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We are Community Stack. We build digital infrastructure for people the market usually overlooks: SEND families, small charities and communities that get forgotten.
There are three things on this page. Scroll through or jump to whichever is useful to you.
Ethan Sumner
Founder and CEO, Community Stack
Switchboard
If you run a charity, you should not have to pay for a website.
Thousands of UK charities and community groups have no proper digital presence. Not because they do not want one, but because websites cost money, take time, and need skills a small team running on goodwill does not have spare.
Switchboard fixes that. It is a full digital platform built for the third sector, and the essentials are free, permanently.
The name comes from old telephone switchboard operators, like my Nana, who proudly worked in Barnsley Switchboard. Their whole job was connecting the person who needed something to the person who could help. That is still the job.
What you get
An accessible website you can set up in about ten minutes
A public directory people search by need, not by organisation name
Events, bookings and check in
Donations, Gift Aid and fundraising pages
Volunteer records, rotas, DBS tracking and timesheets
A supporter and funder database
Grant tracking and impact reporting
Accessibility built into the editor itself
SEND Platform
In developmentOne front door for SEND support.
This section is personal, so it is written in the first person.
I am a trustee at the National Association of Special Schools, and I keep seeing the same thing. Brilliant, exhausted families fighting a fragmented system for support their children are legally entitled to. Not fighting because anyone disagrees about the child. Fighting because nobody can tell them, clearly, what happens next.
Education sits with the school. Assessment sits with the local authority. Therapies sit with the NHS. Benefits sit with the DWP. Advice sits with a patchwork of charities. Every family reassembles that jigsaw from scratch, usually at 11pm, on a phone, after the children are asleep.
I build platforms for a living. That felt like a problem worth pointing this skill set at.
638,700
Children held an EHCP in England, January 2025 — up 10.8% in a year
46.4%
Of new plans issued within the 20-week legal deadline
99%
Of SEND tribunal appeals in 2024/25 decided in the family's favour
What I am building
A trustworthy source of truth. Statutory guidance and every council's Local Offer, pulled into one place and kept current.
An assistant that answers in plain English. Ask a question the way you would actually ask it. Get a direct answer with a link to the source and a clear next step. It signposts and explains. It never advises, never diagnoses, and hands you to a real person the moment anything sensitive comes up.
Tools around the pathway. Deadline trackers, explainers, local support directories, and preparation checklists for meetings, annual reviews and appeals.
How it is being built
Accessibility is the product, not a compliance task. WCAG 2.2 AA is the floor, tested with real assistive technology.
It works on a bad phone on a bad connection.
No account and no personal data needed to get an answer. The safest data is the data we never hold.
Nothing about us without us. Parents and young people shape it from the first prototype, not shown a finished thing and asked to approve it.
This is a personal project, separate from my day job. It sits alongside the work Community Stack does, and I am building it in the open.
Ethan Sumner, Founder and CEO, Community Stack
Get involved
Suggestions are the thing I want most. What did nobody tell you? What would have saved you a month? What is the question you have asked five different people and never got a straight answer to?
Active campaign
People who have something to say should be able to say it.
#CommunicationForAll
Communication is not optional infrastructure.
For non-speaking people and those who rely on augmentative and alternative communication, the infrastructure is broken at almost every level. Devices are underfunded. Training for professionals and families is inadequate. Attitudes from institutions are often dismissive.
As someone who faced speech issues as a child, I want to give back. The result is that people who have something to say cannot say it. Not because of their disability, but because of failures in the systems around them.
0.5%
Of the UK population relies on AAC to communicate
Years
Average wait for an AAC assessment in many NHS areas
1 in 3
AAC users report their device was not funded on first application
What we are doing
Building an evidence base on the real state of AAC provision in the UK
Campaigning for AAC to be treated as statutory provision in every relevant setting
Building a resource hub for AAC users, families and professionals
Engaging manufacturers, commissioners and policymakers on the systemic changes needed
This is one of three campaigns we run. The others are #DigitalSENDInfrastructure and #NoCommunityLeftOffline. See all campaigns
About
Who is behind all this
Community Stack is a community infrastructure group based in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. We run 17 communities, 3 ecosystems and 12 conferences, with more than 25,000 members. That side of the business is commercially sustainable, and it is what pays for the side that is not.
Switchboard, our campaigns and the research work all sit under Community Stack Labs. Labs exists because some problems do not have a commercial solution, and if we do not work on them, most of the organisations that could will not.
Ethan Sumner
Founder and CEO, Community Stack
Engineering Excellence Lead, Barclays
Membership Trustee, National Association of Special Schools
Co-optee, Audit and Risk Committee, Barnsley College
Treasurer and Trustee, local Scout group
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