Nonprofit web design

Many charities would benefit from the occasional assistance of a volunteer with IT skills. That’s why IT4Communities was set up to match charities with IT professionals wanting to volunteer their skills. I’m now working part-time for IT4Communities in their London office.

What kind of help can nonprofits get from a volunteer? Well, here are just a few examples of volunteering opportunities listed on the website recently:

IT fixer for prison charity: This charity based at Dartmoor prison, Princetown, Devon, helps maintain family contact between prisoners and their children. Imprisoned parents read a bedtime story which is either recorded digitally or filmed. They’re looking for a local volunteer who would be available to come in and rectify problems when they occur and also to train staff to solve simple IT problems and do simple maintenance tasks. >> Read more…

I started a new job today, working three days a week for IT4Communities. This organisation matches IT volunteers with nonprofit organisations in need of help with websites, databases and other IT systems. I’m working at their office near Barbican, London.

My project – for six months – is to look after their mentoring scheme. This project matches qualified but less experienced volunteers to organisations, and it also matches them both with a mentor: a more experienced person who can provide guidance and help ensure the task is resolved.

As well as this new job, I’m still doing freelance web development.

If you volunteer with a community group or charitable organisation in the UK, visit www.btcommunityconnections.com to apply for a laptop and contribution to a year’s free broadband connection. The closing date for Round One is 9 June 2009 for postal applications and 11 June for online submissions.

I know several organisations that have won a computer in previous years – and I helped a couple of them to make successful applications.

More than sixty people gathered in Galway, Ireland in April 2009 to talk, learn, and exchange ideas about Drupal. Drupal is a popular, reliable and very flexible content management system that’s used on many well-known websites. While they were there the attendees built free websites for two Irish charities. You can see the results at www.ruralsa.ie and www.zikomo.org. Both look great, well done to those involved!

Back in Australia the FullCodePress competition to build two charity websites has announced its team members and attempted to answer a tricky question: are events like this damaging to the web development community? I don’t think that charitable one-off events like this are anything other than a good idea. They’re nothing like design competition websites such as 99designs.com which encourage cookie cutter designs for minimum pay. At FullCodePress and the Drupal competition, professionals are pooling their skills to create quality products at no cost, purely for the challenge and the social good.

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…

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…

A volunteer could give their time and skills to help you build your website. However, you need to think carefully about your expectations and their motivations, be realistic about what can be achieved and how quickly, and plan for the inevitable time when your volunteer decides to quit. Here are some thoughts on how to find and manage website volunteers. >> Read more…