The best charity-charity partnerships in the sector

Charity partnerships increase the use of digital

The Charity Digital Skills Report 2019 highlighted how charities are being left behind without digital skills. Charity-charity partnerships are helping to change this. Delivered by non-profits, foundations and government, Catalyst aims to accelerate the use of digital in the charitable and non-profit sector.

Programmes run by Catalyst focus on growing the network of organisations; improving charity use of digital and tech; and increasing support for digital implementation.  

Just launched in July, Catalyst is supported by Comic Relief, City Bridge Trust, Department of Culture Media and Sport, Esmée Fairbairn, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and The National Lottery Community Fund.

Helping charities on their digital journey, CAST (Centre of Acceleration of Social Technology) has already worked with Comic Relief, the NCVO, Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation—Investing in a healthier society, and many others.

The CAST flagship programme Design Hop helps charities chart their digital services journey to improve delivery of services. Refugee Action’s session helped focus their communication with refugees and improved digital transformation and service delivery. Dan Sutch Co-Founder of CAST said:

“For us what was so crucial was that by repurposing an existing off-the-shelf platform—in this case WordPress plug-ins—rather than commissioning a new, whizzy bit of technology, Refugee Action has a sustainable product that can develop and grow, is easy to update and is professionally maintained.

It is so important for a fragile sector such as ours to reuse tools that already exist, since it so massively lowers the cost of innovation.”

Combined marketing and communications

Power in numbers can be a force for change. With public attention focusing on the global climate crisis, charities, private companies, and individuals can focus their voices to lobby government. The Climate Change Coalition amplifies the voices of WWF, the National Trust, the Woodland Trust, Oxfam, the RSPB, UNICEF and many other influential environmental impact charities.

Using digital marketing and communications, the organisation has held the biggest lobby of the UK Government in history –  #TheTimeIsNow lobbied 381 MPs to raise the climate change emergency. While not until 2020, the #ShowTheLove campaign uses a digital widget to encourage everyone to do something for the environment.

On Valentine’s Day next year, #ShowTheLove will celebrate everything loved but at risk because of climate change and has reached nearly 126 million people through digital campaigning.