About iT4Communities
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iT4Communities is a charity supporting IT volunteering in the UK. We are funded by the charitable arm of the Information Technologists' Company and by corporate sponsorship.
We are a small team supporting a large network of IT professional volunteers throughout the UK and, occasionally, overseas. Since our inception in 2002 our volunteers have delivered over £2.5 million worth of support to charities and voluntary sector organisations in the UK.
We work with charities, large and small, voluntary groups and social enterprises. An organisation with an IT need can contact us and we will help them analyse their requirements. Through our website we will then advertise their request to our network of highly-skilled volunteers.
Once a volunteer has started working with a charity we provide advice and support to both parties throughout the project.
Please contact us if you would like further information about what we do.
How it started
it has been a terrific kick to make good on promises that we made 30 years ago about how the IT industry would improve people's lives
Rodney Hornstein, Liveryman of the Information Technologists' Company
The idea for iT4Communities came out of the Information Technologists' Company's charitable programme which had already demonstrated the value of expert IT advice to charities. Research commissioned by John Fisher of Citizens Online also showed that, while the IT sector as a whole was positive about community involvement, many companies weren't sure how to get started or how to do this effectively.
At the same time, Gail Bradbrook (then working at Business in the Community) was piloting a day dedicated to IT volunteering projects, MAD 4 IT, which received wide support from IT companies and professionals.
The time was right for the iT4Communities initiative to take shape - with the unwitting support of Costa Coffee and Cafe Nero, who hosted many of the early discussions between David Edwards (then Operations Director of the Information Technologists' Company), Gail and John.
David Jefferson (Council member of Intellect) and Geoff McMullen and David Morris (both of whom have served as President of the BCS) greeted the project with enthusiasm and, with the invaluable support of Roger Graham and Mike Warburg of the Information Technologists' Company and Jean Irvine (BCS and the Information Technologists' Company), iT4Communities was launched.
The founding partners of iT4Communities were
- The British Computer Society
- Computer Weekly
- Citizens Online
- Intellect
Early grant funding and sponsorship was provided by The Baring Foundation, British Computer Society and IBM and Microsoft.