Insights
#BeMoreDigital Leadership Day on the 25th of June was a huge success. Refresh your memory or catch-up on what you missed
Charity Digital’s #BeMoreDigital Leadership Day took place on the 25th of June.
Over 400 people joined us for this online event that included 10 hours of completely free, expert-led content to help charities improve their digital leadership skills.
When we began planning #BeMoreDigital Leadership Day in 2019, we had no way of knowing how important the subject would become. Fast forward just a few months, and digital leadership was the hot button issue in the charity sector – as strong stewardship through a process of rapid and unplanned digitisation became the difference between success and failure for many organisations.
As charity operations from fundraising to service delivery became digital (in many cases for the first time) strong digital leadership was needed to ensure that this transition was successful. Without the right leadership, digital projects can become rudderless. This happens commonly when decision-makers get swayed by the latest and flashiest tech, rather than beginning their digital journey by asking what their service users need.
That’s why strong digital leadership is crucial. It allows organisations to make sound and responsible decisions around digital strategy and infrastructure.
But digital leadership is not the sole preserve of senior management. Anyone can become a digital leader in their organisation. All you have to do to get started is begin taking responsibility for small digital actions within your organisation.
#BeMoreDigital Leadership Day featured ten hours of content all geared towards helping attendees take more responsibility for digital leadership within their organisation.
These webinars covered leadership across a number of areas of digital: from security to data analytics to fundraising.
In total, the day comprised 10 sessions, as well as an opening, ‘Welcome to the Day’ session led by Charity Digital CEO Jonathan Chevallier.
One of the most popular sessions included a webinar led by innovative digital security and risk management experts Skurio. The session, entitled ‘The Dark Web and it’s threat to the charity sector’, covered some of the most troubling threats facing charity operations. It empowered attendees with knowledge of real-life cyber threats and the risks they pose (so you can understand what makes your organisation an attractive target), as well as the opportunity to learn how automated monitoring helps you identify key threats like fraud and planned attacks sooner, so that you can improve analysis, investigation and mitigation.
Another key session was ‘We build it strong; we build to last: Life after COVID-19’. This webinar was led by a panel of experts from Finance Innovation Lab, Cats Protection and Turn2us. The three different organisations shared their key takeaways on how they’re looking towards the future and harnessing these learnings in order to build strong, successful organisations moving forwards. This is one of the key topics facing charity digital teams at the moment, as charities navigate the future of remote operations and plan for the long-term.
One of the biggest sessions on the second stream was ‘Digital Agility in Time of Crisis’. This session, led by cloud communications experts Olive, featured a conversation with British Red Cross exploring how cloud-based communications allowed them to rise to the challenges of COVID-19 and continue to deliver crisis services when they were needed most. You can read more about this here.
We were joined by a range of expert speakers from digital leaders in both the tech and charity sectors. As well as the speakers already listed, attendees also enjoyed webinars led by Citizens Advice, The British Red Cross and The Scouts.
A number of representatives from market-leading tech vendors also spoke at the event. This included delegates from Twilio, Olive & Mitel and Skurio.
You can view a full list of the speakers here.
We had over 400 attendees join us for the event. In total, they watched almost 60,000 minutes of content!
We saw great engagement on the day, with an enthusiastic response across social media. Here are some of our favourite tweets from the day:
Final bit of yoga \uD83E\uDDD8♀️ breathing from @CharityDigiOrg before the final sessions of #BeMoreDigital leadership day @digiscot pic.twitter.com/UpKYEsktva
— Madelaine Stark (@StarkMadelaine) June 25, 2020
Great #BeMoreDigital leadership day sessions from @CharityDigiOrg. Plenty of information and ideas to take onboard.
— John Turner (@jtpostcard) June 25, 2020
Great to have a gentle stretching session by @CharityDigiOrg on their #BeMoreDigital leadership day! Really thoughtful of them to look after our physical health between their amazing but info intense sessions! pic.twitter.com/tS4JQRIIIZ
— Siobhan Mercer (@SiobhanVohn) June 25, 2020
Shout out to @Giftee2000 who was invited to speak on a panel for @CharityDigiOrg at their #BeMoreDigital Leadership Day requested by our chair of trustees @CTav! Gift spoke on the importance of diversifying the digital sector to make it more inclusive & representative \uD83C\uDF4B pic.twitter.com/mqX3mNKEGA
— Sour Lemons (@sourlemonsuk) July 1, 2020
#BeMoreDigital Leadership Day from @CharityDigiOrg looks great. Amongst many others, it features my colleague @sianbasker who knows many things and is very good at explaining them. And it's free. https://t.co/ZtXgX0cLfK pic.twitter.com/nZGPC7owm5
— Ben Proctor (@likeaword) June 10, 2020
Brilliant advice from @sianbasker "Give your data back to the people who provided it!" Too often we take data from our front line staff and tell its story to our funders. Tell your staff too! Recognise the huge impact they make.
— Siobhan Mercer (@SiobhanVohn) June 25, 2020
@CharityDigiOrg #BeMoreDigital leadership day. pic.twitter.com/7KKNgBjYPn
Whether you couldn’t make it on the day, or you’re just looking to refresh your memory, we have made all the content from the day available.
By signing up at the #BeMoreDigital Leadership Day page, you can access the full schedule of content at your own leisure on our dedicated event hub.
Our courses aim, in just three hours, to enhance soft skills and hard skills, boost your knowledge of finance and artificial intelligence, and supercharge your digital capabilities. Check out some of the incredible options by clicking here.