Are you planning for future uncertainty?

 

Developing scalable plans

Scenario planning requires a deep dive into a charity’s organisation. This includes its staff, volunteers, premises and expertise. Each needs to be stress tested against possible challenges ahead and how these elements of an organisation can be scalable. Are more digital experts needed? Are less face-to-face frontline staff needed? Do we have the right infrastructure in place?

 

A good example this year has been around digital service delivery. Social distancing has required services to move online. Helplines, chatbots, web chat, social media and online messaging platforms hare all used more. Those charities that had previously assessed a scenario where these need to ramp up have been far better prepared for the pandemic.

 

The Access Group’s 2020/21 The State of Digital Maturity in the Not for Profit Sector report was published in October. The report highlighted the need to scale up digital services amid the pandemic. This found that more than half of charities scaling up digital expertise had focused on back end areas such as human resources rather than frontline support.

 

 

An example of effective planning and scaling up of digital has been Cybersmile Foundation. They scaled up its online support for bullying victims in 2019, well ahead of the pandemic this year. Cybersmile met their audience where they are as more young people seek support online. The online support included the creation of artificial intelligence powered chatbot Cybersmile Assistant.

 

 

 

This has also helped the charity to reduce support costs, which helped save money amid COVID-19 income losses. Latest figures from the charity show that the average cost of support it provides to each person has fallen from £3 to just 8p - a 97.3% drop in costs.

 

Prioritise operations

After scenario planning and ensuring scalability, charities and their trustees need to assess further challenges ahead and prioritise operations. This can include some tough decision making.

Amid the pandemic, some charities have had to make redundancies. But for many this has been part of long-term planning taking into account likely future scenarios.

 

Jewish Care’s announcement in November is an example of this long-term thinking. It has been forced to cut face-to-face community centre support roles amid £7m losses. But it has also announced investment in outreach and digital support to better meet beneficiaries needs in the future.

 

Jewish Care chair Jonathan Zenios said: “Jewish Care needs to continue to adapt and to change, to meet challenges as we find them but to always put the needs of those who need us most first. However difficult the decisions we face may be, we face them knowing that they will help us to meet those needs now and into the future.”

 

Use digital resources to plan

It’s been a tough year, but the charity sector has remained resilient and defiant in the face of adversity. Planning for the future is essential to organisational sustainability and ultimately survival.

 

There is a raft of digital resources to help charities plan ahead across their operations. For example, a central CRM system is key to analysing data and spotting emerging trends in donors and supporters. Accessing free open data sources is also crucial to getting ahead of future trends, in particular in health amid COVID-19 recovery. Financial management tools ensure charities have the reserves and revenue streams to survive adversity.

How are you planning for the future? Let us know in the comments below.