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: IT Strategy
Skill Type: Strategy
Region: South East
Locality: Orpington
Postcode: BR6
Virtual: No

Description: This charity provides services to those requiring palliative care in Bromley. They have a network of more than 50 PCs all running Windows XP. They would like you to write their IT strategy and include ideas of what they could with IT but aren't doing. Their offices are accessible.

Opportunity Name: New Brochure-type Intranet Website
Skill Type: Website
Region: South East
Locality: Orpington
Postcode: BR6
Virtual: No

Description: This charity provides services to those requiring palliative care in Bromley. They have an existing website, but would like an intranet site to run on the existing Windows web server for internal staff use only. They want it to provide staff access to news items, policy, operational procedures, useful links and other documents. Of course they'll need to maintain it after you've gone, so they need a simple CMS. You'll need to define the new pages in more detail, implement a simple CMS, build the new pages, and train them to update the website. Their offices are accessible.

Opportunity Name: Review & plan for interactive website for young people's charity
Skill Type: Website
Region: London
Locality: Radlett
Postcode: WD7
Virtual: Yes

Description: This Charity runs workshops and events for young people with a team of facilitators working in schools and youth clubs. This is an ambitious & successful project and they now need a technical volunteer to assist them to implement their plans to better use their website. They would like young people to be able to publish and share their stories online via the website, they have a brief for this and although this is a future development would like some assistance reviewing the plans now. The volunteer role is to work with the programme director and their current web designer to advise to help review the technical briefs for young people 'user generated content' (CMS or other solution).

Opportunity Name: Website Redesign, Web 2.0 Guidance, and Donations via PayPal
Skill Type: Website
Region: London
Locality: London
Postcode: NW5
Virtual: No

Description: This social care charity provides services to young people with learning difficulties and their families. This is an interesting opportunity to redesign and improve an existing website, and provide guidance on different technologies. They have an existing website which is bright and informative, however, they want your ideas on layout and design, especially in relation to it being a marketing tool to their different audiences. They need more pages for projects, an online registration form, and a page to take donations via PayPal. Whilst they have some familiarity with Dreamweaver, they need your advice about whether to continue to use Dreamweaver or to use a CMS; if they opt for the latter, you'll need to implement a CMS for them. They also need your guidance about providing interactive functionality for their audiences, and for you to implement it.

Opportunity Name: Explore options for improved e-mail or text communications
Skill Type: Consultancy
Region: London
Locality: Hackney
Postcode: E8
Virtual: No

Description: This charity based near Kingsland station, London, have been operating community arts projects for over 30 years. One of their main events is a literature project which runs workshops and events aimed at encouraging people into writing. This year they will be organising a UK-wide literature festival. They have a large database of about 5000 contacts. Some of these contacts are sent their bi-annual magazine; others receive the course brochure. The charity is looking for advice on more efficient ways to contact these people. Currently they are unable to extract e-mail addresses from the database and they would like a volunteer to help them explore this and the options for sending HTML or RTF e-mails. They would also like to consider the possibility of communicating via SMS text messages. They use web-mail but do have access to Outlook. The charity is aware that other organisations running similar projects are making much better use of technology and don't want to be left behind. Initially they'd like you to look at their requirements and suggest some options to make their communications more efficient and attractive to the recipients. You could then help them implement their chosen option and they will try to get funding for any software they need to buy. Their building isn't accessible for wheelchair users.

Opportunity Name: Requirements document for interactive website
Skill Type: Consultancy
Region: London
Locality: Tower Hamlets
Postcode: E2
Virtual: Yes

Description: This not-for-profit company managed an EDRF-funded project to provide advice and support to sole traders, social entrepreneurs, micro businesses and social enterprises, run by or supporting people from excluded communities in Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Newham. The project ended in March 2007. Since it was much more successful than expected, helping over 1,100 small businesses, they want to continue providing support through web-based resources. They would like to replace their existing website with a much-more interactive site. They want to be able to provide on-line support to businesses, help small businesses form partnerships and promote capacity building and sustainability. They are looking for a volunteer who can help them evaluate their ideas for the site and create a realistic specification. They would then use the specification to commission the development of the site and would appreciate advice during that process. It is important that the specification should include plans for long-term sustainability so that they can add new features to the site as necessary. This opportunity can probably be done remotely but the contact is happy to travel for a face-to-face meeting.

Opportunity Name: Mambo built website - advice and training
Skill Type: Website
Region: London
Locality: Merton
Postcode: CR4
Virtual: Yes

Description: This community development trust based in Mitcham works with the communities of East Merton, running lunch clubs for older people, projects for young Mums and other environmentally aware programmes. Their current website (built by volunteers from the US) does not accurately reflect their work as the content is not up to date. They haven't been able to find a volunteer who has worked with Mambo, so they are looking for a volunteer who would like to learn Mambo, and help them bring their website up to date, and at the end, train them how to use Mambo.

Opportunity Name: Special needs charity needs vital database help
Skill Type: Database
Region: East of England
Locality: Norwich
Postcode: NR3
Virtual: Yes

Description: This charity works throughout Norfolk running music and movement sessions for children and young people with special needs. The sessions, which include song, dance, puppets and playing instruments, help the children gain new skills such as using their imagination and generally gain in confidence. Their Access contact database is causing problems, displaying error messages and has become increasingly unstable. (They have an additional problem that there are now 2 versions of the database and they are unclear which is the most accurate). They would like a volunteer to assess the database situation and help them repair it. If this is not possible, they would like a volunteer to help them build a new one. This database is vital to the running of the charity as allows them to prepare reports for funders and monitor their work. Your time would make a vital contribution to the charity and the young people they work with, please can you help? Although they would need you to attend at least one visit to Norwich, they feel that it might be possible for the work to be completed quickly or remotely.

Opportunity Name: Creation of Short Film or Animation for website
Skill Type: Creative Design
Region: Wales
Locality:
Postcode: NP22
Virtual: No

Description: This aspiring social enterprise in Blaenau, Wales, is being spun out from a charity which designs complementary currency systems to promote bottom-up social and economic regeneration. The new organisation is an institute housed by several universities from around the world to design, develop and test new 'tools' and systems for economic and social development, in the UK and in the rest of the world. They have strong links and partners in several developing countries, and gave a presentation to the Commonwealth Forum in Kampala in November. They want your help to create a short film or animation to go on the new website (which is another opportunity) - whilst they have a firm story, the graphics haven't been created yet.

Opportunity Name: New Brochure-type website with CMS
Skill Type: Website
Region: Wales
Locality:
Postcode: NP22
Virtual: Yes

Description: This aspiring social enterprise in Blaenau, Wales, is being spun out from a charity which designs complementary currency systems to promote bottom-up social and economic regeneration. The new organisation is an institute housed by several universities from around the world to design, develop and test new 'tools' and systems for economic and social development, in the UK and in the rest of the world. They have strong links and partners in several developing countries, and gave a presentation to the Commonwealth Forum in Kampala in November. They want your help to create a really effective web site to show what they're doing and as a showcase for their partners - a collective identity is of paramount importance. The domain name has already been bought. They'll need to update it after you've gone, so they'll need a CMS, to change text and images, and create new pages. They have a good idea of what they want, including a contact form, and a links page, and a short film or animation (which is another opportunity). You'll need to: define the website content and structure in detail, guide them in signing up for suitable hosting, build the website, implement domain-based email, and show them how to maintain mailboxes, implement a CMS, and instruct them in its use, provide user codes and passwords for access.