Volunteering Canterbury

[December 2002] Volunteering Canterbury, an incorporated charitable trust that supports and promotes volunteering, has a well-designed website that is useful and information rich.

The website offers information about the organisation, as well as information about services and events, how to become a volunteer, some links and papers.

A database of volunteer jobs is available, searchable by geographical area and by job category (eg sport, tutoring). The search is quick and effective, and once completed you can register your interest for a position with an online form. Those needing volunteers can also register with Volunteering Canterbury.

The Services page has a clear listing of what is available, while the Papers section has a good dozen downloadable PDF files, including titles such as The Value of Volunteering and Inspiring Involvement. This page could be more useful if it mentioned the size of the
download, but there is a helpful link for those who need to download Acrobat Reader.

While the home page of the site highlights events coming up, there is a full listing in the Events section. Events listed are current and also extend well into next year. This is a page you feel you can trust.

The links page features volunteer centres, primarily in New Zealand, with good contact information for those (many) which don't have websites.

This is a superb website, with just a few failings in the link text - the occasional "Click here" reduces accessibility and reduces search engine rankings. Link text should always contain high content words. For example: "Find out more about this here", where "here" is the link, would be more effective if it read: "Find out more about Employee Volunteering".

This site even has a ghost to add a little spice:

On one page there's a link which doesn't appear on other pages: 2001IYV, while from the Home Page (but from nowhere else) you can reach information about Employee Volunteering and a slightly strange little page about volunteering in South Canterbury.

A quick, but thorough tidy up would sort out these very minor bugs. Consistent navigation is very important in making a site both usable and credible.

The site though is well put together, easy to navigate, clear, fast-loading and friendly, and above all, useful. Switch off your images, and even your stylesheet, and you can still use the whole site without impediment.

http://www.volcan.org.nz/