Purpose of this Template

This template represents an entire operational website that you can use to run your village.  The template was designed by experienced volunteers from operating Villages.  We aim to help you quickly and effectively jumpstart your Village's public and private websites.  The template configures your "back office functions" by providing all the features that most  new Villages want.  This template likely provides more capability than you will care to use initially.  In that case you can simply delete, ignore or disable the aspects of the website you don't need.   

This template suggests the website, organizational framework, procedures, documents, and application features that Villages might want.  It provides the Village's “starter” settings and examples that can be easily modified based on the Villages needs.  It contains dozens of easy-to-customize web pages that you can modify.  It is organized around the functions a Village needs, whether performed by a volunteer committee, paid staff, or a mixture of each.  

All this is accompanied by documentation explaining choices that other Villages have made in creating their operating processes.  We also suggest help and mentoring by volunteers from existing Villages who are familiar with these tools.  

Specifically, the template:

• Suggests starting values for many of the choices that new Villages need to make.  However, in all cases, the choices can be easily changed based on the Village’s preferences.
  

• Provides example web pages that the Village can use as a starting point for the Village’s website and can often simply substitute text and pictures into the sample pages.
  

• Lays out sample menus to navigate between the Village’s webpages,  application tools, and even external pages.  Here, too, it is easy for the Village to change the menus and we have even developed alternative menus that with a few clicks the Village can replace the menus currently in the template.

• Provides some instructions identifying choices that other Villages have made in setting up their website and back office application and identifies some of the concepts that you should consider when setting up your Village operation.

• Suggests a committee structure and/or allocation of functional responsibilities.
  

• Describes procedures for commonly used village functions.
  

Ask for Mentor

We encourage you to ask for a Village Volunteer to act as your mentor as early as you can in your process.  The mentor will help you work through the choices you have and can show you the “how to’s” and the “what to avoids.”

We believe that in planning for and implementing your Village most new Villages will benefit from an experienced mentor from a Village that has been using the application.  You can ask for a volunteer mentor from a Village currently using RunMyVillage by contacting RMVusers@vtvnetwork.org.

Assign a person or committee to set up your website, internal processes, and database.

Many of the decisions you initially need to make are policy and process decisions that need to be discussed by the founding organizers.  Examples are: what are the membership types and fees; what volunteer services will the Village provide and services will you refer to contractors; what types of events will be sponsored; what kinds of social activity groups will you encourage; does the Village want to have a membership directory that members can use to learn about each others; what will be the Village’s transportation policies. 

If you are setting up the website you will work hand-in-hand with the people making policy decisions.  You can use the documents in the template directory, and the sample set up shown included with the template as well as the vendor's documentation to guide you.

One advantage of the template approach is that many decisions have been made.  You can later revisit them and tailor the approach to your needs.  The template documentation helps identify some of the decisions that might be overlooked by the policymakers unless the choices are pointed out.