Charity Spotlight: Aroa Fernandez Alvarez, Co-Founder of Trace Planet

Trace Planet uses research, education, and multi-stakeholder coalitions to promote environmental regeneration to fight against climate change, using the fashion industry as its entry point to making a difference.

Professionals of small charities are regularly under pressure to find ways to be resourceful, efficient, and take meaningful action with intention – and digital technology can play an essential role in that. But the 2023 Charity Digital Skills Report found that key challenges for small charities include a lack of funding for digital technology (54%), being busy firefighting (44%), and needing to upskill staff or volunteers (41%).

So how are small charities using digital technology to tackle some of the biggest challenges of our time, despite these resource limitations? We spoke to Aroa Fernandez Alvarez, co-founder of the environmental CIO Trace Planet, to learn about the use of digital technology in building a community around a cause, creating a visually engaging website, and overcoming unforeseen digital challenges.

Charity Digital (CD): How have you been able to build your network of people and organisations, and did digital technology play a role?

Aroa Fernandez Alvarez (AFA): Digital technology has been crucial. All our networking has happened online, there are not so many local organisations doing similar work, so from the very beginning we used digital search engines to understand who was doing what in the regenerative ecosystem, reach out, and forge alliances.

Tech and hyperconnectivity have many downsides, but there’s no argument to the fact that they enable us to build connections and collaborate on projects with people and organisations that would be very difficult to engage with in an analogue world.

CD: What’s the story behind your choice to use online workshops, and how have they helped on the way to achieving your mission?

AFA: The online workshops started because of the pandemic! We had planned an exciting calendar of in-person events that was meant to kick off just about the same time that COVID-19 got to the U.K. and everything shut down.

We decided to completely change our strategy and develop a new programme that would work in an online setting, and that’s how that workshop series was born. We love facilitating in-person events and creating experiences and spaces where people can have deep conversations and meaningful interactions.

We still believe this is easier done in person than online, but going online brought a whole new set of opportunities: we were able to reach amazing speakers from all over the world (Netherlands, Australia, U.S.) who we would never have been able to engage through an in-person meeting, and in turn, our workshops gathered participants from all around the world.

I think ultimately the change of strategy to an online workshop format enabled us to reach many more people with our message about environmental regeneration.

CD: As your work involves engaging key stakeholders from the fashion industry, what’s your advice for other charities looking to forge new coalitions?

AFA: Our advice would be – be proactive and approach people, most will be willing to talk and collaborate. If you have an idea, approach others with a plan as specific as possible, and be clear about what you imagine your role can be and what they can get out of this.

Everybody is really busy and it’s best to be clear and straightforward about things, otherwise projects and conversations are likely to fizzle out and be pushed away by more urgent priorities.

Also, don’t take it personally if people don’t follow up – again, times are busy and we all have competing priorities!

Keep trying to find the right partner. If you don’t have specific ideas yet, do still network and try to understand what other organisations are doing. It’s by talking and getting to know each other over time that you’ll come up with the best ideas.

CD: What advice do you have for other organisations who want to create a visually engaging website?

AFA: We still have lots of ideas for continuous improvement, so we see our website as a work in progress. Some tips:

1. Be clear about what your goal is with your website and plan your content accordingly. We wanted ours to mimic a learning journey, so the page structure and how the links between different sections do that
2. Have the user journey in mind at all times. How will somebody interact with your website? Will they be able to get what you’re all about within two minutes of first visiting it? Will their experience navigating it and finding content be great?
3. Work backwards. Be clear about your values and vision and think how you want to convey them through the website. We draw what we want the end result to be and then figure how to fit and develop copy for the different areas, and where we need to create assets for
4. Find help. We worked with a brilliant graphic designer to develop assets that would complete our copy and that integrated seamlessly with the structure we were giving the website
5. Have fun! Ultimately there’re a million different ways to create a fun website that works for you. A good website development process forces you to rethink your messaging and how you present yourself to the world, which is something that, as charities, we don’t do that often as there’re always so many competing priorities. Use this opportunity to bring your team together and refine your vision and storytelling

CD: Has Trace Planet ever faced a challenge with digital technology, and how did you overcome it?

AFA: Building this website was quite challenging – it forced us into a process of strategic review and was a big project to manage on our very limited capacity while continuing activity delivery.

We’ve also had all sorts of problems with our operating systems. What has worked in our experience is asking for help and being patient. Generally, most tech systems have good client support, so we raise any queries that we have and wait for a call back.

Sometimes issues take days (or even weeks!) to resolve, but we’ve learned to be more patient and just don’t fuss about things we can’t control. We’re honest with our community: we’re a very small team and sometimes things don’t get done as quickly as we wished, we just don’t have the capacity for it. And that openness has worked.

It’s a similar situation to when we facilitate workshops online – sometimes tech doesn’t work as it should and there’re issues with connectivity, sharing screens etc. All you can do is prepare well, have backup plans where possible, and if things still go south, take it with good humour and improvise.

CD: What’s next for Trace Planet?

AFA: This year our main focus is to secure funding to expand our workshop programme and our operational capacity.

We want to further develop our in-person workshops and expand our work with schools, as we believe that it’s a priority to work with young people who generally are quite aware of the magnitude of the climate emergency but who don’t always know how they can be part of the solution.

We want to use the workshops to spark hope and ignite action.