The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is overhauling its web site so that it can increase donations and recruit further volunteers.

The organisation has signed a deal with ISP Pipex to host the new system, which is intended to go live in November.

The charity aims to increase the site’s visitors and donations fivefold by introducing ecommerce functions and real-time information about rescues.

‘As a charity, we rely on voluntary donations online and through people buying things from the shop,’ said Steve Burns, web team leader at RNLI. ‘We need to find ways to attract more people to the web site by adding new functionality. We also want to encourage them to donate or get involved.’

One new application will be the ‘out on a shout’ facility, which will allow people who are considering volunteering as a lifesaver to see where lifeboats are conducting rescue missions.

‘People will be able to see when a lifeboat has been called out; get information about the latest rescues; shop, donate and find out about the history of the organisation,’ said Burns.

RNLI will use four virtual local area networks protected by Cisco firewalls to run the system. ‘The key thing with the Pipex system is that it’s dedicated, stable, resilient and secure,’ said Burns.

The web portal will also provide secure access for the RNLI’s 4,500 volunteer crew members, so that they can access training modules and information over the internet.

The charity is also planning to make considerable savings on hosting and domain name costs. The plan is to consolidate local web sites, run by many of its 223 lifeboat stations around the UK, on to the www.rnli.org.uk site.

‘It will be a lot easier to manage and it will be a lot more cost-effective,’ said Burns. ‘The plan is to amalgamate all of this into the main web site and then to introduce a new content management system.’

Pipex will host the system from its London data centre at Harbour Exchange, which has strong business continuity systems in place to ensure that the portal does not fail.