The UK charity Contact a Family, which provides information, support and advice to families with disabled children, has upgraded its central information system infrastructure for under £50,000, spread over three years, mainly through the use of open source software.

The charity has a head office in central London, employing some 35 staff. It also has a number of smaller offices around the UK, with a mixture of paid staff and volunteers.

Several years ago, Contact a Family realised its existing computer systems were no longer meeting its needs. The charity had grown and needed an integrated infrastructure and a dedicated IT employee.

Ryan Cartwright was appointed five years ago as the charity’s first full-time IT manager and has overseen a systems upgrade, including the implementation of a new database, to give all staff access to accurate information about services and support groups. A list of more than 3,000 medical conditions also had to be included. The database has been integrated into the charity’s main system to ensure information can be shared as effectively as possible.

Cartwright was keen to build a web-based system, which would be easy for staff to use and would require little extra support. But this approach looked too expensive, even with a grant from the Department of Health.

“Initial discussions with suppliers and advisers suggested that a web-enabled solution could be prohibitively expensive,” says Cartwright, who soon realised that proprietary-based systems, running Microsoft Windows 2000 and MS Exchange would eat up a “significant proportion” of the budget on licensing costs.

“This did not bode well for the organisation’s intended future expansion.”

Instead, the charity decided to work with its existing support provider to build its new system on open source. The quote for the new system was a quarter of the cost of a proprietary system, but there were drawbacks. The open source system would not have all the functionality of MS Exchange, but after user consultation, Cartwright realised that with some extra programming, all the main functions needed could be provided.

A further challenge came when there were misunderstandings about the database requirements between Contact a Family and the consultancy with which is was working, and this led to delays, according to Cartwright.

After the database was delivered, further development was carried out in-house by Cartwright.

The system runs on two servers, both running SuSE Linux, one housing the database, web and mail servers, and the other acting as a file and print server within the charity’s head office. 

Extra consultancy time for adapting the software was added, but the system was still within budget.

The main advantages of the upgrade have been the integration of the charity’s IT system and a high level of system reliability.

The use of open source software has meant the systems were not only substantially cheaper than proprietary systems, but have been adjusted to the charity’s needs.

External support requirements have been minimised. In fact, by investing in its own staff, Contact a Family has benefited by drawing on a wide set of internal skills, well-tuned to the organisation’s needs, says Cartwright, who is a member of Social Source UK, a group of people from the voluntary sector who seek to promote the use and good practice of open source software within the voluntary sector.

“Another key benefit has been that the systems have been able to grow and adapt to the ever-changing needs of the charity, with minimal additional outlay,” he says.

Summary Contact a family

A new central information system infrastructure for under £50,000, spread over three years, mainly through the use of open source software. The use of open source software has meant the systems were not only substantially cheaper than proprietary systems, but have been adjusted to the charity’s needs.