When Conduce Group announced a Pro Bono Service for Registered Charities and Non for Profit/3rd Sector Organisations Disability Direct was one of the first organisations to get in and touch take advantage of the free service.

Naomi Hope who works on Disability Direct’s Enable Young People’s Project was creating a website called “The Stuff”. Naomi was in touch with her friends at Conduce for informal advice regarding various aspects of web security and moderation. So when Conduce announced the Pro Bono service it wasn’t long before Naomi registered her interest.

Naomi described The Stuff website as
“…a social networking site for 16-25 year old disabled people in Derbyshire. Not quite a Facebook or MySpace, more somewhere that people can get information, write on message boards and hopefully make friends.” 
 
However the hot topic of online safety of young people was a genuine concern.
“We wanted to encourage friendships as disabled youngsters are often isolated, but we don't want anyone dodgy pretending to be a 16 year old girl.  We thought about people having to join the site by setting up a profile but were not sure how similar sites do it safely so that only the right people are joining?  We want to encourage social inclusion and development of friendships but are so wary of the dangers.”
 
Conduce offered suggestions regarding security and moderation, but the scope of advice soon extended to include resilience testing, search engine optimisation (SEO) and the use of social media.  Ultimately Paul Saunders, Conduce Consulting’s resident web guru, conducted a site visit, produced a comprehensive report for the development team and helped Naomi put together a plan to drive traffic to the site.

Naomi was really grateful for the recommendations that the report provided:
“Thank you for the report.  It is so clear that even I understand it!

 Thanks so much for your time and expertise; this will have a huge impact on the success of the project and the support we can offer to young disabled people.

Best of all, your help was free… We love that in the Charity sector!!”

In the short period of time since the consultation The Stuff website has increased its Search Engine Optimisation score by over 33%, visitor numbers are up and user engagement is growing all the time.

For more information about Conduce’s Pro Bono service please refer to http://probono.conduce.net

About Disability Direct

“…to facilitate independent living opportunities for disabled people…”

Our aim is to empower disabled people to make their own choices and improve their quality of life and independent living opportunities through the provision of information, advice and advocacy.

The 1990 census highlighted 25,000 disabled people living in the City of Derby, yet no information and advice service was available to this 10% of the local population at the time of this study. Taking this information on board, a group of disabled people submitted an application to RADAR (Royal Assoc. for Disability And Rehabilitation) for a full-time Information Officer and rent of an office.

This bid was successful and premises were rented in a back room of the Rosehill Business Centre on Normanton Road, Derby. With the assistance of volunteers, trainee placements and further appointments of a Chief Executive and Personal Assistant, further funding for an Information Shop was obtained through the Health Authority Joint Finance programme.

In March 2001, due to an increase in staff and services, we moved to larger premises just a few doors away from the business centre.

The shop has been open to the public as a drop-in service and has taken well in excess of 30,000 enquiries to date. Disability Direct currently employs 20 paid staff, and a team of 4 dedicated volunteers.

As a registered charity and company limited by guarantee, we have secured funding from, amongst a range of others, the Big Lottery Fund, Derby City Council and Derby City PCTs.

Since 1993 Disability Direct has prided itself in being able to make a difference to disabled people residing in Derby in a non-political and non-campaigning way. Many barriers have been broken which were not targeted by other smaller disability organisations e.g. information provision in other languages thus attracting enquiries from disabled people from minority ethnic groups who currently form approximately 20% of the total enquirers.