Following a somewhat lengthy thread on
here and
UKBF it's clear that various people on the forums are involved in the third sector - whether they are employed directly, volunteer or their business provides services to the sector. It's also clear that there's a real lack of online discussion spaces for the third sector.
With this in mind, I'm currently working on
Third Sector Forums to fill this huge gap. The forums will give people from the third sector (charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises) the chance to come together much in the same way that we all do on here. There's nearly 700,000 people employed in the voluntary sector alone, many more than that volunteer and the social enterprise sector is growing massively each year.
Various Scottish Business Forums members have got involved so far. Tom from Clear Blue Designs has offered to set up the forums, provide hosting and ongoing technical support. David at Nothing Does has developed the branding and we've got an excellent logo in place. Alison over at The Frockery has offered her help as an admin and she'll also be bringing a wealth of experience in the voluntary sector with her. We also have a few other volunteers who will be acting as admins on the forums once they launch. My full-time role is in developing a charity partnership within Lanarkshire, Scotland. I also volunteer with Scottish Community Foundation and sit on the national Fair Share Trust Panel. I'm really keen to see the forums become a success as there's nothing similar in the UK at present. By working with our current network of contacts we hope to spread the word about the forunms via the various voluntary and social enterprise sector networks within the UK.
We'd originally planned to run the forums on phpBB but Tom and I have since decided to go with VBulletin, the excellent software which powers UKBF. The issue being that while phpBB is free, VBulletin comes in at £133 for the licence and the project tools add-on.
We're looking for a UK business to cover the £133 cost of purchasing the VBulletin licence in exchange for 12 months banner advertising on Third Sector Forums.
If you're interested or if you have any questions then drop me a PM or post here.
I've also posted this request on UKBF so I'll keep everyone updated if there's any developments on there.
Could your business support a UK charity forum?
