Nonprofit web design

LASA’s Computanews magazine is now free as a download (it used to be a paid subscription). If you’re from a nonprofit organisation and are generally interested in improving your use of IT, then Computanews is well worth a read.

It’s not aimed specifically at techies, it’s easier to read and perhaps more relevant to charities than some other publications. It’s written in plain English and spells things out for you.

For example the current edition has an article on news feeds. It explains in simple language what feeds are, why they exist and how you can subscribe to them, and discusses whether you could offer them to your own website’s visitors.

Caring Choices is a nationwide initiative to help shape future policy on long-term care for older people. More than 700 older people, carers and others were invited to share their experiences and views at events and on the website throughout 2007.

The Caring Choices website is based on WordPress, a free and open source content management system. It enables The King’s Fund and its partners to publish pages and articles onto their website; and for visitors to the site to leave their comments; and for visitors to subscribe to receive new articles. >> Read more…

The Addiction Search Engine was designed to help people find reliable information on the web about addiction-related issues. It uses the free Google Custom Search tool and was set up by the Ana Liffey Drug Project, a not-for-profit organisation in Ireland. This case study explains how they did it. >> Read more…

An organisation called nfpSynergy does research into charities’ use of the Internet and publishes the findings in their annual Virtual Promise reports. These reports give a useful insight into the evolution of charity websites.

Five years ago, when nfpSynergy began their research, only 16% of the public said they had visited a charity’s website in the past six months. By February 2007 that figure had risen to 23%; and by October 2007 it was 30%. That’s very encouraging news for charities spending time and money on developing their websites. So what else does the report tell us about trends in charity websites? >> Read more…

Are you a web designer looking to do some pro-bono work? Or a non-profit organisation that needs help with web design? IT4Communities is a UK organisation that matches IT volunteers with the charities that need their skills. There are many charities looking for website work so here’s a snapshot of what’s currently available. >> Read more…

Relate London North West is a branch of the relationship counselling charity.

I designed their website using standards-compliant html and css. Only a limited colour palette was used, to reflect the charity’s branding. The ‘heads’ graphic and logo were supplied by Relate.

The website has a simple structure of pages and sub-pages, but no posts or news items.

This Relate website is built around WordPress, a free and open source content management system (CMS). This enables Relate to publish pages on their website and easily make changes to text and images. WordPress is a great tool for small charities who want to have control over their own website content.

To see the website I designed for Relate visit www.relatelondonnw.org.uk.

Between July and September 2007 The Joseph Rowntree Foundation asked the public to consider what social evils face the UK today.

The Social Evils website lists the result of a web survey of 3,500 people and discussions with groups whose voices are not usually heard. I designed the mini-website for the consultation.

The website was developed using WordPress, a free and open source content management system. It enables the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to easily publish pages on their website.

The brief was to create a very simple WordPress template to match the JRF’s corporate image.

Online discussion forums enable your website’s visitors to have a conversation. Your website could host a busy virtual community; and if you are a health organisation you could even use forums to provide an Internet-based support network. In 2007 the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust won an eWellbeing award for its use of online forums in building social networks. This case study explains what was learnt along the way. >> Read more…