What are the key steps on a charity’s digital journey?

This article appears courtesy of Catalyst. Part One of Two

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Earlier this month, Catalyst published new research, looking at the key points in a charity’s journey to digital maturity.

The research is based on interviews with 15 charities who’d taken significant strides in building their digital capabilities, although all of them said they were still on the journey.

Through talking to these charities, we identified a number of consistent staging posts, common obstacles, and things that charities could do to make the journey easier.

Here, very briefly, is a summary of the key findings.

Nine patterns

We mapped out a journey that started with “curious” charities taking their first steps with digital, then “starting out” charities who were moving along the journey, and “advancing” charities, progressing through later stages of planning and development.

The “curious” stage was all about the challenge of getting going and knowing where to start, particularly with no money, limited capacity and low levels of digital skills amongst staff.

The “starting out” stage was defined by a clear goal and a digital project, often with an external agency. By the end of this stage, there was usually a move towards tackling digital strategically.

Finally, the “advancing” stage was about embedding a digital culture, digital expertise and a digital strategy, as well as tidying up legacy issues and replacing “good enough for now” solutions from earlier stages of development.

We found consistent steps that charities passed through on the journey, although each of course faced different challenges at slightly different times. The journeys were not linear or simple, and there were many individual wrinkles for each organisation, but we were nonetheless surprised by how much the overall arc of progress had in common.

 

 

Pattern 1: Someone takes the lead

When we talk about a charity’s digital journey, to a great extent we are describing the progress of an individual leading that charity’s digital journey. They are often fairly close to one and the same thing in the early stages.

The biggest issue for many charities was simply getting started, and the reason most charities got started was because a single person was either given or took responsibility for change.

From what we heard, complacency and concern were a big issue here. When systems were functioning well enough, or staff had got used to work-arounds, there was not much appetite for change.

We came across many charities where staff had been burned in the past by expensive projects that had been financial black holes. In other places staff felt they lacked the skills, or were worried about the impact of service users, who were often at risk of digital exclusion.

The only way to overcome this was an internal staff member taking the lead to explore where digital could help their charity. In most cases, this was not someone appointed to a digital role. They were unlikely to have led digital change and some had limited digital skills. Digital leads ranged from youth workers to communications managers to operations managers.

The key was not their skills, but their commitment, enthusiasm and their knowledge of their own organisation.

Digital leads struggled with a number of challenges, from confidence to money to time. Support was crucial - from line managers and senior figures, and often from other charities who showed what could be done.

Tech for good communities were crucial here, They offered guidance, advice, and the ability to learn from others at a practical level.