We’re excited to share that we have launched a new academy, starting with positions for Junior Developers and Digital Marketing Executives.
Get hands-on experience that will drive your career forward while getting paid!
The first step is to find out more about the roles available and then apply to join an Academy Day.
Our Academy days make the interview process more inclusive, interesting, and (hopefully) fun!
Spend the day with our mentors, participate in activities with other guests, and show us why you’re a good fit for being at Torchbox.
There will be a baseline of knowledge and skills required depending on the role you’re applying for. The full criteria is included in the specification.
The Academy Days are running on the following dates:
Find out all you need to know and how to apply.
Digital agency Torchbox has gathered the SEO data of over 50 charity websites across eight sub-sectors to provide a benchmark of organic SEO performance across the not-for-profit space.
Torchbox has measured success against six SEO metrics, including technical health, backlink profile, and content. The data has been presented as a card game, allowing you to play your nonprofit against other charities operating in a similar space.
As well as a physical pack of cards, there is also a Super Trumps website, where you can play the game, read the state of the sector review, visually compare the performance of all included charities and read the individual sector reports. The eight subsectors analysed are:
“We hope this gets some conversations started internally about the value of SEO at charitable organisations, and if not, we hope this at the very least raises a smile!”
Phil McMinn, Digital Marketing Director, Torchbox
The Super Trumps project was launched at an exclusive webinar, with guest speakers from Oxfam, Sightsavers, and NHS Digital – with a panel discussion around SEO utilisation in the nonprofit space.
“It was a really great session. Very informative and has given us plenty to consider for 2022.”
Kim Watson, Head of Marketing, Versus Arthritis
The response to the project has been incredible, with positive feedback from charities that are and are not included in the analysis. Also, requests from other nonprofit sectors, such as Think Tanks, to be included in the next benchmarking analysis!
“Absolutely nerding out over these #TorchboxSuperTrumps. Who knew SEO benchmarking could be this fun?”
Dan Papworth-Smyth, Head of Digital Engagement, Breast Cancer Now
Torchbox’s overarching goal is that this benchmarking exercise will help to highlight where opportunities lie to utilise SEO and provide the data to illustrate what is possible in the not-for-profit sector.
Join the discussion #TorchboxSuperTrumps
By Jacob Topp-Mugglestone, Junior Developer & Wagtail Consultant
When I joined Torchbox as a developer, I was worried. I had no previous web development experience. I was coming from a very different background of laser and plasma physics, where I’d used Python to simulate what kind of conditions hitting a sample with a laser might get, or analyse just what kind of densities my latest experiment might have reached – but never to manage someone’s website!
After finishing my Physics Masters at the University of Oxford and then trying out research, I found that what I loved most was coding – so I started looking for a job where I could do that full-time. Torchbox jumped out at me as somewhere I’d have the opportunity to try a range of different projects, and I was excited about their ethical focus as well – so I applied. Thankfully they were willing to train me up on the web development side of things.
In the month before I started, I was able to meet some of the team at a Wednesday lunch and for a punting trip (in turn, they were also introduced to my baking obsession). During this time, I did some reading up on Django and database design, but once I started in earnest, this got a lot more practical. My line manager, Nick Smith, and the head of the Tech team, Helen Warren, came up with some requirements for a test website to build to get the hang of Django fundamentals, as well as arranging code reviews from the rest of the team. While building that, I also got involved in a little support work for our existing client sites.
Soon, my first big project began. The Motley Fool were sponsoring extensions and development on the open source Wagtail CMS, which Torchbox founded. I was excited to get the opportunity to work on such a big open source project – I started contributing in small ways, with documentation updates, then minor feature changes like adding a way to disable moderation, but quickly was able to gain experience with the support of Karl and Matthew, the other developers on the project. I always felt supported, no matter what I was taking on.
Before long, I was able to get stuck in to developing Wagtail Content Import: an app for importing documents from Google Docs into Wagtail StreamField (since then I’ve had the opportunity to expand it to Word documents as well). From then on, I was nearly full time on this work (as well as some support work for our existing clients). I loved the diversity of it, since it gave me opportunities to pick up experience in all sorts of areas. Over my first year at Torchbox, I’ve developed apps like Wagtail Image Import (my first React-heavy project), Wagtail Content Import and Wagtail Draftail Anchors, helped on others like Wagtail Transfer, and worked on big features for Wagtail itself – of which the biggest, Workflow (a fully-customisable moderation system) has just been been officially released as part of Wagtail 2.10. Early this year, I also joined the Wagtail core team, responsible for keeping the project going, so I’m looking forward to staying involved with Wagtail’s development, with work on features like inline commenting in the edit view and page analysis tools planned for the near future.
I’ve just finished my first year, and thinking back on it, I couldn’t have asked for a better combination of a supportive environment and constant new technical challenge in which to grow into a developer role. The tech team has always been keen to provide advice and learn from each other, and on the other side, there’s always interesting new requirements from clients driving development.
Over the last five years we’ve seen our US client base grow, with names such as the University of Pennsylvania, Oxfam America, and NASA. The Wagtail CMS has also gone from strength to strength, with thousands of US organisations now using it to power their digital estate. With this track record, and many more opportunities in the pipeline, it’s the perfect time to set up in the USA.
“You’re expanding and opening an office during a Pandemic?”
Expanding yes… but we’re not opening a new office.
We’ve been looking at setting up in the US for a number of years, but settling on a location has proved difficult. Our clients are located all over America – from New York to California – so committing to bricks and mortar in one state would still have meant committing to high flying miles if we were mainly collaborating on site.
This is something we wanted to avoid as much as possible, so we continued working with our US clients from our offices in the UK and with our distributed development team in North America. This has enabled us to refine our processes and become experts in delivering digital products remotely. As the world has become more borderless our US business has really grown, with over 20% of our revenue coming from North America.
When the Covid pandemic hit, like many businesses we were nervous what the future held – not only for us, but also our clients. As it turns out, Coronavirus has actually accelerated our growth because more organisations in the US are shifting to remote working, mirroring what we see in European markets. Teams are much more open-minded about the potential for working remotely. They still want to work collaboratively but being physically in the same location has become less important. But, whilst remote has become king, clients do still want to work with teams on similar timezones, so we are looking to expand our development team in North America.
All of this has led to our decision to incorporate in the US. Not only does this make it easier for American organisations to do business with us, but it also helps us grow our team stateside. We can continue to do what we do best – collaborating remotely with clients to turn their vision into reality.
If you’re keen to know more about our service offering in the US, or would like to become part of our team, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line.
Torchbox has been providing digital services to charities and nonprofits since the year 2000, we offer digital product development, digital marketing services and we’re the founders of an open source CMS called Wagtail, which is used by the likes of the NHS, Oxfam and Mozilla Foundation (to name but a few). And now, as we hurtle towards our 20th birthday, we are delighted to have been included on The Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies to Work For list 2020.
This list is based on the open and honest feedback from our employees – providing them with a chance to have their say (anonymously) and to highlight areas we can improve on. We’re chuffed to have achieved a 3 star level of accreditation (the highest) which means we have “extraordinary” levels of engagement.
Everyone at Torchbox is driven to work for an organisation that stands for something beyond making money, which helps explain why we have such brilliant people and why they stay.
Olly Willans, Torchbox Founder and Creative Director said:
“Having become an employee-owned company last year – the first digital agency to become a 100% Employee Owned Trust – we’re on a journey to make Torchbox the best place to work that it can possibly be, whether you work remotely or in one of our Oxford, Bristol, and Cambridge offices. We don’t have everything right yet, and this survey provides us with valuable feedback on what is and isn’t working and highlights areas that we can focus on. Next year, we’re determined to do even better.”
Django Girls Bristol (Similar to PyLadies and Rails Girls) is a one-day workshop about programming in Python with Django, with a focus on including those who identify as female or non-binary.
We want to introduce more women to the world of programming. Reach out to your communities, families, friends, and share the love of technology and programming with all the women you know. Together, we can bring more diversity into tech and empower women to pursue exciting jobs and feel represented.
We accept applications from local and visiting attendees, we will offer financial aid to those who wish to travel to (and stay in) Bristol for the workshop. You don’t require any prior programming experience (but technical background is fine). You can apply here. The closing date for applications is the 18th September.
The workshop will take place on Saturday 19 October at Torchbox in Bristol. You’ll work through a tutorial in small groups with a coach, so you’ll be able to learn at your own pace.
If you wish to get involved in helping out, please write to us at [email protected] or fill out this form! We’re always happy to have volunteers and coaches for the day of the event or to help with tasks like decorating, promoting, or coaching!
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