Delivering your digital strategy accelerator
03 April 2023 - 29 December 2023
10:00 - 12:00Welcome to the Delivering your digital strategy accelerator supported by Okta and delivered by Charity Digital and DOT PROJECT.
What is the Delivering your digital strategy accelerator?
It is a free 9 month mentoring accelerator to help you deliver and embed your newly developed digital strategy across your organisation, supporting you to implement the digital initiatives you have identified in your strategy, but also to build the structural changes and digital resilience within your organisation necessary for success.
The programme is designed to support you to:
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Build connected digital skills ‘across’ your organisation by engaging 4 - 6 individuals from your organisation
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Take part in collective learning through deep connection and opportunities for collective action by providing space for organisations to reflect together on the systemic challenges they are facing
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Access targeted, specialist mentoring support around key areas within your digital strategy that you need to deliver
As organisations move into delivery of their digital strategy, there will be a need to understand the roles, relationships, behaviours and practices needed to deliver their digital ambitions, and collaborate on their change journey. The accelerator will support organisations on the journey to adopt a mindset of ‘being digital’ through shaping their structures, practices, and processes alongside their technology and data capabilities.
Mentors will support organisations in the following ways:
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Mentorship to build digital infrastructure and bring the benefits of technology to the organisation
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Mentorship to build a digital mindset that influences every aspect of the organisation from shaping team structures to embedding new collective practices and processes
Any support will always be twofold - helping teams tackle immediate challenges, as well as mentoring and guiding them towards long term resilience.
How can it help me and my organisation?
A firmly embedded digital strategy provides the foundations for organisational resilience - both technical and organisational/team resilience. Most digital strategies fail in the first year - focus is lost, capability and capacity gaps become visible, accountability erodes, and the strategy becomes another non active document in the archives.
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By having access to hands-on mentorship across 9 months, organisations will be able to address the challenges outlined above. Mentorship will be tailored to the individual organisation’s needs
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Community and collective exchange are vital to building digital confidence. Quarterly cohort sessions focussed on exchange and collective learning will enable this
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The quarterly cohort sessions also work as a collective accountability network for charities to deliver against their own digital roadmap
Who is it for?
Who is the Delivering your digital strategy accelerator for?
This accelerator is for organisations who have a newly created (within the last 12 months or less) and approved digital strategy and roadmap and are now embarking on implementing this and embedding it across the organisation. It is designed to take open and committed organisations who understand the value of a digital strategy to a place where they are executing the strategy aligned to their organisation’s goals and are thus delivering on building a digitally resilient organisation.
We estimate the time investment for the charity to be around:
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1-day per month per team member across each team
Does this sound like you? Our eligibility criteria for the accelerator are:
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Organisation size: your organisation has a minimum £750K turnover and has the financial and human resources to invest in a year-long strategy development project
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Organisation type: Charity or other not-for-profit social impact organisation
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You have a dedicated baseline budget available to deliver against the strategy, that is outside your existing business as usual costs (although you may need to create a business case for your full funding requirements)
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Team size: can 3 to 6 people in your organisation be responsible for and commit to delivering the strategy as a business critical project. The team should include a mix of leadership and decision making roles along with supporting roles e.g. Communications, Service Delivery Lead, Central Operations, etc.
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You have a recent (developed within the last 12 months) approved digital strategy and roadmap and are now looking to implement and embed this across your organisation
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Your strategy and its delivery is owned by a senior member of staff (at Senior Leadership Team level or above) who will be a member of the team taking part in the accelerator
Value & commitment
What is the value of the Delivering your digital strategy accelerator?
Value for your organisation:
The accelerator will help organisations ensure that they get the return on investment of their strategy development and mitigates the risk of losing momentum and focus on delivering against their roadmap.
Our financial commitment:
The accelerator is funded by Okta and is free for participating social impact organisations. The programme offers each participating organisation over 30 hours of mentoring and coaching support delivered by DOT PROJECT and Charity Digital.
Your time commitment:
We ask that participating organisations invest their time and commitment into this process. We want the accelerator to be transformational for your organisation so that you’re able to make the biggest possible impact for those you support. In order to do this, we ask that you commit a minimum of 1 day per team member per month across the team to this process.
Programme modules
Learn more about the Delivering your digital strategy accelerator modules
The accelerator will be delivered as follows:
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4 cohort sessions
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Cohort session 1 - Orientation and alignment/kick off
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Themes for subsequent cohort sessions 2-4 will be based on emerging needs from the cohort (for example how to write a business plan, best practices for principles, practices, processes and governance for resilient organisations, how to best plan a CRM implementation, partner selection, systems selection, data management, requirements analysis)
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Individual organisation mentoring: specialist mentoring, targeted around individual organisational needs. Each organisation will have up to 4 days access to mentoring across the duration of the accelerator.
Meet our experienced accelerator leads:
Alex and Cazz will work together with you to identify your individual mentoring needs and to convene the right mentors for you leveraging the Dot Project partnership network. All of our mentors have a track record of providing you with the confidence and clarity to make the right technology and organisational decisions and support you with implementation, making sure change is embedded into teams and delivery and maximises the value to the organisation.
Alex Mecklenburg
As a certified change coach and facilitator with over 20 years of experience of facilitating cultural change and building high-performing and deeply connected teams, Alex brings a deeply practical approach to any digital transformation challenge.
Her focus lies on working with teams, leadership, and boards to support them to build skillful relationships that support, boost, and sustain any change journey. Her vast cross-sector experience enables best-practice learning and safe experimentation.
Cazz Ward
With over 25 years of experience in the sector, Cazz is a highly experienced hands-on technology transformation leader within the public, voluntary and third sectors. Her role has always been about making technology make sense to non-technical people, understanding their organisational challenges, and helping them make the most of the opportunities that digital can bring.
Cazz brings a wealth of experience in end-to-end business and technology transformation, information security and governance, and user-led solutions development.
Application process
How to apply for the Delivering your digital strategy accelerator
We want to ensure that the accelerator is the right fit for the participants who take part, as this will ensure that organisations are able to truly benefit from the process. We have employed the following process to help make this happen.
- Before applying, check yourself against our eligibility criteria - Am I eligible?
- Stage 1 - Expression of interest (EOI) - Register here
- Qualifying entrants will be notified within 7 days to submit a complete application form
- Stage 2 - complete and submit an application form
We only have limited places and are aiming to fill all places by the end of March. If you are interested, then please register your interest as soon as possible and complete a full application to avoid missing out. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis at the start of each week and where successful applicants are identified, they will be informed before the closing date. We may also request to have a call with your team as part of the application process.
Eligibility Check
Check if you’re eligible for the Delivering your digital strategy accelerator
To qualify for the programme you need to be able to answer ‘yes’ to the following questions at the start of the application form. Before starting your application please check the questions below to make sure you are eligible.
1 - Does your proposed team have capacity to engage in the programme (1 day per month per team member)?
2 - Do you have, or do you plan to have in the next 12 months, dedicated budget to invest in digital (this should include both tools as well as the skills and human resources required to support your digital approach)
3 – Do you have an approved digital strategy and roadmap for your organisation?
4 - Is your leadership team on board with implementing your new digital strategy?
5 – Are you a charity or other not-for-profit organisation delivering social impact in the UK?
6 - Is your annual turnover within your organisation above £750K?
If you answered YES to all of the above questions, please go ahead and start your application by registering your interest by hitting the "Register interest here" button below.
If any of the answers were NO, unfortunately, we can’t accept you onto the programme at this stage. Please register to Charity Digital and keep a lookout for new courses and programmes coming soon.
