Boosting YOUR connections with a Local Community Map

It’s always been important for communities to come together – but right now, it is more essential than ever.

Whether you need help, or want to help, we need to work together. And that way we’ll help each other to get through whatever life throws at us.

And that’s why – we’ve decided to work in partnership – to support the award-winning digital enterprise aDoddle. aDoddle is a LOCAL service, on a NATIONAL platform.

What is aDoddle?

If you’ve ever searched Google Maps for a local business, you’ll know that it’s quick and easy. You can soon work out who is closest to you, and what they provide.

Unfortunately that’s not the same when it comes to finding help or support. Often organisations just don’t have the time or resources to get their details up on Google, and with very small organisations they sometimes don’t even have a website anyway - or the budget to promote it

This can mean that people often aren’t aware of the amazing help and support right on their doorsteps – so they can miss vital support at a time they most need it.

And when a business comes to sponsor a small local help-providing organisation, they too can easily miss what’s right under their noses. Simply because everyone is under pressure and it’s just very time-consuming to do the grass-roots research.

However, the smallest of charities or community organisations are the ones that are most in need of support. And that’s where aDoddle comes in.

It gives every local Charity, Community Group or Organisation the ability to create a free profile on the map. Encouraging them to share the 5 key things people want to know: Who they help, how they help, the difference they make, the help they need and how to contact them.

Making it ‘aDoddle’ for people to find, access & give support locally

How did aDoddle start?

aDoddle started off as the brainchild of founder Jaki King, who has dedicated the last 10 years to her three passions - People, Communities & Change.

Back in 2010 Jaki started to dream of an interactive community map. “I was working with a number of local people, and I realised that they needed help and that their lives could have been so much better or easier? if only they were able to find the support available locally.” Said Jaki.

“At the same time that this happened, I was working with a couple of local companies. When I shared my idea, they told me that they wanted to support local organisations, and they couldn’t find them.

“This cemented my idea of a local community map.”

“Once I was formulating this idea, I spoke with a few people at much larger organisations, including RBS, KPMG, PwC and others. They all said their companies would benefit from a single place that would help them and their staff to support at a more local level, and it would be an incredible resource”.

aDoddle has grown from here, and is now reaching around 1300 organisations, who reach out to hundreds of thousands of local individuals. (See this page on the aDoddle site: https://adoddle.org/about/history )

Jaki sums it up: “I realised that it’s very easy for a company to throw cash at a big name charity” said Jaki. “However, the smallest organisations are providing grass-roots support and they are where the money can have the greatest impact – getting right to the people and communities that are most in need of it.”

aDoddle Aims:

Smaller local organisations are where people turn to at a time of crisis (or in time to avoid a crisis). Sometimes it will be the organisation itself that can reach out to its community members to give VITAL support. Sometimes it’s about the community coming together and volunteering to connect with others – building stronger, more connected and resilient communities.

The map supports:

• People in need to find help and support, plus volunteering opportunities or places to connect
• Charities to highlight their services
• Community projects
• Businesses to discover charity partnerships & volunteering opportunities for staff
• Universities to develop new avenues for research

The aDoddle map covers the whole of the UK and is a developing project. It is also working to establish a network of connected local maps to better support local communities.

Find a charity or project on the Local Community Map below:

Why is Cardyard supporting aDoddle?

You, me, the team at Cardyard, all of us – we are all members of our local communities, and we believe it’s important to support our communities by giving back, by being positive community members, and by helping where we can.

We were delighted to discover what’s going on with aDoddle and we want to be a part of this exciting and pioneering project.

At Cardyard we have been reviewing opportunities to support a worthwhile organisation for some time. We are firm believers in CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), and as a young company we feel it’s important to get involved just as soon as possible.

In aDoddle we believe we can reach out even further. We can:

• Encourage our business partners to get involved and focus their CSR investment more locally
• Help aDoddle raise funds to boost their innovation, spread the platform and build local maps even quicker
• Encourage our customers to support aDoddle - which in turn supports all charities & grass roots community organisations
• Encourage new people (those who might otherwise let a gift card go to waste) to use that gift-card to support aDoddle.

Mike Hayman, CEO of Cardyard said: “We acknowledge that by choosing one charity, it does mean that many others are left “unchosen”. We also know that smaller organisations are currently screaming out for funds, help and support.

“One of the things I really like about aDoddle is its national reach. The Cardyard market is national, so we believe that any good-cause we support should also be national. This means that if any of our customers just want to donate to a good-cause, we can facilitate this with our link to aDoddle which supports other good causes and charities nationally.

“We believe that with at least £300 million* wasted giftcards in the UK, these can be put to essential use, giving right back into the community.

“Longer term we hope to be able to identify the specific community areas that people would prefer to give – so future donations will be able to tie in with the location maps. But in the meantime we want to get national donations up and running, so at first we will be setting up an option for people to give directly to aDoddle, to grow the aDoddle support and maps, thereby providing smaller community organisations with higher visibility across the UK”

Jaki King, Founder of aDoddle and award-winning social enterprise If Everyone Cares CIC (IEC) commented:

“It’s phenomenal to have been approached by an organisation, like Cardyard. We are incredibly excited by the potential of the good that this link-up can do – with people able to donate their unwanted giftcards. Every giftcard donated will help us to support and raise the profile of all the charities that are on the map and in turn that will help those that need help or want to help to find them.”

For more information, please visit aDoddle