Spring 2007

Welcome to our latest newsletter. There is much happening within Credit Action at the moment and hopefully the following information will bring you up to date with some of the things we are involved in.

Websites

One of the things that have really been encouraging is the development of both the www.creditaction.org.uk and www.moneybasics.co.uk web sites. This was reflected in 400,000 hits that Credit Action received in January 07- a record by a long way. Chris Tapp our Deputy Director is having regular meetings with GE who fund our Moneybasics site with excellent results.

More and more news and topical events are appearing on it - why not take a look at both sites and tell us what you think. We particularly welcome suggestions for improvements or new topics etc.

Moneymanuals

We are continuing to see good demand for our moneymanuals and there continues to be big orders from an increasing number of organisations. We have just revised and updated our main guide "Thinking about money". We have also been approached about translating this into several languages for use by people coming to the U.K. from Eastern Europe.

We have also updated a 'Guide to Making a Will' and 'Money Saving Ideas', both of which are now available as free downloads from the website.

Training

One area Credit Action wants to expand greatly in is that of running training courses for local councils and housing associations. In effect we would be "training the trainers". In late 2006 one of our consultants, Mel Griggs, ran the Ideal Budgeting course for Wandsworth Council and we received excellent feedback.

 

In the United States these courses are becoming increasingly important. For example all people coming out of bankruptcy have to do a basic money management course before they can go back in to the banking system and we expect this could well happen over here. Increasingly, Councils and Housing Associations are under obligation to help their customers handle money more effectively - in any event it is their interest to do so. We see a lot of scope here and we plan to run training events later this year to help others develop the skills to become teachers of the Ideal Budgeting course. If you would like to find out more about training courses for your organisation, or would like to become a trainer for Credit Action, please contact us: office@creditaction.org.uk

 

With Credit Action regularly featuring as a major source for comment on personal money management issues and with Chris achieving so much, we are confident that the future of the charity is strong. Over the years it has developed from small beginnings to become one of the most influential money education charities in Britain. We have linked with the leading debt charity, Consumer Credit Counselling Service, to offer free debt counselling to all those that need this service.

 

Keith Tondeur
National Director

At Credit Action, as I frequently have to inform people ringing me up to flog us space in magazines, we have no advertising budget. As a charity we think that we can use our money much better in actually trying to assist people rather than spending the big bucks it needs to run ad campaigns. This does mean however that we have to be smart about how we go about raising our profile and awareness of how we can help people. This is where the media comes in.

We are very fortunate that years of Keith's hard work and the assistance we have received from our PR consultant Frances Walker have helped us to achieve a strong position in relation to the media and we now frequently get the opportunity to appear on both local and national media formats - from The Times, BBC Breakfast News and the Chris Evans' show on Radio 2, right through to features in local papers and appearances on Women's Hour on Premier, one of my more unusual requests! These appearances all give us the opportunity to comment on current issues, offer general information and advice to those who might need it and also do the crucial work of letting people know where they can turn if they need help.

We have been particularly busy on the media front in the last 4 months as interest in money and debt issues has hit unprecedented levels. It is then I'm sure no coincidence that both our websites have had record numbers of hits recently.

As Keith has mentioned it has been a time of transition for the charity but things continue to move from strength to strength and I am extremely enthusiastic about the future of Credit Action and the many opportunities opening up to us in the ongoing battle against a lack of financial understanding. Our work in delivering simple but vital money information into areas of high financial exclusion through simple postcards is continuing apace and will be in full swing by the summer and we are also looking at massively increasing our distribution of the student guides in 2007 with the aim of reaching every student in the UK!

I look forward to introducing you to our new Development Officer in the next newsletter and to updating you on some very exciting projects which are in the pipeline for the near future. Until then have a wonderful spring and once again many thanks for all your support!

A little over two years ago Credit Action, in partnership with our sister charity the Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) and GE created the money information website Moneybasics. The aim of the site was to provide people with the vital information they need about money but presented in a way free of jargon and easy to understand. As well as this the site contains tools so that users can easily make a budget online, or calculate their mortgage. There is a newsroom containing up-to-date information and stories on the financial issues of the day affecting the man on the street.

Up until last year, the site operated with GE managing the site from the USA and Credit Action working to keep it updated on this side of the Atlantic. This was proving a frustrating exercise! Time lags meant that any update had to go from Credit Action to GE in London, over to GE in the States and then it could be changed. This meant that it often took two to three weeks for a change to actually be made!

In spring of 2006 however a new team took on Moneybasics. Pip Abercrombie and Rob Buller at GE, Frances Walker of CCCS and Chris Tapp at Credit Action looked to update Moneybasics and make the system for maintaining the site more efficient.

A major step was taken last summer when the content management passed from the USA to London and updates could be done in hours, rather than weeks and the content of the site was given a thorough review including new, updated tools and extra content on key issues previously not covered, such as identity theft. Pip Abercrombie reflects the positive attitude of the team to the changes, "MoneyBasics is a fantastic family to be a part of - I love working with the team and I feel that we have made some particularly great progress over the last 12 months. The site is certainly coming along in leaps and bounds."

The site has gone from strength to strength since then, including the recent development of a weekly news summary put together by Adela Read. With all these developments the team are buoyant for the future. Rob Buller says "Tools like the new budgeting calculator help to enhance the user experience, and ongoing PR activity, such as last Christmas's festive season campaign, continue to raise the profile of the site. We're starting the year in a great position to be able to plan and execute further improvements in 2007."

With the number of hits daily rising from an average of around 1000 in the first 3 months of 2006 to an average of around 6000 in the last three months, Moneybasics is set to continue as a key part of Credit Action's work in helping people to think better about their money.

Log on to www.moneybasics.co.uk to learn more and look out for new and exciting progress in the coming year!

Chris

Chris Tapp
Deputy Director