Consultancy · Tech for Good

Digital consultancy for charities and community groups.

Scoping, funding applications, prototypes and websites for good causes, from a studio that has been the techie, the treasurer and the founder.

Book a free callSee our Tech for Good work
What this is

Digital consultancy for charities, community groups and social enterprises in Northern Ireland. We are a studio that has been the “techie” in two Techies in Residence programmes, co-founded a community charity, and still believes good technology for good causes should be small, specific and built to last.

Tech for good is one of Invisible Building’s three pillars, alongside web design and e-commerce. We have worked with AWARE NI, Barnardo’s Northern Ireland, LooseHeadz and Moira Community Association, and we have sat on the other side of the table too: writing funding applications, setting up bank accounts and running crowdfunding campaigns as a volunteer treasurer. That is the experience this consultancy is built on. You can see the projects on our Tech for Good page.

  • 2×Techies in Residence programmes, with AWARE in 2015–16 and Barnardo’s NI in 2020–21
  • 1Community charity co-founded, registered and handed over on schedule
  • 7Languages in FixIT, the housing-repair tool we built for refugee families
  • 10 yrsWorking with charities, funders and volunteer committees in Northern Ireland
Who this is for

Good causes with a digital decision to make.

  • Charities and voluntary organisations planning a digital project: a tool for the people you support, a new website, a system to replace the spreadsheet.
  • Community associations and residents’ groups who need a Facebook group, a website, online payments and a way to keep them going when the committee changes.
  • Social enterprises and charity shops selling on Shopify to fund their mission, who need the store to work harder for less.
  • Funders and programme managers who want an independent technical view on a proposal, a budget or a residency pairing.

What we help with

From the first “we need an app” conversation to the day the founder hands over the logins.

  1. Scoping a digital project

    Turning “we need an app” into a clear, fundable brief: who it’s for, what it must do, what it can cost, what happens after launch. This is the work we did with Barnardo’s before FixIT was a line of code.

  2. Funding applications & budgets

    Realistic technology budgets and delivery plans for applications to the Community Foundation NI, National Lottery Community Fund, councils and trusts. That includes hosting, maintenance and accessibility.

  3. Prototypes & MVPs

    Low-cost, testable versions of a tool so you can learn from the people you support before committing to a full build. See web app & MVP development.

  4. Websites & Shopify for good causes

    Websites, donation flows and Shopify stores that a volunteer can run, without app subscriptions eating into the money you raise.

  5. Digital infrastructure for new groups

    The set-up that lets a new community organisation function from day one: Facebook groups, email, shared drives, online banking and payments, simple governance tools.

  6. Succession & sustainability

    Documenting how everything works so it survives the founder leaving. We designed Moira Community’s leadership to rotate every two years, and the events still run without us.

How we work with good causes

Two principles, learned the hard way.

  1. Build with, not for

    Every tool we have shipped for a charity has been built alongside the people who will use it and the staff who will support it. The best way we have found to do that is the residency model: a techie embedded in the organisation for months rather than a supplier at arm’s length.

  2. Plan for the day after launch

    The residency, the grant and the launch are the easy part. Hosting, updates, the next language, the volunteer who inherits the login: that is where charity tech projects usually die. We scope for that from the start.

Pricing

Priced so it fits in a budget line.

We keep a proportion of our time for tech for good work and price it accordingly. Discovery calls are free. Scoping, funding-application support and reviews are fixed-price so you can put them in a budget. Our Tech for Good package is the usual starting point. Where a project is funded through a programme like Techies in Residence, we work within the programme’s terms.

If you are a small volunteer-run group with no budget at all, tell us anyway. Sometimes an hour of advice is all it takes.

Book a free call

Questions

Asked often.

What is Techies in Residence, and can you help us apply?

Techies in Residence is a Community Foundation for Northern Ireland programme, funded by Comic Relief, that pairs tech companies with voluntary and community organisations to build digital solutions together. Invisible Building has taken part twice: with AWARE in 2015–16, when the programme was run by the Building Change Trust and CultureTECH, and with Barnardo’s NI in 2020–21 under the Community Foundation. We are happy to talk through whether it fits your idea.

We only have a Facebook page. Is that a problem?

Not at all. For a lot of community groups a well-run Facebook group is the right tool, and we have set them up ourselves. The question is what you need beyond it: payments, a place for documents, a way to reach people who aren’t on Facebook. We’ll help you work that out.

Do you build apps for charities?

Yes. We build web apps that work on any phone without an app store, which is usually the right call for a charity budget. FixIT and the AWARE Mood Matters tool were both built that way. See web app & MVP development.

Do you work with organisations outside Northern Ireland?

Yes. Most of our tech for good work has been in Northern Ireland, but LooseHeadz are in Cheshire and FixIT was designed to roll out across the UK and Ireland. Video calls make the geography easy.

Written along the way, as it happened. Nothing tidied up afterwards.

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