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.

Supporting weekly Internet cafe sessions: A community association with its own centre has 9 PCs running XP, a Mac, 3 printers, MS Office and would like to offer a drop-in Internet cafe session in the evening too. They’re looking for someone to support the sessions, make sure the computers are set up properly, and provide advice and support to anyone that needs it. They think a session of 2 hours once a week is about right, and they would prefer someone who could commit to at least 12 weeks.

Fix a CSS and HTML navigation menu: This project is part of an international charity based near Archway tube station and works to influence the World Bank and IMF on environmental and social concerns. The dropdown menus on their website don’t look right in newer versions of Internet Explorer and they would like you either to redo the menus entirely or fix them.

So if you’re a nonprofit organisation that needs help with IT, why not sign up for help from a volunteer with skills to spare?

Case studies of successful IT volunteering projects

IT4Communities has a case studies section on their website, showcasing some of their successful volunteer projects. Some of these are web design projects and are worth a read if you’re either a charity looking for help or you’re considering being an online volunteer. One of the case studies is about how, whilst living in Australia, I gave a website health check to The Theatre Royal Stratford East.

Here are some quotes from the article…

Silvia, the theatre’s marketing officer is quoted as saying: ”As a theatre we don’t have a lot of budget for things such as website maintenance, so I was looking for a way that we could get the help we needed without having to pay consultancy fees that the theatre could ill afford.”

She goes on to say: “They were able to find a volunteer quickly, who then contacted me personally”. Proving that geographical constraints are not a problem for iT4C, volunteer Jason King, was located in Australia and carried out an online health check of the Theatre Royal’s website.

Jason’s main recommendation was to reduce the number of HTML coding errors on the website, something the theatre’s web designers are currently working through. He also recommended improving the title pages, in order to get a better profile on Google, giving them some simple examples of changes they could make. His final recommendation was to get a proper accessibility study from a company such as AbilityNet.

“This sort of practical advice was invaluable to us, and although it has not been possible to carry out an accessibility check yet, it is definitely something I plan to undertake in the future,” explains Silvia. Jason also recommended that the theatre take advantage of Google Analytics, “Although we already had a statistical tool, we have found this much more reliable,” explains Silvia.

Despite being on the other side of the world, Silvia says that she had a good relationship with Jason. “We didn’t have a lot of exchanges as our correspondence was all email based. However, we found Jason very responsive and he was able to do everything that we asked of him. For example, at one point I needed a report emailed to me over the weekend and he was even able to do that!”

Volunteer Jason added “Virtual volunteering worked well for me. It was a short, simple and well-defined volunteering project and suited me better to give advice rather than offer practical assistance and it made a nice change to do a website health check for a theatre”.

This kind of volunteering – all done online, no need to be in the same country - can be quick and rewarding. I only needed to spend a couple of hours analysing the website and writing the report. Volunteers are needed for all sorts of IT projects: desktop problems, servers and networking, databases, and training; some of these can be done remotely, but web design is a particularly good fit for virtual volunteering.

Get a free web health check for your nonprofit

If any charities reading this article would like a free health check for their website (a two-page report analysing the design, editing, preformance and promotion), please just ask me. Whatever country you’re in, makes no difference!

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.

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

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.

Volunteers from the Ana Liffey Drug Project choose which websites to add to the Addiction Search Engine. When visitors type in a search query the Addiction Search Engine searches only these sites and, in some instances, the sites that they are linked to. Because addiction is an area on the web that attracts bogus websites, this means that the users of the Addiction Search Engine don’t have to trawl unnecessary or inappropriate websites.

How to set up a search engine with Google Custom Search

It’s quick and easy to set up a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE). Simply visit www.google.com/cse and follow the instructions. If you don’t already have a username and password for Google you’ll need to create an account first. Within minutes you’re able to start adding websites to your own search engine.

Refining the search results

A key feature of Google CSE is the search refinements function. Refinements are labels that can be applied to web sites. They appear as a list of links above search results and allow users to narrow their search. When a user clicks a refinement label, the sites that are labeled are given priority in the results.

How volunteers contribute to this project

It does require a significant level of time to maintain and refine the Addiction Search Engine. It’s important to ensure that the Custom Search is up to date and relevant and this is where having volunteers can be really helpful.

All contributors to the Addiction Search Engine give their time and expertise on a pro bono basis. The Ana Liffey Drug Project currently has six volunteers and all have a background in working in the field of addiction. Volunteers are given limited access to the Addiction Search Engine to add sites and decide which existing ‘search refinement’ labels to apply to those sites.

Significantly, Google Custom Search allows for a capacity of 100 volunteer contributors; therefore, the recruitment of volunteers is an ongoing process and is an area with a lot of potential for development. The input of volunteers in sharing their expertise and energy is crucial to the ongoing success of the Addiction Search Engine.

What difference has the Addiction Search Engine made to the Ana Liffey Drug Project?

A key value of the Ana Liffey Drug Project is that they aim to take a wider role in society – they believe in partnership and have a local, national and international perspective. The development of the Addiction Search Engine has acted as a conduit to quality web based information for the wider community.

It’s allowed them to work in partnership with professional volunteers from outside their own agency. They also collaborate with other respected organisations, via their websites, to help promote quality information and support on issues relating to addiction. Using the web has brought new friends to collaborate with, such as the Swansea Drugs Project, Wales. Plus the Addiction Search Engine is helping to raise the profile of the organisation in Ireland and in other countries.

Advice for other organisations wanting to set up their own search engines

Be specific and identify your niche.

Prepare a plan for how you see your custom search engine developing. Do your research and take a look at good examples from other projects.

Be wary of jargon because the keywords and search queries that visitors to your website might use may not tally with the jargon used in your area of expertise/specialism.

Take time to learn how other Google features can assist your new Google Custom Search Engine. You could use Google Alerts to receive email updates of the latest websites, news items etc to be listed on Google, based on your choice of query or topic. For example, one of the email alerts the Project receives is on the topic of ‘drug addiction’. This lets them know about the latest web sites and articles to appear on Google and they can add the best of these to the Addiction Search Engine.

Measuring the success of your custom search engine

Google Custom Search provides statistics on the use of the Addiction Search Engine. That’s how the ALDP knows that there were 3,982 search queries in February 2008 and a grand total of 12,349 searches so far. The statistics facility, provided by Google, gives a clear picture of the ongoing use and success of the Addiction Search Engine.

You don’t have to have your own website to have a custom search engine. However, if you have your own domain name and webspace you can host your CSE within it. Recently, www.addictionsearch.net has been developed as the new home for the Addiction Search Engine. If you have your own hosting then the free Google Analytics tool can be used to get far more detailed statistics on site usage.

Other indicators of success include the ongoing telephone calls, emails and personal contacts made by people interested in the work of the ALDP having found the website and their specific interest in the Addiction Search Engine.

Advertising revenue

Google by default puts adverts on your CSE but non-profit organisations are allowed to switch them off. Originally the Project didn’t plan to include adverts on the website. However, not for profit organisations need to create revenue too and adverts can create a revenue stream that meets some of the cost of providing and developing the website. The eventual goal is to have a financially self-sufficient website.

The website is too new to gauge whether the revenue will be sufficient. However, between 18th February 2008 and 12th March 2008 the revenue earned from Ad Sense was $52. This could be improved on by ensuring the Ads that appear on the website are efficiently and effectively targeted: there is an option to exclude the URLs of inappropriate ads.

This case study was written by Jason King based on interview notes with Tony Duffin of the Ana Liffey Drug Project.

The Ana Liffey Drug Project

Established in 1982, the Ana Liffey Drug Project was the first ‘low threshold - harm reduction’ type service in Ireland. This model has gone on to be replicated throughout Ireland by many other organisations. Ana Liffey Drug Project was originally set up as an alternative to the dominant abstinence based approach of the day. The project created a welcoming space where active drug users could look at their life and their options for positive change in a non-judgmental environment. The project espoused core principles of ‘Respect, Welcome, Participation and Rights’. These principles still apply today.

Tony Duffin

Tony Duffin is Director of the Ana Liffey Drug Project. Over the past 16 years Tony has focused his efforts on the issues of drugs, alcohol and homelessness. Tony has delivered, managed, designed and led innovative services that work with people actively engaged in problematic substance use. Tony qualified in the Diploma in Drug Dependence from the National Addiction Centre, London, in 1999 and the M.Sc. in Drug and Alcohol Policy, Trinity College Dublin in 2006.

Advice needed

Some of the projects are relatively quick and simple and involve giving advice rather than doing design work. For example a human rights charity already has a website but needs to review the way its content is structured and improve their search engine optimisation.

Replacing an old website with something better

A charity that gives scholarships to nurses and midwives has an old frames-based website they want to replace with an accessible CMS-based site. What’s good about IT4C is that they help charities define their needs carefully, so you’ll notice that a lot of these projects tend to expect best practice in areas such as accessibility, coding standards and content management.

A complex project requiring skilled volunteers

A brand new charity is setting up a web application to help them fundraise to build schools in areas of the third world that currently don’t have one. Sensibly the back-end and front-end development have been split into two separate projects because it’s a complex job and they will require different skills from the volunteers.

Could you create attractive eBay adverts?

A wildlife charity wants to auction off some items to raise money – could you develop an html template for them and help them with basic photography? A simple, practical piece of volunteer work.

On the IT4Communities website you’ll find lists of charities’ projects and volunteers’ skills. You can even subscribe to an RSS feed to receive their latest volunteering opportunities.

Voluntary doesn’t mean amateur

Don’t ask a volunteer to design your website unless they have the same skills as a professional web designer. Interview them and ask to see other work that they’ve done, until you’re satisfied they can do the job properly. If they can talk confidently to you about web design without talking over your head, that’s a good sign. Don’t be afraid to reject volunteers if they’re unsuitable.

If you need a volunteer to help keep the site’s content up-to-date then techie skills are less important: look instead for someone with good grammar and spelling, fairly good basic computing skills, the ability to copy text accurately, and plenty of spare time on their hands.

The better organised you are, the more likely your volunteers are to do a good job for you. Always provide them with a short, clearly written project brief and state what standards you expect.

Get free advice

Web design is a constantly shifting area of technology and you may sometimes need advice. Many consultants and web professionals are happy to give some pro-bono advice, particularly if it can be done quickly. If your website isn’t getting many visitors, ask an expert in search engine optimisation to give an hour or two of their time to help you figure out what the reason and solution might be. If you don’t know which content management system to implement on your new website, find an expert to help you decide. It doesn’t hurt to ask and if they decline, thank them graciously for getting back to you. If they agree, ask for a short written report and remember to thank them.

Find a geek

In the UK a charity called IT4Communities can help you find a suitable volunteer. I’d definitely recommend you contact them rather than use your local Volunteer Centre: IT4Communities specialise in matching you with technically adept volunteers and will help you define your needs properly.

What’s their motivation?

Volunteers need to get something out of the work they do for you: a sense of achievement, sharing skills, socialising. If they do a good job, send them a thank you letter, provide them with a reference or recommend their work to other charities. 

School kids and university students are often given a project to create a simple website. They may decide to ‘help’ a charity by using them as their project. Remember, by definition a student is someone who hasn’t yet learned to do something, so why let them loose on your site? They almost certainly won’t be available to fix any problems afterwards.

Watch out for wannabe web designers who want to build up their portfolio by creating you a free website. An organisation I know once had a volunteer design their website. He became angry when they later altered the colour scheme because it no longer matched the picture in his portfolio. Volunteers should be doing the work primarily for your, not their own benefit. Also, very few beginning web designers can design standards-compliant websites.

Your volunteers won’t be around forever

Many are between jobs, retired, on holiday from university, employed part-time or on long-term sick leave and their situation may be subject to change with little notice. Therefore, don’t give long-term projects to volunteers unless the work could easily be taken on by someone else when they leave. Don’t give volunteers urgent work and tight deadlines, that’s unfair.

You’re in charge

If you’re not a very technically-minded person it can be tempting to leave everything in a volunteer’s hands, but this has its dangers. For example, I know a charity that fell out with their volunteer web designer, who then claimed copyright of their website, deleted it and changed the passwords. Ouch. When working with volunteers on websites, ensure that the charity has ownership of the domain name and the hosting account, retain all passwords, and make clear to the volunteer that you own copyright on any work they create for you. Ideally, put this in a simple, short contract that they sign. Try to communicate regularly with your volunteer about progress and any concerns you or they have.

Right, that’s enough from me. I’m giving some pro-bono consultancy this week to a not-for-profit organisation that owns a big square-rigged sailing ship. Their website doesn’t quite get across how magnificent the ship looks, there’s plenty of room for improvement and I’m looking forward to getting on board. If you’ll excuse the pun.