smartChange

Our extensive research and discussion with the voluntary sector had convinced us that there was a need to enable effective use of the Internet by charities and voluntary groups. We believed that new technology could help the not-for-profit sector to become more effective and efficient and allow member organisations to maximise their core objectives. Though initially aimed at assisting smaller charities participants eventually ranged across the entire spectrum of charities in the UK.

For charities

As a first step an online database was built which could be easily accessed by the organizations wishing to participate in the project, (smartchange partners). Each partner organization could very rapidly create a profile of itself. This profile could be regularly updated. We facilitated the use of images and graphics thus allowing the profiles to have the maximum visual impact. To assist partners we ran a number of workshops that allowed them to come to grips with the technology requirements and allowed us to better understand and improve our offering to them.

The database also effectively acted as a website for the partner and gave those partners that did not have one, an Internet address. Partners with existing web sites could link these to the smartchange profiles. In such circumstances significant cost savings were made for smartchange partners. (Source: The annual cost of running a charity website. Virtual Promise Report, 2000)

For companies

The smartchange profiles database was then marketed to a large number of the UK's largest employers. Many of these large companies agreed to link their own intranets to the smartchange partner database. This meant that there was now a channel for the employees of these companies to search for charities that they wished to support. The ease of being able to search for charities by name, type and location from the employees desktop proved popular with all participants.

Employees could research charity profiles and choose to volunteer their time or give monetary contributions through the payroll or by credit card. Time and cost savings were made by automating these processes and the reduction in paperwork was positively received by the payroll departments. The employers were also able to monitor their employee involvement with charities in a very efficient way and could therefore collect and report this data to their stockholders and the community at large.

Our contribution

Our work included extensive consultation with charities and voluntary groups, large employers, think tanks, umbrella organisations and government departments. This was further supported through a number of conferences which allowed stakeholders and partners to understand and assist each other.

Our technical and non-technical contribution included the following:

• Assistance with formulating objects and with legal registration as a charity
• Business process engineering
• Security and legal consultation
• Project management
• Database population and data management
• Front-end visual design
• Middleware
• Back office integration
• New media marketing
• Below the line marketing
• Public relations
• Event management

In addition some of the technologies used include:

• Apache server
• Linux web servers
• mySQL
• PHP delivered content
• SSL security
• Session control
• full content management system
• database driven project/volunteering matching system
• Integration with corporate intranets through firewalls and other defensive measures