If your third sector organisation needs to develop or review its online presence, the ‘Community Web Consultant‘ website is your first call. I am an experienced community development worker and this site can help you find the most economic and effective way forward. What you see on the site today is only the beginning of the story.
The Blog
I wrote about the blog Community Development Online last Friday. This will build into a reference for your web presence, written with the community and voluntary sectors in mind. The best way to follow it is to sign up for the email list. The form is on the site at the top of the right hand column. If you do this, you will receive three things:
- every Tuesday, a summary of the last week’s blog posts. This means you can review what I’ve written about and read anything that interests you. You need return to the site only when there is something that interests you!
- you will receive a free email sequence “Real Community Development”. This series of emails introduces some key issues in community development; it contains nothing about websites but plenty of ideas and challenges to community development practice.
- sometimes, I’ll send you an extra email about new developments on the website. I’ve got lots of ideas for making life easier online for community and voluntary organisations. I hope we can share ideas on the website and together we develop online tools to help groups get the best from limited resources.
Community Web Consultancy
Community and voluntary groups often waste scarce resources paying for websites that don’t work for them. They can’t afford commercial rates and so their sites are either developed by experienced designers, who don’t understand the sector and because they have a business to run design a low-cost site that is basic, or else they find a volunteer who doesn’t always understand what works. The upshot is sites that do not work properly and can be a liability.
We need to approach developing a web presence on a shoestring in a different way. Wasting scarce resources on sites that don’t work is hardly satisfactory. If you have time to invest, then you can learn the basics, perhaps calling in professional help when you get stuck or want to try something new.
An assessment is a good starting point and you can find out what it involves on my website. I’m planning a host of tools to help you develop your web presence and maintain it in-house as far as possible.
If after you’ve read about assessments, you’re not sure whether it is right for you, I’d be happy to take a look at your current website. I can do this in a very short time and offer some ideas about where it is going wrong (and where it is going right!). A site review might help you work out why your site does not attract support.
One last thing. I do charge for some services. If I say something is free, it is free and subject only to the usual constraints in law, eg copyright, you are welcome to use the free material on the site.
If you can’t find what you’re looking for, tell me. The site is nowhere near complete and so I will be delighted to add material to help you if I can. We desperately need to develop online communities that will help us re-build our real life communities. If we’re going to do this we need to learn how to buy and sell online. Stay with me and find out what I mean.
It would be brilliant to hear from you. Let me know what you think and what you would like me to write about. And don’t forget to sign up to the blog!