Urban Forum is a grassroots organization with over 900 members working with deprived communities in the UK. It aims to support community groups and be a bridge between them and policymakers. Social media can help by allowing for interactive dialogue, connection, collaboration, commerce, campaigning, and communication, but it also poses challenges like maintaining a balance between corporate and personal accounts and dealing with trolls and extremism that could harm reputations. Urban Forum needs to carefully plot how to best leverage social media's opportunities while avoiding its pitfalls.

1. Foundations & Social Media
Toby Blume
Chief Executive, Urban Forum
www.urbanforum.org.uk

2. About Us
900+ members
Small, local, grass roots
groups
Working with +10,000 groups
in the most deprived
communities
Index of multiple deprivation scores of Urban Forum
members
300
Number of members
250
200
150
100
50
0
Most Least
deprived deprived

3. What we do
A bridge between
community action and
policy-making
supporting communities
to play a leading role in
public policy and
improved outcomes

4. What is social media?
“The term social media refers to the
use of web-based and mobile
technologies to turn communication
into an interactive dialogue”

5. Social media in
numbers….and
pictures

9. How online content is shared

10. Opportunities

11. How social media can add value

12. Connection

13. Collaboration

14. Commerce

15. Campaigning

16. Communication

17. Challenges

18. Corporate vs Personal

20. Trolls and extremism

21. Reputation

22. Plotting a
way
forward