The virtues of working in the open

Working in the open could also be referred to as sharing your work or using work shared by others. It’s a generous and collaborative way of working – both internally and externally.

In this context, work can refer to a number of things. It could be a specific resource, such as a user journey for a new volunteer enrolment app you’re developing, or findings from a service user survey that’s relevant to other organisations.

 

But equally, it could mean sharing things that you’ve learnt or experiences you’ve had in running a project. For example, you could blog about projects being worked on, talk about project developments with networking groups, or tweet about a project milestone you’ve met.

 

 

Why work in the open?

 

Ninety-four per cent of charities on the Catalyst development programme said that open working is something they’ll be taking into the future. So it’s got something going for it. Benefits of working in this way include:

 

 

Transparency

 

With trust being crucial to a charity’s success, open working shows donors and supporters how their money is being spent and what benefits it will bring about.

 

 

Generate interest

 

Generate interest both internally and externally. This will help to get internal stakeholder buy-in to projects or create good PR for the organisation as a whole.

 

 

Sector-wide learning

 

Widely sharing knowledge, information, and resources with other organisations means that collectively we can save time and money. By building on existing learning or repurposing resources, organisations can help more people, more quickly.

 

 

Building strong networks

 

 

Open working by nature is reciprocal. By sharing learning and experiences, collaborative relationships are built and strengthened for the benefit of individual charities, the sector, and, ultimately, service users.

 

 

Digital for good

 

Catalyst is a collaborative, helping charities and social enterprises to develop digital skills and processes for good. Open working has been front and centre for many of the charities and agencies involved.

 

They’ve learnt to work openly in ways including writing and publishing weeknotes, sharing design assets for others to re-use, and sharing learning and reflections of their work.

 

The wealth of information shared by programme participants shows the variety of ways that organisations can work in the open and the benefits of doing so. They also have a collection of practical guides, or recipes, to help charities reuse resources and learn from one another.

 

 

Sharing resources to combat ageism

 

Earlier in 2021, The Centre for Ageing Better launched a new free picture library – one which has positive and realistic images of older people. Typically stock images of older people tend to fall into two categories: frail and vulnerable or unrealistically positive (such as older people enjoying extreme sports). This library aims to challenge those stereotypes and sits alongside a suite of age-positive icons.

 

According to Yehia Nasr, Digital Officer: “The motivation behind making it free and publicly available was partly because I knew how difficult it was for a lot of charities especially to find affordable or free images that aren’t stereotypical or negative, so we wanted to make it as accessible as possible.

 

"We also want to combat the ubiquity of these negative images that are so common across society and different sectors, so it was important that we tried to reach as many people and organisations as possible.”