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The "Voluntary and Community" sector is effectively a large and disparate grouping of charities, not-for-profit companies and self-help groups, ranging from multi-national organisations with wide influence ("Oxfam") to local gatherings for a single purpose ("Stop the A34 Expansion"). Probably the only consistent factor linking the Sector is the voluntary involvement of people in most of these groups. The needs of the Sector,
therefore, are to inform and contact similarly-concerned people,
recruit volunteers, raise funds, raise awareness. Smaller organisations
(and notably, some larger ones) have been slow to understand and
utilize the impact of electronic communication. |
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Good Informational sites (not necessarily good-looking, though): The National Council for Voluntary Organisations the leading membership organisation for the UK voluntary sector; represents views of and for the sector; publishes; researches; etc. Great site and very functional VolResource portal for info about the voluntary & community sector; well-informed and good links including warnings where linked sites are not-accessible National Association of Councils for Voluntary Service umbrella organisation for Councils of Voluntary Service, which are themselves local umbrella groups for the voluntary & community sector Scottish portal for the voluntary & community sector as the law is somewhat different in Scotland CSV volunteering and voluntary sector training organisation Volunteering England – National Centre for Volunteering. Co-ordinating body to promote and encourage people to volunteer and to enable organisations to make better use of volunteers 2005 is the Year of the Volunteer, with different themes or focus for each month Timebank High-profile, heavily promoted by Govt. and much much more trendy than Volunteering England, but not a supposed to be any rival. UK Home Office - Active Communities Unit. One of the most important developments for the voluntary sector was the setting-up of the UK Government’s Active Communities Unit, which supports and brings together the sector and has funded some high-profile work Nonprofit Online News US portal and news site for the Nonprofit sector. Publishes extensively. Very e-voluntary/e-community conscious – probably the most ICT-literate site, if not in look then in content. Looks like a Blog but it’s much more. Not just US-centric, either. No links to other organisations, though, on the site itself. Newspaper articles Net
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