The Shop - a la carte website and database consulting

Charlottesville and Central Virginia has an excellent network of nonprofit organizations doing important work for our communities. The impact of these organizations cannot be overstated.

But no one starts a nonprofit wanting to wrangle with the inevitable technology problems: managing websites, dealing with databases, putting together mailing lists, and so on. Sometimes the tech breaks and a nonprofit can get stuck on a tech issue. And that leads to a tough choice: either assign people to learn enough about the tech to solve the problem, which diverts resources away from the primary mission of the organization, or hire a tech firm, which is rarely in the budget.

The Shop is a pro bono IT consulting and problem-solving service for nonprofit organizations in Charlottesville and Central Virginia. We assign small groups of volunteers to work directly with someone at a nonprofit to solve a specific issue with tech, data, or web design.

These projects are under the umbrella of The Shop because our goal is to draw on experience to complete projects more quickly and more successfully. We learn about the common roadblocks that nonprofits face and we want to share our knowledge about what’s worked to get past these blocks for other organizations. We are also build a library of templates for webpages, databases, and other tech systems that meet modern standards for accessibility. Templates make future projects easier, and we build templates that are ADA accessible and easily translatable to other languages.

If you run a nonprofit and would like to participate in this program, let us know by filling out this form: https://www.codeforcville.org/form/onboarding-form. We are hoping to move from our pilot program to a full project launch this spring and we’re eager to get the ball rolling working with you.

See something on the site that needs improvement?  If you're a member of Code for Cville submit a "to do" note and it'll get shortlisted.  If you're an interested member of the public and want to reach out to discuss an idea please contact us