How net:gain helped The Chesterfield Volunteer Centre

The Chesterfield Volunteer Centre is lucky to have good, up to date ICT equipment, but Centre Co-ordinator Dave Radford knew that wasn't the whole story. Dave is just completing the net:gain programme, provided by the IT29 net:gain centre run by Holmewood and Heath Community Action Partnership. He knew that his organisation needed to take time out, to make sure they were using their ICT equipment to the best advantage.

Dave says, “I don’t think anyone at the Volunteer Centre would consider themselves an IT expert, but the whole programme has been incredibly enlightening.  We are aware that while we are fortunate in the equipment that we have, we knew that we were not really using it to its full potential.  To be fair we had no idea what its full potential was.  However we did have dreams: wild crazy dreams that we thought were just too much for even our fairly up-to-date system. After the first consultation with our local net:gain provider, we found out that our wild dreams were not quite so wild after all. In fact, if we can scrape together just a bit of money, then they are very achievable dreams indeed.”

The net:gain process can also highlight glaring holes in the way an organisation works – both aspects that use technology, and those that don’t.  Dave explains: “It made us painfully aware of the things that we were not doing so well, such as ‘backing up’ for instance.  This had always been a problem for us and we were unsure how to get round it until we found out about backing up to a remote server via the internet. This is a system we will employ shortly.”

Dave feels that the programme has given his organisation the impetus – and the support structure – to change for the better, in a way that puts them in the driving seat: “So often when talking to an IT professional one can feel extremely excluded, but in this instance we felt included. We ended up feeling as if our computers were friends, rather than the enemy we perceived them to be. To have the opportunity to think through what we needed, and then have things explained in a clear, understandable fashion was a breath of fresh air.

“There is still a long way to go, we realise that, but hopefully with the support of net:gain we can work more effectively, serve our clients better, and make our dreams a reality.”