SEAD (Scottish Education and Action for Development)

Support for starting a group

The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations website has a lot of information about starting your own group, deciding if you need to be legally constituted, organisational development, financial management, fundraising, and much more.

Civicus: the World Alliance for Citizen Participation

Civicus is an international alliance established in 1993 to nurture the foundation, growth and protection of citizen action throughout the world, especially in areas where participatory democracy and citizens’ freedom of association are threatened. Their website hosts useful resources for groups on how to develop your organisation, planning and strategy, fundraising and conflict resolution

Seeds for Change – providing tools for community action

Provides training and resources for grassroots campaigners, NGOs, Co-ops and other community groups and organisations in the social sector. Their website has a tremendous amount of resources on everything from facilitating meetings to organising your own campaign.

International Association for Community Development

IACD is an international not-for-profit, non government organisation committed to building a global network of people and organisations working toward social justice through community development. They produce reports on subjects such as the role of communities in peace-building, community-led regeneration examples, citizen participation in decision-making and approaches to social change.

IT support and free and open source software for community groups

The non-profit co-op Seeds for Change also offers support for the IT needs of voluntary and social sector organisations.

The New Economics Foundation Guide to Democs

Democs stands for ‘deliberative meeting of citizens’. Part card game, part policy-making tool that enables small groups of people to engage with complex public policy issues. It helps people find out about a topic, express their views, seek common ground with the other participants, and state their preferred policy position from a given choice of four. They can also add their own policy positions.

Dialogue Designer

A free online tool for generating community engagement.