About

Quick page link: Adding your News, Event or Vacancy. Also below: Advertising, restrictions on re-use, the who and why of VoluntaryNews, logging in issues.

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What is VoluntaryNews?

VoluntaryNews carries relevant and practical news of interest to those involved with voluntary and community organisations across the UK. It is closely connected with the VolResource weekly email newsletter.

We gather information from a wide variety of sources, and try to select the stuff which is useful and leave out the hype and marketing speak. Contributions are welcome especially if it has broad relevance to the sector - use the Content for Consideration form. News which, for example, is only of interest within a county area is unlikely to make the grade for the newsletter and hence our processing, but you could add it direct here. For communication advice and other ways of getting the message across, see the VolResource Dealing with the Media page.

We check material for accuracy and completeness as best we can, but there are often constraints to this, and we encourage active checking before taking any action based on it.

We aim for our web sites to meet high accessibility standards. The design is based on the Zen theme for Drupal adapted with elements of the WordPress theme Andreas09, as used on the previous version of VoluntaryNews.

We are keen to hear of any problems you may have with this site. If all else fails, use the contact form on VolResource.

Re-use

Other websites run by voluntary organisations are welcome to connect to our news feed, as long as this is clearly labelled and credited to VoluntaryNews, with a link back if possible. And it would be great if you let us know.

More wholesale or regular re-use of material by other means, including from the email newsletter, should be cleared with us first. This is one area where we are likely to charge a small fee, whether it is voluntary sector or commercial use.

Advertising

This site features advertising provided by the Google AdWords service. You can add yours by registering with them and selecting our site as a target.

Most entries for the Events, Jobs and Wider (users) News sections are included for free from voluntary organisations. We do charge for vacancy ads placed by an agency or other commercial business, and there is usually a small charge for commercially run events too. Rates on request. Banner ads in various sections should be available soon

If you are interested in discussing options on VoluntaryNews/VolResource, or ads in our email newsletter, please use the Advertising contact form.

Adding your News, Events, Vacancies

See your organisation's news releases, event notices, job ads etc. on these pages. Benefit from our recognised name, the many site visitors, regular checking by Google and other search and news facilities, plus the built-in news feeds which can take your content straight to the desktop or mobile device.

There are two ways of directly contributing news - a blog style UsersNews which allows direct publication with basic options, and NewsStory which integrates with the main news section but requires us to press the 'publish' button. NewsStory has fuller editor functions, and optionally allows attachments (files for download such as Word or pdf documents), images and promotion to the front page.

The Events and Jobs sections are for just about anything of relevance to a voluntary sector audience, and also those considering getting involved. But not fundraising or awareness raising events (at least for the moment).

For all these, start by signing up for a user account  - please tick the appropriate boxes and give some information about your organisation so we can tell this is a genuine request. You can also use a contact form to give us further details or a reminder if we are slow off the mark. We need to approve the account to stop spammers and will do this as quickly as we can. Please don't be offended if you are asked for further information to check your credentials - sending the contact form should make this unnecessary.

Once you have been approved (check your inbox for an email), you will be able to see a 'Create Content' section in the left-hand menu area, listing the types of content you can produce. Please read 'How to Create' first for advice and terms of use. We do reserve the right to edit or delete material we consider inappropriate.

The Job Listing Submission form (over on VolResource site) is still available if you would prefer us to do the work of adding a vacancy. This method is likely to be slower to appear plus we are more likely to edit. On the other hand, in this case you don't need to register a user account.

Commercial organisations should read the Advertising section above first.

We don't generally approve user accounts for those based outside the Uk or Ireland. If you have a good reason for an exception, please explain when you sign up.

Logging in problems?

Most people won't have any problems logging in, but there are a number of things which can get in the way:

• Note that username and password are case sensitive - if you registered using a capital letter (e.g. Fred), type it that way!
• Cookies must be enabled.
• Web browser software (Internet Explorer, Opera etc) often keep visited pages 'cached'. You may need to clear the cache for corrections to work (especially if you had to enable cookies after your first visit here).

A few more words on caching (computers keeping copies of web pages locally, or at a network level). Sometimes web browsers will show a page you previously visited in its 'logged in' state, even though you have now logged out. This is a common reason for seeing an access denied warning - please ignore or log in again, depending on what you are trying to do. If your browser has the feature (e.g Opera has an option to switch off 'Remember content on visited pages' in its Preferences > Advanced section) try disabling the cache. Switch it back on later to speed up web browsing.

Who

VoluntaryNews is one of a number of projects run by VolResource. The main VolResource site, started in 1999, provides practical information for voluntary sector staff, managers, committees, volunteers, members. Briefings on everything to do with running a voluntary organisation, links to further resources, listings of specialist services and software, a glossary, and much more information (although it largely leaves fundraising to others).

See the Contact List for various ways of getting touch.

CharityBlog is largely dormant at present  - more personal and less immediately practical news, views and thoughts, and a place for you to post items on the voluntary sector which aren't exactly news, such as opinion pieces, suggestions or requests.

For more on the background to how VolResource has been developed, and official contact details, see the VolResource Credits page.