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.

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!

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