Creating Volunteering Canterbury's website
Creating a Volunteering Canterbury website has brought many benefits, and due to skilled input and enthusiasm, little stress.
www.volcan.org.nz
In the late twentieth century we became aware that websites were increasingly being used to provide information and reach a large range of people. The idea that Volunteering Canterbury (VolCan) might have a website had been briefly discussed, but was not a high priority especially as we lacked the expertise and resources to do anything about it.
The beginnings
In April 2000 our Manager Ruth Gardner attended the Flaxroots Technology Conference in Wellington. This gave her a concentrated opportunity to think and talk about websites and to clarify her ideas. In May 2000 a Polytech computer studies student did an assignment for us setting out possible options. In September we formulated a plan for how we might go about it.
A volunteer who had completed a course on web 'authoring' offered to do the design. We decided on broad goals, characteristics, and target dates for stage one which was a basic website. Interactivity, where volunteers could be referred to positions "online" was planned for a possible second stage. The initiative for stage two came partly from feedback we had received from several agencies who said they wanted to get as many volunteer referrals as possible and were happy to do all the screening themselves.
Building the website
A number of meetings were held, involving volunteer and paid staff, Board members and interested outsiders, and decisions were made about the text we wanted to go on the website. Progress was discussed monthly by the Board.
The volunteer designer got paid work soon after this and although she was willing to continue we were aware that she would rather be relieved of the commitment. Around this time our Manager happened to be talking to the man in charge of the City Council's website about our plans and he offered for a member of his team to do our design (an example of Employee Volunteering). We could hardly believe our luck! Fraser, the volunteer webweaver was wonderful … very skilled and worked very quickly. He dealt directly with the Manager except for a couple of meetings where other staff were involved.
We went "live" on International Volunteer Day 5 December 2000. Fraser enjoyed the project and did work in his own time as well as paid time. He continued to help us occasionally over the next few years with tasks such as adding new pages.
Keeping the website up-to-date
The site was designed so that our staff can change any of the text easily, using FrontPage which is part of the Microsoft Office suite. We can honestly say this is no more difficult than editing a Word document and sending it in an email.
One of our requirements was that the website Home page should always look up-to-date (having visited many sites that are obviously outdated), so we decided to put a few current events there. This section and the events section are the ones we maintain regularly … basically whenever an event has happened or a new one is organised.
Our Manager found the whole exercise very satisfying mainly because it was a finite project that interested her. Many of our other projects are ongoing or highly influenced by outside factors and this was different.
Stage two
In 2001, International Year of Volunteers, the Government decided to give funding support for Volunteer Centres and part of our application was for $3,000 to make our website interactive. This money went partly to our website hosts (Plain Communication) and partly to our database designers (Original Software) to write the necessary interfaces to allow a copy of our database to be on the website. The other two Centres using the same database are Western Bay of Plenty and Dunedin. Gisborne is no longer using it and Tauranga has changed to WBOP.
The interactive Stage Two went live in April 2002. The website database holds information about over three hundred available volunteer positions. Whenever a new position is registered the agency involved is asked whether they want it to go on the website. Only a very few positions are withheld from the website because the agency wants to know that any volunteers referred have been personally interviewed by us.
The website database is updated weekly (we could do it more often if we wished). This is a simple task too. Website registrations and referrals arrive daily as emails and are loaded into our central database. We find many people who've come through the website later come into the centre for further referral and vice versa.
Costs and benefits on going online
The only ongoing costs we have are for hosting and domain names (we have two because we changed our name in 2001). Apart from the $3,000 for developing the interactive stage, the only other cost was staff time.
The number of visits is currently over sixty a day. Average 'hits' are 400 a day. Website registrations make up a third of our total registrations and we're confident this will increase once changes being implemented in May 2005 are complete. Volunteering New Zealand has a recruitment website www.volunteernow.org.nz with funding from the Tindall Foundation. Our website is linked to this which provides another way for volunteers to find us.
We find many site visitors are interested in other things apart from registering as volunteers. We get requests for resources and find the papers we have on the web are useful. Quotes from these turn up in all kinds of places. People come to our events because they've seen them on the site. And it's great for those overseas volunteering queries!
Some comments we've received about the website
The thing that most impressed me about it was how clear and easy it was to look at and find your way around. We are in the process of developing a website at the moment but it's pretty slow as I'm teaching myself how to use Frontpage to make it. You've inspired me to keep going. January 2001
I was so appreciative that I could find (information) through the internet. March 2001
Having a website is a brilliant idea. June 2002
The site is well put together, easy to navigate, clear, fast-loading and friendly, and above all, useful. CommunityNet Aotearoa Site of the Month, December 2002
We get so many volunteers through the VolCan website — at least twelve out of the last sixty who applied. February 2003
Thank you. I really liked being able to search your website at my leisure and as a result have found an interesting project. August 2004
I was greatly impressed by the helpfulness of your website, it is very well designed. October 2004
What an amazing website you've got! (ACC vocational provider) Nov. 2004
Thanks very much, your website is an extremely good resource, from a volunteer who selected two referrals. Jan 05
I am just putting together some basic pages on our website, and would like to "steal" some of the information you have on yours as it is simply stated and easy to follow. March 2004
Next steps
In early 2005 we completed a full review of the website and are now in the process of completing changes. As well as making the registration and referral proces more user-friendly with improved search facilities we plan to add a Resources page with a number of useful handouts.
Recipe for success
In summary, the project went smoothly due to:
- Active management involvement and 'buy-in' from the Board.
- Basing developments on what website visitors and Centre clients wanted, not what a designer or technical person said they could do.
- Access to a skilled and enthusiastic volunteer meant the development process was straightforward. A DIY website would have taken more time and new skills, and may not have been as good.
- Defining from the outset the need for the website to be easily maintained by Volunteering Canterbury staff.
If anyone has any questions they're welcome to contact our Manager, Ruth Gardner ruth@volcan.org.nz
© 2003 Volunteering Canterbury. Updated May 2005.
The organisation that has published this case study is acknowledged as its author. The intellectual property remains with the author. You may not copy, republish or distribute this case-study or the content from it, without having obtained permission from the author.