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National starting points

• Action with Communities in Rural England Somerfield Court, Somerfield Road, Cirencester, Glos, GL7 1TW, phone 01285 653477.

• National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA). The network for local sector support bodies. From Feb 07, at The Tower, 2 Furnival Square, Sheffield, S1 4QL, phone 0114 278 6636. Web site includes directory of local CVS, and there is also a regional list of training contacts.

• The various country umbrella bodies are worth checking out for listings of national and local voluntary groups. Start from front pages: NCVO (England), WorkWithUs (Scotland), WCVA (Wales) and NICVA or their CommunityNI portal (N Ireland).

Local Web Resources

These offer information relevant to organisations based or working in their areas and/or a directory of local voluntary and community groups. Dates given in brackets are the most recent times we checked what they were up to. We can't list every site here, so we aim to give coverage throughout the UK of those which we've noticed have a good range of accessible material or have good voluntary sector contacts info.

You may also want to try out external search engines to locate local facilities and groups as they are easier to find than when this page was started.

England

Birmingham Birmingham VSC (3/6/05) See pdf copy of their current newsletter and more.

Bolton Information Network (3/6/05). A Partnership promoting ICT skills but alos providing communtyi info.

Bradford DIVA (3/6/05). Voluntary organisations database for Bradford District.

Brighton Sussex Community Internet Project (15/1/01) Covers the whole county and loads of link lists, but a definite Brighton flavour. Also check: Resource Centre (11/10/01) - equipment and information for Brighton and Hove community groups; Brighton and Hove Community and Voluntary Sector Forum.

Bristol Voscur (3/6/05).

Cambridge Cambridge Online City (15/3/01) Plenty of information available here, and facilities to post information on your own organisation. Shared Interests is a good place to start to find local groups.

Dorset Community Action (4/9/02).

Durham One Voice Network (17/10/06) Site revamped autumn 06, and includes Advice Shop.

East Sussex ESCIS Community Information Service from local authority, or SCIP's county site (11/10/01).

Essex A system from the county council allows community groups to set up their own web pages at essexinfo.net (23/1/06).

Gloucestershire Gloshub.

Hertfordshire ECHO (8/12/03) Electronic Hertfordshire Communities Online - a free site for community information, projects and services. Community Development Agency Hertfordshire (8/2/06).

Leeds Voluntary Action-Leeds Has an IT project as well as an online directory (restricted access).

London London Voluntary Sector Council - second tier support network. TELCO - The East London Communities Organisation - is a campaigning alliance of local mosques, churches, community groups, trade union branches, school communities and others.

Manchester Manchester Community Information Network (16/1/01) connects to MyManchester facility - some solid local advice and support contacts. Community Network for Manchester (25/5/07).

Norfolk Norwich and Norfolk Voluntary Services (5/4/01) Also see Norfolk Portfolio, which has info on courses relevant to organisations in the county.

North Tyneside VODA (1/6/05).

North Yorkshire Forum for Voluntary Organisations (3/6/05) .

Nottingham CVS (12/6/02).

Rotherham Advice and Information Network (RAIN) (19/12/02). Also provide cheap (sometimes free) web design for local voluntary sector organisations.

Sheffield Solis (16/1/01) Do the NACVS website, and have plenty of local links.

Surrey Community Action (15/9/03).

Federation of Community Associations for South Tyneside (3/6/05). Also STRIDE, South Tyneside's Community Regeneration Network.

Windsor and Maidenhead Voluntary Action (20/8/03). Includes an overview of volunteer issues (Good Practice Guide).

York CVS (11/6/03). Some useful reference material on this site.

Northern Ireland

North West Community Network (link problem May 07).

Scotland

Caithness.org (31/8/01).

Clackmannanshire Clacksnet (28/3/05) Community Network. Also see WeeCounty Community Information Website (7/1/02).

Dundee Voluntary Action (26/8/03).

Edinburgh Edinburgh Compact aims to improve communication across the 1800 or so local organisations (27/3/06), Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations' Council (27/3/06).

Orkney Voluntary Action Orkney (15/1/07) or Orkney Communities (Nov 03).

Skye & Lochalsh Council for Voluntary Organisations (3/11/03). Their community toolkit looks very good.

Uist Council for Voluntary Organisations (5/6/07)

Wales

Cardiff Voluntary Action Cardiff (17/1/05).

Pembrokeshire Association of Voluntary Services (PAVS) (19/12/03) Current training courses, details of their ICT project etc.

Powys Telecentres Powys 'Providing Public Access to Information & Communication Technologies In Rural Powys.'

Swansea SCVS (13/9/04)

Also try Wales on the Web.

County and District

There is a distinct trend (Feb 05) of local council sites creating directories of, or links to, voluntary organisations. Some are doing this through county wide sites, others are adding facilites to find funding (and not just council grants) - this usually requires user registration. We give a few below - more grantnet and open4community sites can be found by searching Google etc.

• Brain (4/9/04) Brent Resource and Information Network. A good community site produced by the local counci, includes Grantnet facility.
• North Cornwall Funding search from Grantnet.
• North Devon Open4Community funding search.
• Essex Online (28/2/05)
• Hampshire Cousin (9/2/01) The County Council's directory of community organisations and services.
• Wakefield Open4Community funding search.

Regional

Sector Networks/Forums

These have generally been set up in response to the 'regional agenda'. NCVO has a regional gateway (so England only). Our Lobbying page has government regional offices and sector links to regional assemblies, including London.

All of these are primarily about improving communications between voluntary and community organisations in their region (who are encouraged to be members), providing information on issues which effect them and encouraging the development and dissemination of good practice. Also increasingly a communication link with regionally based (governmental) organisations.

North East England Voluntary Organisations Network North East Phone 0191 233 2000, email: vonne@vonne.co.uk; ESFVON (European Structural Funds Voluntary Organisations Northern) .

North West England NW Network covers European, volunteer management and BME issues. Volunteering North West. Black & Equality Merseyside Network.

Yorkshire and the Humber Regional Forum for Voluntary and Community Organisations. Phone 0113 243 8188, email: office@yhregforum.org.uk

East of England COVER. Phone 01223 893443, email: office@cover-east.org. East of England BME Network; Rural Action East.

East Midlands Engage East Midlands, phone 0115 934 8471, email: emvsf@hotmail.com.

South East England Regional Action and Involvement South East: RAISE.

South West Forum#.

West Midlands Regional Action West Midlands. Also West Midlands V&CS Housing Network.

London 3rd Sector Alliance is a network of networks; London Civic Forum.

Regional Development Agencies are listed under Government/Lobbying contacts.

Local Mixed Bag

Many cities and larger towns have their own sites, run commercially, by the local council, individuals or community groups. These will often have something about local voluntary activity, but quality and focus vary hugely. Some will not get past listing the next car boot sale in aid of the Scouts. However, they are worth a try.

• UKVillages^ is worth checking, although individual pages take ages to load.

Newspaper sites

Many regional or local papers have strong community links and have erratically developed web facilities which allow local groups to put together a few pages of information. Find the listings and facilities via:

• Beehive community sections from Associated Northcliffe Digital.
• CommuniGate from NewsQuest.
• Community sections within icNetwork from Trinity Mirror have largely been withdrawn, Sept 06. Where they exist, they should have a clear page structure of News, Events, Contacts and HomePage areas for each participating group, which makes it quite easy to get your own 'site' online.

Other local sites worth a look

We haven't checked these sites fully, or they don't quite make the grade to be in the sections above.

Bassetlaw CVS (9/2/01)

Bristol Index (16/3/03)

Coventry and Warwickshire News (link problem July 07)

East Lothian Voluntary Organisations Network (24/12/01).

Community Action Hampshire (9/2/01).

LondonVoices (10/1/02) A network for community and neighbourhood websites in London.

Merseyworld (9/2/01).

Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation St Thomas Centre, Ardwick Green North, Manchester M12 6FZ, phone 0161 273 7451.

@Communities Internet (9/2/01) "a project that promotes the people and places we live in, ... inspired by the success of the site in Bishopton, Renfrewshire ... is now extending (to) other towns and villages in Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire and Inverclyde". Also see Voluntary Action East Renfrewshire# (annoying front page graphics and music, 20/2/04).

Devon Community Organisations (6/3/02) or East Devon Net.

Community Accountancy Self Help (west London). Features some local projects as well as very useful community accountancy stuff.