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Service

Community office website development

For managers and trustees of community centres, residents' associations, parish offices and neighbourhood hubs who need their services, opening times, advice appointments, room hire, volunteers and notices to run from one site rather than a noticeboard, a diary and an inbox.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A community centre on a housing estate offers more than its building.

  • There is a benefits advice drop-in on Tuesday mornings run by a partner charity, a food club on Thursdays, a toddler group, an older people's lunch, a job club, a room that the residents' association meets in and three others that local groups hire by the hour.
  • The opening times are on a laminated sheet by the door and on a social media page that was last updated in the spring, so the first question on the phone is always "are you open".
  • Advice appointments are written in a diary at reception; when the adviser is ill the manager rings round from the diary because there is no list of phone numbers in one place.

Where it gets harder

Room hire is a paper grid on the office wall.

  • A group books the large hall for a Saturday, a second group is told it is free because the grid was not updated, and the manager spends her Saturday morning apologising.
  • Volunteers sign up on a clipboard at events and the volunteer coordinator types the names into a spreadsheet when she has time, so a willing volunteer hears nothing for a month.
  • The residents' association minutes and the centre's policies are attached to emails to whoever asks.
  • A resident reports a broken streetlight or fly-tipping at the counter and the receptionist writes it on a notepad to pass to the council; nobody can say later whether it was passed on.
  • The newsletter is a document typed in a word processor, printed and left in a pile, and the trustees ask at every meeting how many people actually use each service, which nobody can answer.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom community office build normally covers:

  • A service directory where each service Whether run by the office or a partner, has a plain-language description, days and opening times, who it is for, how to access it and any eligibility notes, with a weekly timetable generated from the directory rather than maintained by hand
  • Appointment booking for advice sessions with adviser availability Slot lengths, a short intake form and reminders, with walk-in sessions shown as such
  • Room hire for the building's rooms with capacity Equipment, availability, hire requests, regular bookings for weekly groups and a simple record of what was charged
  • Notices and an events calendar
  • Volunteer sign-up with roles Availability, a checks-record field the coordinator maintains, and shift lists for events
  • A newsletter built from the notices and events already entered Sent by email and printable
  • A document library for minutes Policies, annual reports and funding reports
  • A simple issue reporting form that records what was reported Where, and whether it was passed on and to whom

How discovery works

Discovery walks through a week at the office with the manager and the volunteer coordinator: which services run and who runs them, how appointments are offered, how rooms are hired and charged, how volunteers are recruited and placed, what the trustees need to see, and what residents ask for at the counter. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: list, book, hire, recruit, notify, report.

Deliberately out of scope

  • The organisation's accounts and gift-aid handling, which stay in its accounting or fundraising tools
  • Case management for the advice service itself, which belongs to the partner charity and its own system
  • Safeguarding decisions, which the system records as dates and a status set by the coordinator, never as a judgement

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A community organisation running three buildings, forty weekly sessions, a volunteer pool of two hundred and reporting to several funders is a different build from a parish office with one room, two advice mornings and a dozen volunteers, and the scope document will say so.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from a walk-through of an office week, including the timetable, the room grid, the volunteer spreadsheet and the current site
  • A written scope document naming each stage from service listing to funder reporting and what is excluded
  • Design of the service directory, the advice booking, the room hire calendar and the volunteer sign-up on phone and desktop, in plain language and checked against WCAG 2.2 AA as a target
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of services, regular room bookings, volunteer records and documents from your spreadsheets and folders, where relevant
  • Newsletter and timetable templates set up from your branding
  • Training for the office manager, reception, the volunteer coordinator and a trustee, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to the current site, the timetable, the room grid, the volunteer spreadsheet and the document folders; the manager and coordinator named as contacts.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the manager, the volunteer coordinator and a trustee; service categories, booking rules, hire rules and the scope document are agreed with milestones.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the service directory and timetable, an advice booking, the room hire calendar and the volunteer sign-up, reviewed on a phone with reception staff.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: services, timetable and documents first, then appointments and room hire, then volunteers, notices, newsletter and issue reporting.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Reception runs a test fortnight: real appointments, real hire requests and a volunteer shift list for an event, telling us where the rules differ from practice.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Slot lengths, hire rules, volunteer roles and form wording are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Regular bookings and volunteer records migrated, reminders tested on numbers you control, the first newsletter issued from the system, checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The office runs its next week on the new system; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Email and SMS providers for appointment reminders, newsletters and volunteer shift notices
  • Card payment providers for room hire deposits and charges, where the office takes payment
  • Calendar feeds so advisers and room hirers see their bookings on their own devices
  • Mapping services for issue reports tied to a street or a location
  • Council and housing provider reporting forms that an issue report can be forwarded to
  • Accounting software receiving hire income as a periodic export
  • Fundraising and donor platforms the organisation already uses
  • Social media and community notice feeds for events, posted outward from the site

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A two-building community organisation with a volunteer pool

The situation

A community organisation running two buildings, around thirty weekly sessions and a pool of a hundred and twenty volunteers kept its timetable on a laminated sheet, its rooms on a wall grid and its volunteers in a spreadsheet that only the coordinator could read.

Why it is a custom build

The reason this needs a custom build rather than a booking app and a mailing tool is the single record: the trustees wanted to see attendance, hire and volunteer hours per service for their funder reports without anyone re-keying from three systems.

The scope we would propose

  • A service directory with partner-run services marked as such and a timetable generated per building
  • Advice appointments with adviser availability and a short intake form, with walk-in sessions shown without booking
  • Room hire per building with regular weekly bookings protected from one-off requests
  • A volunteer register with roles, availability and a checks-record status, and shift lists for events that the coordinator fills from the register
  • A newsletter assembled from the month's notices and events
  • An issue report form that records where the report was passed on

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of buildings, rooms and weekly sessions in the directory
  • Whether advice appointments are booked online and how many advisers and partners are involved
  • Room hire rules: regular bookings, deposits, charges and whether payment is taken online
  • Volunteer register size, roles, checks-record fields and shift scheduling
  • Newsletter and timetable templates and how many audiences they go to
  • Issue reporting and whether reports are forwarded to a council or housing provider
  • Reporting for trustees and funders, such as attendance and volunteer hours per service
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Community office package

Service directory with opening times, advice appointment booking, room hire, volunteer sign-up, notices, newsletter, document library and issue reporting for community centres and parish offices.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How do you decide between a custom build and the package?

Discovery compares your office week with what the community office package does through configuration. One building, a standard service list, advice appointments and room hire usually fit the package. Several buildings, partner organisations with their own booking rules, or funder reporting that needs attendance and volunteer hours per service point to custom work, and we say which before anything is quoted.

Can partner organisations manage their own sessions?

Yes, within what the manager allows. A partner running an advice morning can be given access to their own service entry and appointment slots without seeing the rest of the office. The manager keeps control of the timetable and the rooms.

Does the volunteer register hold safeguarding checks?

It records what the coordinator enters: the type of check, the date and a status. It does not perform checks, verify them or decide who may volunteer. Those decisions and the underlying certificates stay with the coordinator and the organisation's policy.

What happens to issue reports residents make at the counter?

Reception records the report with a location and, if the office passes it to the council or a housing provider, the date and the reference. The resident can be given a reference to quote. The office system is a record of what was reported and passed on, not the authority's own case system.

Who owns the system afterwards?

The organisation does. Source code and data, including the volunteer register and every document, are handed over at delivery. Hosting and maintenance are optional and separately agreed, and the system can move to another provider.

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