Opportunities of the Month

Opportunities are listed on this page because we've recently talked with the charity and they've told us that they are desperate for a volunteer to help them. Are you that volunteer?

If you contact the charity and they tell you that someone else has recently started work on the opportunity please ask them to contact info@it4communities.org.uk so that we can assist them in assigning that volunteer to the opportunity. Once a volunteer has been assigned the opportunity will be automatically removed from the iT4C website.

For these and more volunteer opportunities sign-in to your account and "Search for Opportunities". Alternatively click on the link on the opportunity name below to go directly to the opportunity you're interested in.

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Opportunity Name: Troubleshooting and planning (Sharepoint & Network)
Skill Type: Technical Support
Region: South East
Locality:
Postcode: CM1
Virtual: No

Description: This Charity established in 1939 now has 100 affiliated clubs across the entire of Essex running outdoor pursuits & sporting activities and programmes for boys and young men. The Chelmsford based office runs a network and server that hosts SharePoint and exchange. Although this in essence helps them to share information with each other it is not ideal and has certain problems such as 1) login problems from remote offices due to IP address problems 2) Publisher files saved in SharePoint 3) Office Diary is not working well with Exchange/SharePoint. They are looking for a volunteer who is experienced in working with SharePoint and a mixed NT, 2000 & XP network environment and with remote workers to solve these frustrations and audit the way they currently have the network set up to ensure they are using it effectively. It is important to them that the volunteer is able to visit and to understand the Charities communication needs and be able to convert this into an effective network/information & file share system.

Opportunity Name: Website update and easy to use CMS
Skill Type: Website
Region: London
Locality: Harringay
Postcode: N10
Virtual: No

Description: This long-established north London church has an existing frames-based website, and they would like it updated to reflect a more professional image and to be accessible. The website is currently maintained by the pastor. They want to reach out to potential worshippers as well as providing support for their existing congregation, for example, sermons as PDFs, hymns and prayers as playable/downloadable sound files, to provide a contact form to minimise interruptions for the pastor. You'll need to: define the website content and structure in more detail, explore whether a simple CMS would be useful, build the website, write notes about updating the website and train them.

Opportunity Name: Choose and install a CMS system
Skill Type: Website
Region: London
Locality: Lambeth
Postcode: SE1
Virtual: Yes

Description: This social enterprise promotes healthy and carbon-friendly work and leisure walking. It has an existing innovative website currently maintained by 2 very busy technical people. They need a database driven content management system which will store information submitted from online forms, and enable several non-technical users in different locations to maintain content and add new pages, and preferably have the flexibility to be upgraded in the future to cater for secure user registration. They would prefer an open source solution but have a small budget, if required. Some training on using the CMS will be needed. They have no office, and expect the work to be done remotely, however they would prefer to meet you. The website uses PHP and offers MySQL database facilities.

Opportunity Name: Help employment charity make better use of IT
Skill Type: Audit/strategy
Region: London
Locality: Camden
Postcode: NW1
Virtual: No

Description: This charity works mainly in the London Boroughs of Southwark, Brent and Camden to help people improve their job skills and get into worthwhile employment. They do this via short training courses and 1-to-1 sessions. They have an office in each borough and also do a lot of outreach work. The charity is not very organised in IT terms and would like a volunteer to help them put together a strategy. They would like to learn about the options available to them so that they can make informed choices and put together a plan for the future. The volunteer should be prepared to evaluate their existing systems and procedures and suggest better ways of working. Example problems include the challenges of tracking multiple projects across three sites and reporting against targets using data held in Excel spreadsheets.

Opportunity Name: Web Design Brief - help and advice [This is a short task]
Skill Type: Website
Region: London
Locality:
Postcode: SW17
Virtual: No

Description: This charity provides practical support to people with mild to moderate learning disabilities, to help shape their own future. They wish to produce a fairly simple website that will provide accessible information to their members and to potential funders/supporters and the wider public. They are looking for support from a volunteer to help get this up and running. They have a web designer in place but need someone to help the charity review all their resources for potential content, to consider longer term sustainability and to liaise with the web designer on their behalf. This would be a very enjoyable project that could either be relatively short or could become longer term project, planning the next stage of the web development (maybe involving member generated content).

Opportunity Name: ASP and database development
Skill Type: Website
Region: South West
Locality: Ottery St Mary
Postcode: EX11
Virtual: Yes

Description: This trust and associated social enterprise work to promote all types of complementary medicine particularly to people in disadvantaged groups who wouldn't normally be able to afford such therapies. They run workshops, seminars and training courses and provide fully qualified therapists. Through links to local health centres in North and East Devon they provide a range of services such as reflexology, massage, homeopathy, etc. To support their work they would like to expand their existing website to incorporate a number of interactive database-driven features. They plan three strands to the site - a members-only area with newsletters, etc; a section for organisations to request therapy sessions for their service users and a password-protected area for therapists to record details of their availability. This development must be done using ASP to fit with their existing site and hosting package. Their existing hosting package has the necessary facilities, e.g. database and SSL support, but can be expanded if necessary. Accessibility is very important to them and the site must continue to conform to AAA standards. The contact at the charity is IT literate and will work closely with the volunteer to define the requirements for the site. They are mainly looking for a volunteer to do the programming and database development but would also welcome input on the design of the site. They are happy to work remotely with a volunteer but would be able to travel for initial face-to-face meetings.

Opportunity Name: Modifying open-source PHP scripts
Skill Type: Programming
Region: Yorkshire & Humberside
Locality: Hebden Bridge
Postcode: HX7
Virtual: Yes

Description: This charity provides various community facilities to local people in the Calder Valley area of West Yorkshire. They have always been interested in IT and provide advice and support to other charities and community groups in the region. They often help groups develop their own websites, sometimes hosting them alongside their own. One of the sites they have responsibility for is an important community resource and averages over a quarter of a million hits per month. However, the server has recently been upgraded to PHP 5 and some of the site's PHP scripts, including a guestbook and bulletin board, no longer work. The charity is looking for a volunteer with PHP and MySQL expertise to help them upgrade the scripts to the latest version. All these scripts are based on open source programs but have been modified to suit the house-style of the website. The charity is flexible about how this work is done. The volunteer can commit as much time as they wish. If they are interested there may be further opportunities to suggest additional features for the site or to work on other sites supported by the charity. The volunteer will need to undergo some checks, as he/she will need to have access to all the passwords for the site.

Opportunity Name: Complex Excel Spreadsheets Advice Please [This is a short task]
Skill Type: Advice
Region: Scotland
Locality: Edinburgh
Postcode: EH16
Virtual: Yes

Description: This charity based in a deprived area of Edinburgh aim to support local people in developing small businesses. The organisation keeps detailed sales records on complex spreadsheets. They would like a volunteer to help with two main aspects of this 1) to set up a mail merge process that will generate letters to the businesses they are helping and 2) to set up annual templates (or other solution) so that the formulas/sheets can be used year on year This opportunity needs a volunteer prepared to visit the charity to understand how they use the spreadsheets and work with them to provide the solutions that will help them run more time effectively.

Opportunity Name: Learner Records Database for new Not For Profit organisation
Skill Type: Database
Region: London
Locality: LB of Redbridge
Postcode: IG1
Virtual: No

Description: This new not for profit community organisation provides employment skills training (including technical training) to disadvantaged individuals in the Redbridge area. They have a small staff team of 2 and a team of volunteer trainers. To keep efficient records of the learners and to produce reports needed to evaluate the work of their service for funders/supporters they require a learner database. They would like a volunteer to work alongside them to produce an Access database that they would be able to use in this way. This would be a suitable project for a volunteer with good Access skills. As a training organisation they would like to be able to offer the person who is able to assist them the opportunity to also receive training from one of their training team if you would like to.

Opportunity Name: IT strategy/review required for Essex Hospice
Skill Type: Strategy
Region: London
Locality: Romford
Postcode: RM4
Virtual: No

Description: This Hospice is an End of Life/Palliative care provider, with services ranging from patient wards, a day hospice, hospice at home, community teams and an education centre. They have been running for over 20 years and their IT systems have grown in a piecemeal fashion with the end result being that the Accounts, HR database and the donor database and the patient records are not able to share data or at least currently don't. The technical infrastructure of the hospice is well managed by an IT support company and is stable and reliable but the Hospice would like to review the software that they use. They would like to work with a system's analyst, preferably with experience in working in a healthcare environment who can help them ensure they have software that is fit for purpose now and help plan for the future so that they are able to manage their funds as efficiently as possible. This hospice works hard to ensure they have the funding they require to provide this invaluable service, your volunteer work would make a valuable contribution to ensuring their limited but vital IT funds are well spent.