Envirofunz
[October 2002] Envirofunz is a database which covers funding for environmental and conservation projects in Aotearoa / New Zealand. The Funding Information Service developed this database under contract with the Ministry for the Environment to provide help to groups and individuals looking for funding for environmental and conservation projects.
Envirofunz has a clear, simple layout, a friendly tone and makes good use of plain language. Pages loaded quite quickly. It makes use of frames though which have the danger of pages losing their context and navigation, especially if you choose to open a linked page into a new window.
The Home Page has news items with a handy list of closing dates coming up soon. Useful Links offers links to a dozen different related websites, all within New Zealand. The Feedback page has a short easy questionnaire form about the site but doesn't offer any contact addresses. The About Us page however does have clear contact information along with some background about the Envirofunz database.
"Other Stuff" suddenly leaves the site and goes to the Funding Information Service. This is quite a jarring surprise as the link looks as though it will take the visitor to just another page on the same site. This link should really be incorporated into the Useful Links page.
The substance of the site though lies in the links to relevant funding. You can access these by a search from the Search Page or via an alphabetical list (one letter at a time).
Searches are easy to carry out and as you enter criteria from drop-down boxes a "My Search" box appears on the left-hand side of the screen, building up your criteria as you go and finally allowing you to click the Find Funding Now button.
The search results seemed clear and actually helpful, offering grouped results according to how closely the potential funding source matched the criteria.
There is also an alphabetical list of links, which is easily accessible. The alphabetical list also offers a "fuzzy" set of categories with a star system indicating how narrowly targeted the funding is. It would be useful though to see some alternate text for the star graphics; an * might be suitable.
While I have some suspicions about accessibility, and while it needs alternate text for the images, this is overall a very useful site with an excellent search facility.
If you're looking for funding for projects this is well worth a visit.
http://www.envirofunz.org.nz/