Charities do love press releases: many, many hours have been spent poring over every word, every comma, every quote and every nuance of a release. One recent calculation was that there were 100,000 press releases from charities every year. The irony is that most of these are destined to end up unread, unwanted and uncovered.

The old adage goes that if you throw enough mud at a wall some of it sticks. That may be so (though I've never understood why anyone would want mud to stick to a wall). The problem is this: the competition for press releases is now truly fearsome. Ask any journalist and they will tell you they may get up to 200 electronic press releases a day and they will tell you that most of them are left unopened let alone read.

So what's the alternative? I think charities need to try getting press coverage without a press release. For many charities this lack of structure could be truly scary. How would the CEO get his or her quote in? How would the charity make sure that the journalist got the story right?

In reality the process is simple. Pick up the phone and pitch to the journalist in 30 seconds the story you are planning. Ask them if they would be interested in this story? What additional information might they want? What are their deadlines? Offer them an exclusive if you think that would make a difference to getting them to cover it.

Getting press coverage without press releases will help your organisation build relationships with journalists far more effectively. Go on, be daring, and see if your organisation can cope.

Joe Saxton is chair and founder of CharityComms. In his day job Joe is driver of ideas and co-founder of specialist research consultancy nfpSynergy