Find what your community needs. Or be found by the people who need you.
Community Switchboard is the discovery layer for the UK's third sector. Whether you're searching for local support, looking for somewhere to volunteer, or running a charity that nobody can find online, this is the platform that connects you.
Free for every community organisation. Live under ten minutes. Accessible by default.
Trusted by charities, grassroots groups, and community organisations across the UK
The support exists. Most people just can't find it.
Every town in the UK has charities running food banks, youth groups running mentoring schemes, and grassroots organisers running the kind of programmes that change lives. They're doing the work right now, often within walking distance of the people who need them most.
But finding them is harder than it should be. Search engines surface national brands before local groups. Social media buries posts before the right people see them. Outdated directories list services that closed years ago. And the organisations themselves rarely have the time, money, or technical capacity to keep a modern website running.
The result is a quiet kind of exclusion. Services exist. People need them. The connection breaks down somewhere in the middle.
Community Switchboard is built to fix that connection.
FOR INDIVIDUALS
If you're looking for support, opportunity, or somewhere to belong
You shouldn't need to know the right charity by name to find help. You shouldn't need to scroll through ten Facebook groups to find a local class. You shouldn't need to be digitally confident to discover what's available within a mile of your front door.
Switchboard gives you one place to search.
Find what's near you
Search by postcode, by need, by accessibility requirements, by language, by what's open right now. Filter for what actually matters to you.
Discover what's happening
A live map of community events, workshops, volunteering opportunities, and support services across your area, updated by the organisations themselves.
Move from access to participation
When you're ready, the same platform that helped you find support can help you contribute, whether that's volunteering, donating, or finding routes into work and skills development.
FOR ORGANISATIONS
If you run a charity, grassroots group, or community service
You're trying to reach people who need your help, while also writing funding applications, recruiting volunteers, managing safeguarding, and running the actual service. A working website is essential. Building one usually isn't possible.
Switchboard removes that barrier entirely.
Live in under ten minutes
Sign up, verify your organisation, and publish a credible, accessible website without writing a line of code or paying for a developer.
Discoverable from day one
Every organisation gets indexed in the national participation system, surfacing your services to people searching by need and geography.
Accessibility as standard
WCAG-aligned layouts, mobile-first design, and structured data that helps people with screen readers, low digital confidence, or limited connectivity actually reach your services.
Everything your community needs to thrive
Core capabilities, available to every organisation
Your microsite
Mobile-first responsive design, accessibility-first layouts, local SEO optimisation, and a basic analytics dashboard. Switchboard-branded on the free tier, your own branding on paid tiers.
Discovery engine
Listed in the national index. Searchable by geography, service radius, need, category, accessibility requirement, language provision, and opening times.
Events and bookings
Publish events, take bookings, send communication reminders, and connect to the live community map.
Donations and Gift Aid
Stripe Connect integration so you can take donations and ticket sales from launch, with Gift Aid where eligible.
Volunteer pipelines
Sign-up forms, opportunity listings, and connections into the wider Switchboard volunteer pool.
Hubs and coordination
Shared calendars, cross-organisation collaboration, and collective campaign amplification with other organisations in your ecosystem.
Knowledge base
Access a shared repository contributed by community organisations across the country, and add your own where useful.
Go live in less than ten minutes
Three steps to connect your organisation.
Create your account
Verify your organisation in seconds. We support registered charities, CICs, grassroots groups, and informal community organisations.
Connect Stripe
Optional but recommended. Connect Stripe to enable donations, ticket sales, and Gift Aid from the moment you publish.
Build your site
Use the modular builder to add your content. Drag, drop, publish. Your site goes live and gets indexed across the Switchboard network immediately.
Modular Builder
Drag, drop, and publish. No code required.
Designed for inclusion, not exclusion
Every organisation stays discoverable on the free tier. Paid tiers add capability and priority placement, never eligibility.
Free
per month
- Switchboard-branded microsite
- Directory Listing
- Event and Volunteer tools
- Basic hub access. Everything an organisation needs to get found and start operating.
Basic
per month
- Removes Switchboard branding
- Training and shared resources
- Organisation Tool limit increases
- Event communication reminders. Best for small charities ready to grow their presences.
Built for the people most often left out
Roughly 49 percent of disabled people say poor accessibility has put them off donating online. 71 percent will leave a website that's difficult to use. 3.8 million people in the UK lack essential digital skills, and 2.8 million have no internet access at all.
Switchboard is built with those numbers in mind. Every microsite is WCAG-aligned by default. The platform is designed for low digital confidence and time-poor teams. From 2027, we extend beyond the web with voice navigation, SMS discovery, multi-language support, and offline-first access, so people can find services regardless of connectivity or device.
#NoCommunityLeftOffline
This is part of our wider campaign, #NoCommunityLeftOffline, which works to ensure rural, underserved, and digitally excluded communities are not left behind by infrastructure built elsewhere.
Built by community organisers, run from Barnsley
Community Switchboard is the discovery and participation layer of Community Stack, a stewardship-led operator of community infrastructure based in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Community Stack runs 18 practitioner-led communities, supports more than 25,000 members, and delivers over 100 events a year across the UK and internationally. Switchboard extends that same infrastructure approach to the third sector.
The platform was named in honour of CEO Ethan Sumner's Nana, who worked on telecommunications switchboards in Barnsley for British Telecom and Central Call, manually connecting people across the region. The principle is the same now as it was then: making sure people can reach each other when it matters.
Ethan Sumner
Co-Founder and CEO
Community organiser and technologist from Barnsley. Having worked for Microsoft, Mastercard and leading consultancies as well as years of running grassroots meetups across Yorkshire showed him the same pattern repeating: communities with networks and funding thrived, while communities doing equally important work without those advantages disappeared. Switchboard is built to close that gap.
Mercedes Moxon-Greenfield
Co-Founder and CTO
UK Robotics Champion, accessibility advocate, and engineer from Sheffield. Mercedes leads platform delivery with an accessibility-first approach, because the people who most need community support are often the same people excluded by complicated technology.
"Participation should never be determined by digital access alone." Mercedes Moxon-Greenfield
Where Switchboard goes next
Now, live today
Presence layer, core discoverability, hubs, job and volunteering basics, knowledge base, national campaigns.
Q3 2026
Expanded fundraising and Gift Aid, project showcases, volunteer pipelines, community-contributed knowledge.
Q4 2026
Collective grant board, lightweight operational tools, amplified national campaigns.
2027
Resource sharing, advocacy coordination, impact intelligence, offline access through voice and SMS, assistive AI for individuals navigating complex systems.
Ready to connect your community?
Whether you need support or you give it, Switchboard is built for you.
If you're looking for help in your area, start with a search. If you run an organisation people should be finding, register today.
Free forever. Live in ten minutes. Accessible by default.
Accessibility Panel
Customize your platform experience and notification preferences.