The Volunteer Centre Brighton and Hove aims to connect volunteers with local voluntary and community-based organisations who need volunteers. In the last year alone, we have received over 1500 emails enquiring about volunteering opportunities and nearly 900 people have visited the Centre looking to invest their time, energy and enthusiasm into their local community. The Centre has c. 450 organisations registered with it and advertises over 400 different volunteering opportunities within the local area of Brighton & Hove. The volume of opportunities brings with it a diversity of roles and a real chance for those who might not always feel fully involved in their local community: for example, people with disabilities, people from within the BME communities, the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community, or older people who have retired from full-time employment and miss that contact. Along with the Project Leader, the Volunteer Centre itself is run by a team of 9 volunteers. Maintaining accurate information on such a large number of opportunities and ensuring it reaches interested volunteers requires energy, enthusiasm, commitment and the right tools to do the job. The Centre manages the data on all its opportunities, organisations and registered volunteers using VBase; the national database that feeds into the Do-it website, where all of our current opportunities may be viewed by the public on-line. Strong IT systems are therefore imperative if the Centre is to maintain a high standard of service to those seeking to volunteer and to capitalize on the value, both economic and social, to the local community of Brighton & Hove. Currently the Volunteer Centre has four PCs, all of which have passed their shelf-life of 3 years and consequently are struggling to run at the capacity which is required to meet the demands placed upon our service. Indeed 2 of our computers are not able to support the software that is standard within the Centre and 1 is unable to be brought onto the domain as used by our umbrella Charity. Aside from hindering our daily work we are increasingly looking to explore and develop new ways of spreading the volunteering word out to the local community; enabling people to get involved and support organisations and their beneficiaries in the Brighton & Hove area. For example, in March we emailed over 300 people to let them know of a local community event that required the support of volunteers to run… 300 people who may otherwise not have known. However, our current IT struggles to perform these activities, with frequent crashes and if we are to continue to support organizations, for whom volunteers are central to their function, it is critical that we have the tools to deliver this service. Costs: £2000 for 4 new computers. Please contact me if you need more information and thank you for your time.