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Centre Development

DirectSupport has developed a range of support materials, sometimes in partnership with other organisations, that centres can use for developing their funding activities, staff, and volunteers. These are particularly relevant to the voluntary and community sectors.

Whilst funding remains for the DirectSupport programme, experienced mentors are available to facilitate workshops based on these and other materials. Participants can include your own centre staff, volunteers or representatives from a local or regional network. Some of the materials we have developed are available as "self-help" downloads, both on this site, and from other sites as listed below.

The materials below are available in full inside the Virtual ICT Centre.

Staff development workshop [PDF, 436K]
Project design workshop [PDF, 75K]
Community Activities Planning Game
More help is available from the Help is at Hand site
Also see the New Opportunities Fund site (NOF Sustainability Plan)

New for 2004, we are offering voluntary and community sector UK online centres the chance to engage in a choice of four supported developmental activities, according to their needs. We provide templates, presentations, activities, workshops and mentoring. You provide time, ideas, and information to work through the planning process. We will be announcing a series of awards for your best plans and ideas - watch this space, or cal the helpline for further details. The four processes are:

Sustainability Planning Process [Doc, 31K], resulting in a sustainability plan for your centre, organisation or network.
An Organisational Development Plan [Doc, 31K], to help you manage change, focus your vision and improve your systems, structures, processes and policies
A Creative Project Design Process [Doc, 31K], to develop your learning offer, improve your appeal to users and your marketing, develop a niche for your centre, and increase your choice of funding streams
A Clustering Programme [Doc, 32K], to encourage you to work more closely with other agencies and other UK online centres for mutual support

Some UK online centres have already produced informative sites with ideas, case studies, examples, games and suggested training materials:

Try:
www.southcotesite.co.uk for ideas, workshops, and beginner ICT tutorials
www.tvco.org.uk for a web-gallery of community art, and ideas.

Sustainability game for online centres

We run planning days for centres that use scenario games as an aid new project development and business planning. The cards we use were originally developed by David Wilcox of Partnerships Online. The latest versions can be downloaded here in pdf format:

http://partnerships.typepad.com/usefulgames/2003/12/sustainability_.html

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