Third Sector redesigns its website
Howard Lake | 29 March 2007 | News
Third Sector magazine has redeveloped its website, presenting its information in a far more effective manner than the previous version. New tools include RSS feeds, better search, and the ability for registered users to comment on items.
The four-column site offers tabbed navigation which reflect the sections of the printed magazine, including fundraising, policy, jobs, communications, policy, and governance. The website refers to these as ‘channels’. The jobs link takes you to the new, separate site thirdsectorjobs.co.uk.
The fundraising section offers latest news, events, opinion, in depth, fundraising resources and the other regular elements of the weekly printed magazine.
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Registered users can sign up to receive a free weekly email update on charity finance and accounting, and a free daily general charity sector news email alert.
The site is free to access, although you are required to register at no charge if you wish to read more than the introductory paragraph of each news item.
The site carries commercial advertising, although currently the fundraising section is carrying three in-house ads among the five on display.
The site has introduced at least one facility not in the printed magazine, namely a poll. The first question is “should charity trustees be paid?” The poll is sitewide, so there is no fundraising channel-specific poll.
The site has some limitations. For example, the news archive section stretches back only to 2002. Also it only offers browsing my discipline (e.g. fundraising) and cause (e.g. animals) back to January 2007.
Similarly, the Institute of Fundraising’s single page from the magazine does not appear to be listed or linked to from the fundraising channel’s main page. The top four results for a search on the site for “Institute of Fundraising” also currently generate page not found errors.
The site does offer some degree of accessibility, although it doesn’t make any claims about achieving a particular level of accessibility. Instead it states that it has introduced “features [which] aim to enhance navigation for screen reader users, keyboard navigation and users of text-only browsers” such as access keys and CSS style sheets.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.