Websites are an important cornerstone of virtually every not-for-profit organisations communications mix. 24 hours a day is a website is reaching out to members, funders and the public.

Not every website gets the attention it deserves. Yet it only takes 10 seconds to turn people off your cause if they do not have a good experience when visiting your organisation's website. You need to put your best foot forward.

How do you make sure your organisation is doing its best to have an effective presence on the Internet?

There is a lot to juggle to achieve this. You've got to think about things as diverse as domain names, commissioning, working with web designers, writing for the web, accepting payments, search enginge optimisation, and measuring success. With budgets under pressure every dollar spent on a website needs to count. If it doesn't meet the basic needs of your audience, things are not after a good start.

This interactive workshop will help you:

• get a full picture of the many aspects your organisation has to have in place for a quality website
• understand some of the language used in the web industry, including introducing content management systems
• learn how to plan for and implement a redesign or upgrade, including commissioning developers and working with web designers
• use a simple self-guided health check so you can assess and improve your website's performance.

The technical skills required to set up and maintain websites will not be covered, although you will get an overview of what is required. This workshop is designed for managers and coordinators (as the ultimate owners of an organisation's website), and communications staff new to website management.

Actually, people don't *read* web pages; they glimpse them.

This hands-on workshop teaches you how to connect with your audience via web pages, emails, Twitter and other 'web' media. Learn specific techniques to get more of your message across, more quickly and more effectively.

This workshop is for everyone who writes emails, web pages, blog posts or documents to go 'on the website'.

With so many not-for-profits trying to fundraise it makes sense (and perhaps $$$) to fundraise smart. Research shows that statistics alone are not enough to move people to give. Instead triggering emotions by telling vivid stories captures people's attention and moves them to act. Digital storytelling is a process which combines storytelling with modern-day technology to produce authentic, compelling digital media. This digital storytelling workshop will introduce you to the process and how you might use it to tell the story of your organisation or help tell the stories of your clients. With the help from Stephen, you will be able to experience some of the technical aspects of the process by assembling a simple digital story. You will also have access to an electronic resource to guide you as you go on to tell your own story.

This workshop is for people who are interested in using social media websites and tools - Twitter, Flickr, blogging, Facebook et al - to connect with their customers and communities. You'll learn about:

• what the Library and other non-profit organisations are doing in
• the social media space
• the things you can do in only 5 minutes a day
• the nuts and bolts of setting up an authentic and consistent online
• identity for your organisation
• the four key questions you need to ask yourself when setting up a
• social media presence

Bring along your ideas and experiences to share - the workshop should be a discussion, not a monologue. A basic level of familiarity with computers and the internet is assumed.

Deb Shepherd and David Barrow have got together for this workshop to show you how to produce your own beautiful email newsletters - just like the ones you get in your Inbox. Ever wonder how they're produced but haven't got the time to learn how? Maybe there is no money to pay someone else to do it for you, or you just find it too difficult.

Along with the power and significant low cost of electronic media, increasingly organisations are producing their newsletters and emailing them out to a list of subscribers to save on hefty print costs. Most typically use Microsoft Word or PDF format and attach this to an email message or simply use a text-based format in an email message itself.

This workshop will move you beyond that and show you how to set up a basic, tabular newsletter together with a masthead, using basic HTML (hyper text markup language - the language behind every web page) with a supporting style sheet to create columns, text, links and images. You'll learn how to include simple, user-friendly but appealing layouts that can impress your readers and secure their interest.

You'll also learn about the platforms available to design, put together and effectively manage your email newsletter distribution lists outside of Outlook or other email client software-even monitor what your readers actually read, together with the all-important reader and legal requirements that apply when sending out email newsletters.

Alison will be able to show you how to get the best out of OpenOffice, the world's most popular free software Office suit, how to improve your productivity and at the same time ensure that your organisation's documents meet the highest professional standards without having to pay a cent for software.