our advertising partners. Six things to do on each visit - probably about 10 minutes effort each time. And invite three or four of your friends to do the same. Remember, our motto is: "Do A Little - Help A Lot!" [Return To Top] |
|
The Wisdom Trust - Find Us On Bebo. The Wisdom Trust now has its own profile on the social networking website, Bebo. If you're a user of Bebo, make sure you add us as one of your friends and stay more in touch with all that's new with The Wisdom Trust. Our ID on Bebo is Wisdom-Trust If you're not already a Bebo user, why not sign-up free of charge at www.bebo.com And don't forget, we've also got profiles on the other two main social networking websites, Myspace and Facebook [Return To Top] |
|
Free Carbon Offsetting - Now Available. The Wisdom Trust has now launched a series of carbon calculators on our website, in co-operation with The Carbon Neutral Company. Now all our members will be able to find out how many kilograms of carbon they're responsible for (from all sources - gas or elecricity at home, vehicles, transport and travel). Having done that, you'll be able to look at a range of ways to offset those emissions - without any cost or inconvenience to you, as you'd expect of any project within The Wisdom Trust program. Quite simply, you create your own personal Wisdom 'charity fund' by earning Fundraising Credits (FC's) through the online education programs, or by shopping online through The Wisdom Trust shopping mall, and even by introducing new members to The Wisdom Trust among your own friends and family. Then you can use the value of this personal fund, either to make donations to one of our listed charities and good causes, or to set aside some of it to offset some (or all) your carbon emissions. Why not find out how much carbon you're creating? Click here to open the page with our three carbon calculators. [Return To Top] |
|
The Wisdom Trust on Myspace - Join Our Group. The Wisdom Trust now has its own position within the Myspace online social network, and you can check out our entry at:- www.myspace.com/wisdomtrust. Take a look at our page and add us as one of your 'friends'. Leave an online message, if you wish, or contact us by email in the normal way and tell us what you think. We hope to keep the blog section up-to-date with information about new charities, donations, members' activities and anything else to do with The Wisdom Trust. You'll also be able to join our special interest group on Myspace, as well. You can find details of our Myspace group by clicking here. [Return To Top] |
|
The Wisdom Trust On Facebook - Check Us Out. The Wisdom Trust has a profile on the Facebook social networking website and it has also launched its own group on Facebook too. If you're an existing Facebook user then click here to join the group and stay in touch with our regular bulletins. You'll also be able to network with other members of the group, make new friends and find out what other people think about the big global issues - poverty, environment and health. If you're not yet a Facebook user, why not sign up and get involved. We've also added The Wisdom Trust to Facebook's directory of 'causes' and you can join that too by clicking here. These two facilities simply offer further ways for everyone to stay in touch with all that's going on at The Wisdom Trust. If you've not yet signed up on our main Facebook profile, you can click here to do so. And if you are a Facebook member, make sure you tell all your friends there about The Wisdom Trust. [Return To Top] |
|
Charity Stories & Articles Needed For Wisdom Trust Newsletter. Our new weekly newsletter is now up and running and we'd now like to invite any of our listed charities and good causes to submit short stories or articles which promote their work and current issues or campaigns. These should be under any of the three main headings - Poverty, Environment and Health. We'll select one story from each of the three headings to feature in each week's issue of the newsletter, with a link to the charity's Website for those who wish to get further information. Send your articles by email to newsletter@wisdomtrust.org and remember to include the name of the organisation submitting the article together with a website address (or a particular website page) to where people can be redirected for more information. [Return To Top] |
|
Shopping Stories. Frances wanted to buy a wedding gift for a couple of her friends who were getting married and being a friend of The Wisdom Trust, she logged onto The Wisdom Trust shopping mall and looked around the websites of some of gift shops and stores there to find something suitable. After a little searching and browsing, she eventually decided on a nice set of vases from Graham & Green. As a result of Frances' purchase, The Wisdom Trust earned 3.43p, automatically and at at no extra cost or inconvenience to her. That's enough to feed about thirty-four hungry children in Africa, or even enough to provide about fourteen six bamboo tree in China to give years of nourishment to endangered panda bears. It would also be enough to replant about three square metres of rainforest, or provide three bags of potato seed to feed a several families in the developing world for many months - and all thanks to Frances' wedding gift for her friends. Isn't that brilliant? Remember to use The Wisdom Trust for all your online shopping. And if the shop you want isn't listed, let us know and we'll try to get them on board in the near future. And don't forget to use our price comparison engines to check out the best prices of anything you want to buy. [Return To Top] |
|
Want To Get More Involved? We're currently looking for people to join our volunteers team and to help us in all areas of our operation. In particular, we'd be interested in talking to anyone who'd like to become part of our management team within their own area of expertise to help co-ordinate all our other volunteers in that field. For example, we're looking for volunteers with particular skills (and possibly experience too) in:- * PR - to help us design and implement a strong PR/media strategy and help prepare perfect press releases every time; * Website Programmers/Designers - to help us improve our current website and also to design, implement and maintain a completely new website, which can offer our website visitors many more online opportunities; * Law - to help us ensure that all our activities are compliant at all times, to check any contracts and to asses any legal risks; * Strategy/Planning - to help us with forward planning and co-ordinating all the various strategies from all areas of the operation, i.e. to make sure we move forward with 'joined-up thinking'; * Copy-writing/Editorial - to help us compose newsletters, articles and factsheets and to ensure that every word, phrase and paragraph oin our website is relevant, accurate, easily-understood and as concise as possible; * Events Management - to help us deliver an exciting range of events of all types - roadshows, festivals, seminars, training course, fundraising events and new campaign launches; * Finance - to help us look outside our normal funding avenues to other funding opportunities, to assess any possible financial risks and later on to advise on any investment opportunities for our fund; * Healthcare/Medical Issues - to ensure that the healthcare information and health-tips on our website are as comprehensive as possible, as well as being accurate, relevant, up-to-date and interesting; * Environmental Issues - to ensure that the environmental information and eco-tips on our website are as comprehensive as possible, as well as being accurate, relevant, up-to-date and interesting; * Education - for people with a background in education (teachers, for example, even retired teachers or headteachers) to help us ensure that our education (both online and offline) is delivered in as interesting, enjoyable and informative way as possible, so people of all age groups learn something new on each visit and choose to come back for more, as often as possible; * Marketing - to help us put together fanstastic marketing campaigns at zero (or little) cost, both online and through our media contacts; * Fundraising/Networking - to help us fundraise through the website themselves and also to implement an innovative fundraising program, based around the principles of 'viral marketing' and networking, to reach out to as wide an audience to increase our income from everyone's normal online activity such as shopping and searching; If you feel you have skills in any of these areas, please do contact us using the link below and let's organise a meeting as soon as possible to discuss how you can help us. We could meet at our new central London HQ in Edgware Road, or, if you prefer, at our Caterham office in south London. Once you're on the team, whatever you do, you always do as much or as little as you want. You decide! You simply fit working on behalf of The Wisdom Trust around all your other commitments. We understand that everyone leads busy lives these days so we never ask anyone to make any commitment they're not comfortable with. So, if you feel you'd like to get more involved, simply click here to tell us what you could do to help us. [Return To Top] |
|
The Wisdom Trust In Teacher's Post. The Wisdom Trust has featured twice in recent issues of Teacher's Post, a Royal Mail Group publication, which is distributed three times each year to 37,000 schools across The United Kingdom. We also hope to feature in the next issue, due for publication in early June. YOu can find the two articles about The Wisdom Trust by viewing the online version of Teacher's Post at:- June 2007 Sept 2007 The Royal Mail Group Education department was recognised in 2007 as delivering a long term positive impact on communities at the annual BITC Awards for Excellence. With this in mind, The Wisdom Trust could not find a better partner in our campaign to engage with schools and their students to get as many of them as possible involved in our various education programs, as well as fundraising for the schools themselves. [Return To Top] |
|
Latest Donations To Charities From The Wisdom Trust. Several donations have been made recently to some of The Wisdom Trust's listed charities and good causes. These include £19.77 to Revival Radio, £10.63 to Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice, £10.67 to Frimley Park Hospital, £10.37 to Watts Gallery, £136.47 to Younger Generation Theatre Group and £10.88 to 15th St Pancras Scout Group. These donations bring the total fund distributed to charities over the last two years to £5,121.28. A total of 46 different charities and good causes have so far been in receipt of donations from The Wisdom Trust. [Return To Top] |
|
Sainsburys Donate £700 to The Wisdom Trust. Leading UK supermarket chain Sainsburys have kindly donated £700 to The Wisdom Trust, through their popular Local Heroes scheme. Sainsburys recognises that many members of staff contribiute their time to support local charitable organisations outside of work and to celebrate and support these activities, the Local Heroes scheme makes dontions towards staff members' chosen good causes. The scheme is proving extremely popular and over £750,000 has so far been donated to charities and other good causes. This is second time, The Wisdom Trust has been in receipt of a donation through the Local Heroes scheme. [Return To Top] |
|
Royal Bank of Scotland Gives £250 to The Wisdom Trust. Leading UK bank The Royal Bank of Scotland have kindly donated £250 to The Wisdom Trust, through their Community Cashback Awards scheme. Royal Bank of Scotland recognises that many members of staff contribiute their time to support local charitable organisations outside of work and the bank is delighted to help those community groups, schools and charities where their staff are already making an important contribution in their own time. The scheme is proving extremely popular and a substantial sum has so far been donated to charities and other good causes. This is second time, The Wisdom Trust has been in receipt of a donation through the RBS Community Cashback Awards scheme. [Return To Top] |
|
The Wisdom Trust is committed to playing its part in improving our environment, as well as helping to relieve poverty and improve world health, and within a few clicks, you too can be part of our work. We offer a unique experience, allowing people of all ages and backgrounds to engage with charities worldwide, and enabling them to learn or contribute to our work whenever they can. We work hard to make this as easy as possible; our education and fundraising programmes run at no cost to our members and both are linked to our loyalty credits scheme, so anything our members do to help the global community also benefits themselves!
By working together, we can make a difference. We can improve our world for the benefit of all. Join us today and be part of our future. With The Wisdom Trust, even doing just a little can still help a lot. |
Home | Login | Register | Search | Shop | Pricecheck | Surf | Eco-Tips | Health-Tips | Articles
Total raised so far:
£13466.88(more info) |
