Pro bono

At Major Tom, we make websites. But we also live somewhere. On a street, in a city, in a country full of schools, clubs, community centres and people who show up for each other without anyone asking them to. We feel part of that, and we want to contribute to it.

That doesn’t start with the company, but with the people behind it. Astronaut Yann spent twelve years in Round Table Belgium, a service club where members set up projects together, raise funds and above all roll up their sleeves. He became its national president, and later also international president of Round Table International.

Round Table International has more than 40,000 members in over 50 countries. As its president, you quickly learn that a good idea from Ghent can work in Oslo, Nairobi or Mumbai too, as long as you share it. And that the best projects are rarely the biggest ones, but the ones where people truly find each other.

Round Table’s motto is ‘Adopt, Adapt, Improve’: take what works, adjust it, make it better. Honestly, it could have been the slogan of a good web studio.

A table has an age limit, commitment doesn’t. Today Yann is active in Kiwanis Belgium-Luxembourg, where he tries to make himself useful in several ways. Kiwanis is an international service club that focuses above all on children and young people in their own communities.

With our local club in Ghent, we regularly organise events. There’s cooking, pouring, setting up and tearing down, and the proceeds go to organisations and people around us who can really use them. No big words. Just doing it, together, as often as we can.

Over all those years, we saw it again and again. Organisations that mean a great deal to their community, but barely exist online. A non-profit with a website from 2011 that nobody can edit anymore. A volunteer retyping registrations from twenty emails every Sunday night. A neighbourhood project with a wonderful story, but nowhere to tell it.

Not because they don’t think it matters. Because every euro goes to their cause, and rightly so. A website then feels like a luxury. Even though a good website is exactly what helps more people find them, support them, help out or join in.

Which happens to be exactly what we’re good at.

Every year, we set aside a serious number of hours for organisations with a social purpose. Not leftovers squeezed in between client projects, but real hours, planned like any other project. With the same people, the same care and the same stubbornness to get it right.

Whatever those hours produce costs the organisation nothing. No quote with small print, no ‘first year free’, no invoice afterwards.

A website that tells people who you are and what you do, works on every phone and that you can keep up to date yourself.

Maintenance of an existing site: updates, security, small and large changes, so it doesn’t slowly sink away.

Custom web applications: registrations for a charity event, a volunteer schedule, membership management, a request form that doesn’t vanish into an inbox.

Hosting: fast and secure, without trackers or cookies that do nothing for your visitors.

For organisations that mean something to their surroundings and have no budget of their own for a website or application. Think of a non-profit, an association, a neighbourhood initiative, a project for children or young people, or an organisation supporting people in poverty, in loneliness or with a disability. Big or small, local or wider: the purpose counts, not the size.

Not sure whether you qualify? Just ask. The worst that can happen is that we look for another solution together.

Send us a message through the contact page: who you are, what you do and what you need help with. A few sentences are enough.

We get in touch to get to know each other. Not a sales pitch, but an honest chat about what’s really needed. Sometimes that’s less than you think.

Together we decide what we’ll do and when. The pro bono hours aren’t unlimited, so we plan them like a real project, with a clear agreement on what’s included.

We build, launch and stay around for maintenance and hosting. A website that gets abandoned after a year helps nobody.

Does your organisation need a website or application, would it make a real difference to your community, but there’s simply no budget for it? Let us know. We can’t help everyone, but we do want to hear from everyone.