Charity web development
Chobble is a Community Interest Company, and one of the groups it's legally set up to serve is charities and community organisations, particularly around Greater Manchester. In practice that means charities and non-profits pay £100 per hour rather than my standard £200 - the 50% discount is written into my published prices, so it isn't something you have to ask for or haggle over. I break every job down by the hour, so you can see where the money went.
I've been at this a long time. I've supported Blue Pits Housing Action, a CQC-registered care and social housing provider in Rochdale, for over fourteen years, and I've hosted sites for care and supported-housing organisations like Freehold Cottage and Newbarn since the mid-2000s. Charities tend to stick around, which suits me fine - the longer I work with an organisation, the better the advice I can give, because by then I actually understand their sector and their site.
Open source, and you own it
I build with open source tools rather than proprietary platforms, and there are no free-but-restricted versions that quietly push you onto a paid tier later on. You get the full source code via GitHub (kept private to your organisation if you'd rather), the licences cost nothing so you're only paying for my time, and you can take the whole lot to another developer whenever you like. Because these are widely-used tools rather than something only I understand, you're never dependent on one person - which matters more than usual for a charity that needs its website to outlast whoever happened to build it.
What it costs
Everything runs to the same flat hourly rate, £100 for charity work. A rough idea of where that tends to land:
- A basic charity site - the pages describing what you do, your team and how to reach you, a donation button, mobile-friendly and set up to be found on Google - is usually somewhere around 6 to 8 hours, so £600 to £800.
- Something more involved - member login areas, event booking, newsletter sign-up, more than one language, custom forms - tends to run 15 to 25 hours, so £1,500 to £2,500.
Hosting is £20 a month for up to twenty static sites, or from £30 for a site that needs its own server. You can also host it yourself for free, since you own the code, and I'll help you get set up wherever you land.
Support after launch
Once the site's live I'm still around. Email me a content change and I'll usually have it up within a working day (bigger jobs, or things sent over the weekend, can take a little longer). I can advise on the web side of GDPR, on where you might be spending more than you need to, and on the technical decisions that crop up as you grow. To keep things moving I'll need text, images and decisions from your side reasonably promptly - the site comes together about as fast as the content does.
Your site will load quickly, be built to WCAG2 accessibility guidelines, get backed up automatically, and stay easy for your team to update. And you'll own all of it.
Where your money goes
Because Chobble's a CIC, any surplus is asset-locked - I can't sell the company or strip it for a payday, and if it ever shuts down the assets pass to another community body rather than to me. On top of that I donate 10% of my income to the Against Malaria Foundation, and I feed improvements back into the open source tools I build on, so the work I do for you tends to help other organisations down the line too.
A few of the organisations I work with
- Blue Pits Housing Action - a CQC-registered care provider and social housing charity in Rochdale I've supported for fourteen years. Their site sets out eligibility criteria and the information they're legally required to publish, and updates go live within a day of them emailing me.
- Freehold Cottage - a residential care home in Rochdale providing 24-hour support for adults with mental health conditions, whose site I've hosted since 2005.
- Newbarn Ltd - a supported-housing organisation for vulnerable adults with mental health needs and learning disabilities, hosted with me since 2010, laying out their services clearly for potential residents and funding bodies.
- Crumpsall Folk Club - not a charity but a non-profit community group that wanted an affordable way to list events and build a mailing list without leaning on Facebook. Built on Ghost so they can manage it themselves.
If you also run events, Chobble Tickets does flat-fee ticketing at the same charity rates.
Get in touch
I'm based in Prestwich, Manchester, and work with charities anywhere; if you're local we can sort it out over a coffee. If a website at charity rates sounds like what you need, fill in the form below.