Moira Community Association
Co-founder and first Treasurer of a cross-community charity for our home village, and builder of the digital plumbing that lets it run without us.
In March 2022 David Shawe co-founded Moira Community Association, a cross-community organisation for the village of Moira, County Down. He served as its first Treasurer. Invisible Building built the digital infrastructure that let a brand-new volunteer group function from day one. Two years on, the association is a registered charity and the events run without us. That was the plan.
- Organisation
- Moira Community Association, Moira, Co. Down
- Role
- Co-founder and first Treasurer, 2022–2024; digital and design lead
- Charity
- Charity Commission for Northern Ireland, NIC109475, July 2023
- Community
- Moira Community Notice Board, with over 12,000 members
- Signature event
- The Santa parade down Main Street every December
- Long-term goal
- A community centre for Moira
Plenty of goodwill. Nowhere to bring an idea.
Moira is a village of a few thousand people between Lisburn and Lurgan with a long main street, a lot of goodwill and, in early 2022, no single organisation that anyone in the village could bring an idea to. Coming out of the pandemic there were plenty of people who wanted to do something: a litter pick, a Christmas event, a group for families with additional needs. There was no structure to do it through.
So a handful of us set one up. The idea was deliberately modest: a pot for community projects and a committee that anyone local could join, so that if you had an idea for something non-profit in Moira you could pitch it, get a bit of money and a bit of help, and make it happen. Cross-community, open to everyone, and designed from the first meeting so that it would not depend on the people who founded it.
What we built
A community group in 2022 is a digital organisation whether it wants to be or not. This was Invisible Building’s contribution.
-
The Facebook community
A public group, Moira Community Notice Board, alongside the association’s page. It is where the village actually talks, and it has grown past 12,000 members. That is well over twice the population of Moira itself.
-
The website
moiracommunity.com: what the association is, the charity number, upcoming events and how to get involved. Deliberately simple and cheap: a site a future committee can keep going without a developer.
-
Donations and payments
Stripe payment links for one-off and regular donations, so the Santa appeal and coffee mornings could take money online without a card machine or a bucket.
-
Forms that do the admin
Airtable forms for listing an event or submitting photos, feeding straight into shared tables the committee could work from. No spreadsheets emailed around.
-
The newsletter
A Mailchimp list for the people who aren’t on Facebook. In a village that is more people than you would think.
-
Governance you can hand over
A constitution built for succession: leadership rotates every two years, and every login, document and process was written down so the next Treasurer could pick it up without ringing the last one.
It snowed, right on cue.
The association’s first big event was the Santa parade on Saturday 10 December 2022. Poole’s SuperValu, Grahams, Café Vic-Ryn, Moira Accountancy, Tribe CrossFit and other local businesses backed the Santa appeal. Santa and his helpers came down Main Street and Meeting Street on the sleigh from half six, and the evening raised £371.24 for Northern Ireland Chest Heart & Stroke.
David filmed it for his own channel. The moment the Christmas music started on the sleigh it began to snow. Properly. The resulting two and a half minutes has been watched more than eleven thousand times on YouTube alone. You can read the full story in Looking back at Magic at Moira.
NIC109475.
In March 2023 the association was one of 105 community groups across Lisburn and Castlereagh to receive a King’s Coronation small grant from the council. In July 2023 it was registered as a charity by the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland (number NIC109475) with purposes that include relieving poverty and isolation, advancing education, providing recreation facilities for the people of Moira, and managing and developing a community centre for the village.
Registration is the moment a community group stops being a good idea and becomes an institution that can apply for serious funding, and getting there is mostly paperwork: a constitution, a bank account with the right signatories, a first set of accounts, a trustee list, a governing document the Commission is happy with. Doing that paperwork well is as much a part of tech for good as any app.
None of it needs a founder in the room. That’s the point.
David stepped down from the committee in 2024, on schedule. The association has since run coffee mornings for the Cancer Fund for Children, taken a stand at the Moira Speciality Food Fair, launched SENcircle (a parent-led weekly group for families with autism and additional needs) and kept the Santa parade going every December.
Moira Community sits on this site because it is the clearest example of what we mean by tech for good: not an app, but the digital and organisational plumbing that lets ordinary people in a village get things done. It was built so that it keeps working after the person who built it has moved on.
Setting up a community group and want the digital side done properly from day one? Start with our digital consultancy for charities and community groups.
The Moira story, as it happened
Written along the way, as it happened. Nothing tidied up afterwards.
-
Looking Back at Magic at Moira: 10k Views, The Santa Run, and Building Something That Lasts
Sometimes you look back at old footage and realise you struck pure gold. You honestly couldn't have scripted it. A few years ago I...
-
Moira Community Association Is Now a Registered Charity: What It Took
Moira Community Association is now charity NIC109475. What it took: a constitution, trustees, a year of accounts, and the digital kit that made it...
-
Tech for Good Is Now One of Our Three Pillars. Here’s What That Means
Why tech for good now sits alongside web design and e-commerce at Invisible Building, and the rules learned from AWARE, FixIT and Moira Community.
-
Santa Came to Moira (and It Snowed): The 2022 Parade, the Appeal and £371 for NICHS
Moira Community Association’s first Santa parade: local sponsors, a sleigh down Main Street, snow on cue, and £371.24 for NI Chest Heart & Stroke.
-
We’ve Started a Community Association in Moira. Here’s the Digital Kit Behind It
Co-founding Moira Community Association: the Facebook group, bank account, forms, payments and newsletter a new village group needs from day one.