Charity Report shows need for digital strategy

The Charity Digital Skills Report is an annual barometer of the digital skills, attitudes, and behaviors across the UK charity sector. The Report tracks how charity approaches to digital change and explores the sector’s response to digital, looking at leadership, strategy, governance, and more.

The Charity Digital Skills Report 2022 sought to understand the changes that have occurred over the past year. Charities are encouraged to use the findings to benchmark their own organisations and learn how other charities are adopting and accessing digital.

The Report, which is now in its sixth year, shows that charities are prioritising digital, but are not doing enough in terms of taking a strategic approach. It also shows that digital skills at a board-level need to improve, particularly because charities want a clearer digital vision from CEOs and charity boards.

In this article, we will look at some of the main takeaways from the Charity Digital Skills Report 2022.

Takeaways from the report

The Report shows further digital progress, with more and more charities prioritising digital. 82% of charities see digital as more of a priority as a result of the pandemic, for example, and 72% of charities are using tools, skills, infrastructure, and service delivery to progress with digital.

Charities with a digital strategy in place is slightly down from the previous year, from 60% down to 56%. That is still a good increase on a few years ago, when that numbers stood at on 49%.

It’s a slightly worrying downward trend, largely because smaller charities are failing to adopt a digital strategy. It is a concern echoed by Charity Digital CEO, Jonathan Chevallier, who contributed to the report: ‘It is worrying to see the growing digital divide between organisations who are approaching digital strategically and those who are at an earlier stage. I am particularly concerned that many organisations that are less developed digitally and most at risk of being left behind are small charities.

Smaller charities need to be proactive, Chevallier says. ‘These typically local organisations play a vital role in our communities and it is fundamental to their sustainability that action is taken.’

The Report also sought a response of digital progress at the level of charity boards. The Report found that 64% of boards’ digital skills are either low or have room for improvement, which clearly highlights that it is an area that needs to be addressed. It’s a particularly important area considering that 58% of charities want a clear vision of what digital could help them achieve from CEOs and boards.

Other key stats in the Report include:

• 38% of charities say upskilling is the 2nd greatest barrier to digital progress
• 25% of charities do not have diverse teams developing digital products
• 55% of charities are concerned about choosing suppliers who share their ethics and values
• 40% of charities need funding for devices, software, and infrastructure
• 41% of charities view themselves as poor at understanding their users’ needs

Join the webinar

The team behind the Report will be running a free webinar on what the report’s key findings mean for the sector on Thursday 14 July at 13:00. You can join the webinar here.