Welcome to Community NI

The fact remains that the internet is a great place to get instant information on a chosen topic - search engines give us a plethora of links, websites are updated daily with breaking news and ebulletins deliver headlines straight to our inbox.

Community NI aims to provide the most up to date and wide ranging information possible about Northern Ireland's voluntary and community sector to ensure that charities get their message out there in an increasingly cluttered world of communications.

Developed by the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action, and funded by Invest NI, the site invites charitable organisations to publish their information - be it news, events, publications, campaigns or services - on this 'portal' website.

The secret of the site is in the way it classifies information. Any content published on the site will be tagged by 'theme' and 'region'.

Themes

The team behind the site initially put their heads together to produce a comprehensive list of themes. This was then reviewed after voluntary and community organisations put forward their comments and suggestions about how the list could be improved.

Regions

The regions are based on NUTS areas. Although the council districts may be the most obvious way to divide up the map of Northern Ireland, these might change over the next few years because of the Review of Public Administration. Join the discussion about how best to classify areas in Northern Ireland.

Customise the site

A registered user can customise the site so that their homepage gives them only the information they are interested in - so you might set it to show content about the arts, funding and the west and south of Northern Ireland.

Rolling out the functions

When the site launches on Wednesday 20 April, there will be an excellent framework in place and the makings of a useful reference tool about the sector. The Community NI team hope to see the site content grow quickly as voluntary and community organisations submit their information to make it a 'gateway to the voluntary and community sector in Northern Ireland'. Over the coming months new functions will be introduced to Community NI including ecommerce and online discussions.

Spreading the word

Initially NICVA will be responsible for marketing the site to ensure it sits at the top of all the important search engines. Following the Belfast launch on 20 April, the site will be presented in a series of regional launches to local voluntary and community groups.