Birmingham Community Matters needs a new website!

This callout has been prepared by Birmingham Community Matters (BCM) with the aim of receiving expressions of interest (EOI) and quotes from web designers/developers, for the creation of a new website.

We are able to do this thanks to a grant from the National Lottery’s Reaching Communities England fund. 

> Get this information as a downloadable PDF: Birmingham Community Matters – Callout 2020.

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Purpose

We’ve outgrown our website. The aim of our new website will be to make it clear what BCM offers and to whom – and enable site users to find the information they are looking for quickly.

Background

BCM is a small charity, founded in 2016 to give people across Birmingham face-to-face support with getting started and running their community groups and projects. We support in many ways but, essentially, when people approach us for help, we match them with people who are experienced at doing similar things.

We are big on conversations and connections and so our new website will facilitate these – it won’t replace them.

Covid-19 changed our ways of working, as it has for most organisations. BCM has adapted and grown, and now delivers digital one-to-ones, webinars, networking and small group meetings. We aim to return to our in-person events when we can, whilst retaining the new ways of working that we’ve developed in order to widen our reach.

The current BCM website sits on a WordPress platform, which we are familiar with, and the new website needs to be easily editable to allow ease of use by site admins.

Design and branding will need to be in keeping with the existing BCM brand.

Site users

•   People looking for help with a small charity/voluntary group (from having an idea, through to changing structures and writing funding bids)

•   People looking to help (knowledge sharing and networking)

•   Stakeholders (project partners, trustees, funders).

The new website will:

•   Present how BCM can help, and how people can become ‘Community Matters Helpers’

•   Have a resources area – BCM videos, PDFs, guidance, guides for Helpers / people we help,  resources for our partners

•   Have a blog, searchable by filter / tags, displaying news and case studies

•  Have a calendar – possibly as online booking system for our own events, and the option to register/join a list for the next event if it’s sold out, option of adding other external events from a select number of our partners

•   Have standard pages such as About, Jobs, T&Cs / policies, etc – and the option to add more, and edit the navigation, later down the line

•   Be secure and safe, GDPR-compliant, relevant policies in place

•   Have CRM integration, and a way to capture information about the people enquiring, and how we have helped

•   Be mobile-friendly / responsive

•   Enable easy access for BCM to access visitor statistics and SEO facilities

•   Contain a search facility that picks up on blog posts and resources

•   Enable integration with MailChimp

•   Have a 404 page.

Possible add-ons

•   An interactive flow chart or similar, where site user can click through to see where they are at in their small charity journey, results emailed to them – and populated into our CRM so we can help with their enquiry more easily by identifying gaps, and get them a face to face/triage/in person or through zoom meeting.

•   Include a map and/or directory of the charities/small organisations we have either helped, or are working with, across Birmingham, as well as the option to have a layer (post Covid-19) linked to our events. Even better would be the opportunity to link to sustainable transport options, cycle paths and accessible parking. This map would be useful for groups seeking help in person (to attend local meet-ups), for groups to find other local groups/charities, and also as a record of where we are helping people, and where we might need to concentrate our efforts in future.

Design

•   Fonts to be used are Filson Pro font bold for headings, and Avenir for body copy

•   Images to be supplied by BCM, with input and advice welcome

•   Colours will be provided upon answer to the brief

•   Content will be written by our in-house copywriter

•   Logos to appear on home page footer currently National Lottery Fund and Selly Oak Neighbourhood Network scheme (we must be able to update these in future)

•   Clear and simple design is important; the website needs to be highly user friendly, and must adhere to accessibility requirements.

Response required

•   Feedback to brief – is it possible and any immediate concerns?

•   Timeframe – doesn’t have to be detailed at this stage. What is possible and would there be any expected delays?

•   An estimated overall cost, taking into account 1-2 rounds of amends plus testing, the inclusion of annual ongoing hosting fees if applicable, preferred payment terms.

•   Who is the main point of contact and who will be carrying out the work.

•   Examples of similar work carried out previously (links to websites are fine) – please give a short overview of your role within the work/web design and build, and anything you think we might like to know.

•   Tell us about yourself – Birmingham Community Matters values community, so we’d love to know what area of Birmingham you live in, what are your connections to the city, have you had any involvement with charities/small organisations? What are you passionate about?

•   There may be things we have forgotten – if there’s anything you would like to discuss please include this within your response.

Callout process

If you would like to express an interest, please get in touch. Please send your responses via email to Birmingham Community Matters, subject: ‘Website callout’ to info@birminghamcommunitymatters.org.uk 

The work will be awarded on the basis of track record and relevant experience, expertise, creativity, community and value for money. We will be inviting three EOIs to Zoom meetings with members of the BCM team, and one of our trustees.

We welcome applications from any candidate, and are particularly keen to receive applications from candidates who are underrepresented in the workforce. This includes people of colour, women and those whose gender identity is not the same as at birth, and members of the Traveller community.

Format expectations

We are imagining a word document or PDF which responds to the discussion points above. It must be something we can circulate to our team and trustees. We would expect submissions to be no more that 4 x A4 sides at 12pt font. We will anonymise the applications prior to circulating.

Timescale 

Callout launched: 6 October 2020
Deadline for EOI: 20 October 2020
Zoom meetings to take place w/c 2 November
Web designer/developer appointed Nov 2020
Aim for website to be live by start of June 2021.

Thank you for reading this, and we look forward to reading your EOI.