The benefits of having a resource library for charities and non-profits

A resource library is a collection of useful items or sources of information gathered in one place to make them easier to find for a community of people. Many charities and non-profits have them to store vital information or signpost to services they either provide or recommend to their end users. We have extensive experience in designing and building resource centres for our clients – have a read below for some examples of these, as well as our insights into why we think they can be a real asset to your organisation.

TLDR: We go into detail on what a resource library is and how it can benefit charities and non-profits to build one into their website

So, what is a resource library and how can it help charities and non-profits?

Resource libraries, or centres, are a curated portal that house useful documents, such as eBooks or white papers; videos; case studies; events calendars; project hubs; links that signpost to other resources, events or projects; and much more. They vary in their complexity and functionality – this is usually affected by the type of content, the budget available to build it, and its intended audience.

Libraries like these can provide a way of storing historical documentation that might be beneficial in the future. One of their key features is to make information that may easily be obscured over time much more easily accessible. What makes having a resource centre incredibly valuable for charities and non-profits is how they present an opportunity to stand out and become a ‘go-to’ for information within their sector. It also allows them to build a solid reputation as a knowledgeable source.

Many charitable and non-profit organisations already make use of a resource centre; however, its functionality may be poor or potentially difficult to navigate. Some don’t have one at all. It’s highly important to ensure that a resource library is accessible for users across all device types, in particular, mobile. Whether you choose to only showcase your own resources, or point to or include others, is up to you; however, if you do so, it can assist in creating a more comprehensive library on a particular subject.

Useful features of a resource library

Here are some of the key features contained within a resource library that make them both easily navigable and engaging for their users.

The ability to search your library

Although seemingly ubiquitous, a well-functioning search option is quite frankly the most important feature of a resource centre. If you can’t search through the myriad of items within it, your users will never be able to find what they’re looking for. It’s not a common feature, but you can also add functionality that allows users to search within linked documents – e.g. a PDF – making the content within easy to find.

Filtering information

To help sort through a wealth of information, it’s a good idea to build in some kind of filtering system. You could keep this very basic or allow people to narrow searches down in more detail. However, it should have filters that are relevant to your audience, for example: being able to filter by a particular theme; looking for information relevant to a specific age group; if your content relates to an area or country, the ability to filter by country (or county, town or postcode, if the information is based more nationally) etc.

Being able to ‘favourite’ items

If your users have found resources within your library that they like, it’s very useful for them to be able to ‘favourite’ them so that they can return to them at a later date. This may require a log-in feature to be added in to store that information.

Download or print resources

On a particular resource page, why not make that resource either printable or have the ability to download it? This is particularly true of any documents, e.g. PDF’s, white papers.

Changing views

Users may wish to view resources in a particular way – for example: if they’re location-based, having both a map view and a list view is a good way to display the information so that they can find things that are relevant to them, such as an event being held in their area.

Intersecting content

Sometimes resources may interlink in some way. There are a few ways you can demonstrate this, such as using tags to highlight how items relate to each other. You could also have a ‘similar resources’ feature at the bottom of a page to lead users onto other areas of interest.

Keeping up to date

Hopefully, you’re updating your resource centre on a regular basis; however, are you letting your users know that you’ve updated it? You can do this via a notification function your audience can sign up to that tells them when your resources have been changed or new ones are added. This could be as simple as a notification (via email) on an individual resource if it’s updated. You could also instigate a newsletter that gives more of an overview of the resources you’ve added or updated.

Sharing resources and referencing

What’s the point of having a resource if it can’t be shared? Your users will want to share your resources with colleagues and others to be able to implement learnings from them, so make sure they can be shared easily, either via content platform specific buttons (e.g. LinkedIn, Instagram etc) or via email. They’ll also want to be able to reference them when reporting on their findings. Adding references is quite time consuming, so having a feature that enables users to do so efficiently will also put you in their good books.

Another aspect of sharing is ensuring that the content you want people to find is easy to look for. There are certain pieces of data that form part of the sharing preview – a.k.a. ‘metadata’ – such as the title, description and image for the content. You can improve the searchability of your resources by doing a few things to these points of the metadata, for example:

Highlighting and featuring content

On the homepage for your resource centre, it’s a good option to include some ‘featured’ resources – perhaps ones that are proving popular, that fit a timely theme, or you particularly want to highlight. This can also be replicated on individual resource pages to shortcut to ‘related’ content that might be a good offshoot to signpost to.

Our work in practice

We’re experts in creating resource centres and have done so for many of our clients. Have a read below about a few of our favourite examples:

Open Contracting Partnership

An independent non-profit public charity that works in over 50 countries, Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) helps transform procurement from an overlooked, underfunded paper-based chore to a digital, data-driven government service that can be an engine for innovation, sustainability and economic inclusion. The resource centre allows users to access research papers, reports, infographics, case studies, data tools, training materials and methodologies, all developed by OCP and their partners. This is a great help in implementing open contracting practises, making them more effective and efficient. Users can select the resources they wish to view via a number of filters. These filters make the experience more streamlined and user-friendly.

What Works in SEND

What Works in SEND is a learning and innovation program designed to generate high-quality evidence of what works – and what doesn’t – in SEND environments (Special Educational Needs and Disability). They use their resource library to house this evidence, which includes work on service improvements and practice models that can be replicated by others in the industry. It’s an incredibly valuable, peer-reviewed service providing research reports, reviews, evaluations and grey literature that’s gone through What Works in SEND’s process of developing effective practises, research and evaluation, before it achieves a place in the evidence store. The resources can be sorted via their strength, breadth, theme or project status, making it much less time consuming for users to discover projects that are relevant to their needs. The individual projects are also followable via notifications, so users can keep track of any updates in real time.

Ecosystems Knowledge Network

We created a Project Directory to showcase Ecosystem Knowledge Network (EKN)’s extensive index of innovative nature finance projects, case studies, initiatives and plans. EKN are an award-winning network that brings together people from a variety of sectors to benefit ecosystems services and promote a healthy natural environment, both nationally and beyond. Their website is a ‘one-stop shop’ that enables its members to engage with a multitude of ecological resources and opportunities designed to support the natural environment. These resources are colour coded by resource type (e.g. blue for case studies, green for innovation showcases etc), and can be searched via their county, country and size. Something really exciting about this work is the project map we created for them: this displays resources on a map for users to find projects that are local to them; this is then further definable by any tags associated with the resources, the primary ecosystem service and the development programme.

Consortium for Street Children

The Consortium for Street Children’s resource library houses the world’s largest online collection of publications and reports on street-connected children. The charity act as a voice for street children when many have none – they create partnerships between organisations, activists and policy makers around the world to highlight the needs of and make change for street children globally. These resources are free-to-use and are available in a number of languages, depending on where they were published. Users can refine the results to show those based on a particular country, region, year of publication and the organisation who published it; they’re also downloadable and have a discussion feature for members to discuss them.

Conclusion

We’re pleased to say that the resource centres we’ve built have proven invaluable to our clients and their audiences. Helping clients to share their knowledge and expertise, and present themselves as thought leaders in their industry is a great source of pride for us, and hopefully this post demonstrates how a library like these examples could be of benefit to your own organisation. If you’d like to discuss how we could assist in creating a resource library for you, get in touch with us.