Okay, heres some actual help:

https://uxchecklist.github.io/

http://uxrecipe.github.io/#

These are the steps you take to design any software product (your website is your product)

But this is UX, not marketing & comms. UX is a fantastic career (it’s what I do) but its a million miles away from marketing.

Thanks for all the info guys.
A lot of it I’d picked up on, but nice to get some different perspectives from other disciplines

Interview is tomorrow and just finishing up my presentation after a certain amount of procrastination (building this up from the frame for the girlfriend):

The brief for the presentation is:
Please present on the following:

1. A review of VAF’s website homepage and give your ideas about and recommendations for improvement;

2. Your recommendations to attract potential donors and investors:

3. Any other recommendations you would make on the VAF website.

I’ve got 1 and 3 covered, but not sure about 2…
My answers seem to revolve more about having a think about your different user groups and building the website up to reflect them, and giving an example of a funder who does this well:
https://www.foundationscotland.org.uk/

But, I dunno…. maybe some kind of excellent wheeze/scam/plan/ponzi scheme to bring in rakes of cash? Anyone got any ideas?

Maybe 2 isn’t about the website at all?
Maybe some numbers on the demographic of folk that might typically give to an organisation like VAF – might be a bit late to research that though.

Yeah, that’s the thought that’s crossing my mind too

The GDS stuff didn’t come around by accident, it was carefully crafted by an excellent team who really know their stuff.

I can vouch 100% for this; my OH was part of the team for a while so I know quite a lot about what they went through. There was a number of very, very brilliant people involved in that site.

Ach well, I’ve done it. Looked up some donor stats, picked 7 separate donor types/audiences and shown some examples of it done well by other organisations.
Had a run through with my cat as audience

A good night’s sleep, a ****, my Zegna suit, new charity shop shoes and a shave will see me through.

But, I dunno…. maybe some kind of excellent wheeze/scam/plan/ponzi scheme to bring in rakes of cash? Anyone got any ideas?

Well not a website (as you know) 🙂 . I’ve seen a couple of people throw cash at a website imagining that that’s all you need to get money flowing in. You can guess what happened. But you do need to look in detail at a few investors that you already know, look at what they are looking for – sorts of programs etc., and make sure that info. in on your site in an obvious and attractive way. Then when you encourage others to go to your site they are likely to find what they need.

I can vouch 100% for this; my OH was part of the team for a while so I know quite a lot about what they went through. There was a number of very, very brilliant people involved in that site.

Very very brilliant 😀

Well, I never got this job, however they did give me feedback (which is quite a rarity – had 2 pieces of feedback from 7 interviews after requesting)
They went with someone with more media/PR experience.

However, they did ask if I was interested in a contract to do their digital transformation project which was on their site then too, so meeting them again for an interview this week.

Surprise, surprise, another presentation!

“Please talk us through how you might approach moving VAF’s relationship management systems from Access databases to a modern cloud based solution”

Just a wee 5 minutes so will be a whistlestop tour.

This would be a good one to land, looks like 3 days a week for 9 months, invoicing as a contractor…

So, my question is, what kind of rate would you expect?
The job involves the above system change plus a whole audit of how they use all their IT technology and then staff training etc