Free SCIP Manuals for Web Design

We have three sets of web design workshops running at the moment, teaching people how to set up and run a website using Wordpress.com. The notes for this course are available for free download from a site we've created to support this training.

Wordpress.com is fairly easy to use and it has some great support pages, but we recommend the Dummies Guide for those who want to buy a book - mainly because this includes info on wordpress.com as well as running your own version of wordpress.

We have also published some of our own notes to help our learners, including:

1. Wordpress tips and how-to's - mainly for those things where we found the Dummies Guide less helpful;
2. A Guide to Running Your Own Community Website - tips about setting up your page, whether or not you use Wordpress.com, plus roles and responsibilites, launching your site and so on.

Both are available for download at scipdiy.wordpress.com.

Turning websites into email

I love email and I get loads of it every day. I filter it off into various folders and try very hard to only read messages that require an action - and leave the rest until I have set aside 10 minutes or so for catching up. And now I love SendMeRSS, for sending RSS feeds sent straight to my email in-tray, giving me all sorts of news and updates as they're added to the web.

I love mailing lists and discussion forums because I can dip into specialist networks and keep track of trends and ideas, just by running through a folder full of emails. I also love having email on my Blackberry because I can ignore stuff as it comes into my in-tray on my computer at work, but then catch up later [usually as I put the kids to bed].

I also love pootling around websites but find that time goes very quickly and I always end up promising to go back to something - and then never do. So I've signed up to a load of RSS feeds, that mean I can see the latest stories as they're added to a website. The RSS Feed Reader built into my browser [Flock] is fine, and you can also get RSS or News Readers as standalone applications. But I want all the information I can get coming into my one place  - and in my case it's my email in-tray.

Some websites offer an email subscription, so you can receive news regularly. But many sites don't have this facility, which means you  need to check your RSS Reader or go off surfing on the off chance that something's been added.

SendMeRSS lets me sign up to receive emails every time a website is changed. So I can keep track of any page that has an RSS feed [which is a lot of them these days] and then receive an email containing the story as it is added.

There are other tools like this out there - www.rssfwd.com and FeedMailer.net amongst them - but this has worked the best so far. I get an account lsting my feeds and they come through nice and promptly. Oh, and it's free...

Send RSS feeds to your email | Home

Community-sector Drupal Conference

Drupal is a powerful open source tool for creating websites that can be managed by people without a high degree of technical skills. It is a very popular tool with a large community of users, and it is free.

Many people around the world use Drupal to set up sites for not for profit organisation - we've been using at SCIP for several years, including our own site at www.scip.org.uk. The initial set up stage still requires a specialist web developer, but once it's in place it can offer very powerful features to anyone with basic keyboard and mouse skills.

These sites are becoming increasingly popular for small and medium sized community organisations, alongside the growth of personal sites such as Blogger. You can change content quickly and easily, add photographs and useful links to other sites, add news stories and tidy up loose ends, such as when staff or job titles change.

Drupal has developed thanks to the commitment and collaboration of a wide range of people across the world. This conference in Coventry in late August is for web developrs with a specific interest in creating sites for the voluntary sector. It's just £15 and is being organised by Illuminate ICT.

Our Drupal Conference | www.illuminateict.org.uk

Free manuals for open source products

Floss Manuals is a great website that lets you build manuals for a wide range of free software. You can pick and choose which software you want to know about and it will build a manual that you can download as a pdf.

There are loads of free open source tools out there that can do the same thing as software you can pay for - free software available online you can download and use without paying a license fee. So far so good, but, unlike Microsoft and other standard suppliers, it can sometimes be hard to find user-friendly information about how to use it.

It's all very well installing a free copy of Open Office if you're confident about learning new software skills, but it's a lot harder for people who aren't happy clicking about trying to make it work. And there aren't that yet Dummies' Guides for even the most popular open source products.

That's why Floss Manuals is a great idea. It's a well-designed website that let's you select the products you want to know about and download pdfs of the manuals. Follow the link to see how it helps you get the most from OpenOffice, which is a free alternative to the suite of Microsoft Office applications including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. OpenOffice manuals

Fundraising and the Internet

Fundraising is the lifeblood of the sector, but how can the internet help? Well, it can help you with:

• Research that supports your fundraising
• Where’s the money?
• Information to support my bids
• Raising money from donors
• Improving your fundraising skills

I compiled the following list of sites as part of a review of useful sites for a training course I'm planning. Although a lot of it may appear to be local information I'd suggest it all has some value wherever you work:

East Sussex Bidding Bulletin
The Bidding Bulletin is updated monthly and is the most comprehensive listing of current funding sources I have found anywhere in the country, including deadlines, contact details of all live funding pots. Mainly relevant to south east of England, but worth a look for any fundraiser.

West Sussex Grant Finder
Where’s the money? Use this free service to search for current grants information. Not 100% relevant to Brighton & Hove but better than anything we have online here.

Government Statistics
Relevant facts and figures emphasise the value of your work and add weight to your application. Now you can view all sorts of Government statistics - just put in your postcode and see the census data for your neighbourhood, plus loads of other useful information to cut and paste into your funding bids.
Take donations online at bmycharity
Take donations online – you pay a commission but can easily take donations and add tax relief without having an online banking facility. You can also try www.justgiving.com for the same service.

Popular local funders
Brighton Resource Centre maintains a list of popular funders, especially aimed at small local groups. Every CVS or local support group could do this quite easily - does yours?

Professional fundraising information
This is at the professional end of the fundraising spectrum but may alert you to training courses or new ideas.

Advice about how to make a bid
Lots of useful leaflets and information to download from the Funderfinfer website about how to do fundraising – from beginner to expert level.

You can also subscribe to various email alerts to receive news updates about fundraising by email. Keep your eye open as you surf these links and let the information come to you.

The fine art of making a presentation

I've just stumbled across a wonderful example of how tools such as Powerpoint and graphs and charts can be a tool for powerful and highly effective communications. I urge you to watch it through to the end to remind you just what makes a great presentation work - and also because it's about world poverty and raises all sorts of questions about its causes and effects.


I'm preparing notes for a workshop on presentations, which will combine a session I run on the use of powerpoint with a workshop that someone else delivers that focuses on body language and confidence-building. We're taking the best bits from each to produce a two-day course for staff and volunteers from community and voluntary organisations in Brighton & Hove.

Whilst Powerpoint may be a staple tool of business there are many people in the voluntary sector who do not use it, and in fact are often anti-Powerpoint. This may be because they don't have access to the tools, or often because they feel an aversion to it - having suffered too many times at the hands of a poor quality presentation made worse by awful slideshows.

The availability of cheaper laptops and projectors means it is now becoming more common for people to use them - we hire them out at SCIP and have seen a massive change in the numbers being borrowed in the past few years. Today a new laptop plus projector may cost no more than about £700 , and it's a great tool for community work and outreach.

But, instead of being liberated by the opportunity to prepare and share information in such a flexible way there is still an underlying assumption that Powerpoint = boring, and an antipathy towards its use. Mainly this is because too many people have suffered as people use all the gadgets at their disposal without any consideration about how it helps tell their story. Rather than embrace the technology and use it as a tool it has become someting you have to apologise for.

I think this video shows how we need to look beyond the technology to see that it is the story and the storyteller that matter - but also how they can use the tools available to help you listen, learn and respond. It subtly underlines that you need to be in control of your tools - this is a master craftsman cleverly combining highly technical skills to make an incredibly powerful point.

TED | Talks | Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world (video)