Culture

Overall success looks like:

The people who volunteer or work for charities will be in a better position to collaborate, confident in trying new things and learning additional skills. They will develop the right mindset for change and innovation, and contribute to how the organisation can achieve its goals through digital. They will focus outwards as much as inwards, understanding how beneficiaries and supporters use digital.

Motivation

• Leaders will need to identify how they can create the motivation for change, for example by setting out how digital could help their charities reach more people or increase income through online fundraising. They can encourage this by showing how beneficiaries, supporters and other stakeholders use digital channels.
• Leaders will need to develop the right mindset for digital amongst staff and volunteers, such as being open to trying new ideas and a willingness to collaborate.

Behaviour change

• Charities who are just getting started with digital could take small steps and learn as they go with online tools. For example, consider running a workshop on how staff and volunteers use digital outside of work, and how they can apply what they’ve learned to their roles.

Ownership

• Whilst strategic initiatives and specific products should have clear owners within each charity, digital needs to be involved in everyone’s role, from trustees to volunteers, such as reviewing where it needs to be included in development plans and job descriptions.

Collaboration

• Charity staff and volunteers should take advantage of the opportunities digital offers to collaborate on projects, using online tools or different ways of working, such as an agile approach.
• Charities could work with organisations both in and outside the sector on mutually beneficial digital initiatives, e.g. a charity working on a pro bono partnership with a local tech company to develop a digital product that could help their beneficiaries. In doing so, both parties should be clear on what they each bring to the partnership, and what they can learn from being exposed to different ways of working.

Overall success looks like:

The people who volunteer or work for charities will be in a better position to collaborate, confident in trying new things and learning additional skills. They will develop the right mindset for change and innovation, and contribute to how the organisation can achieve its goals through digital. They will focus outwards as much as inwards, understanding how beneficiaries and supporters use digital.

Motivation

• Leaders will need to identify and create the motivation for change. This could include creating a vision for how digital could help their charity, communicating how digital will help their charity be sustainable, and celebrating and recognising success.
• Staff and volunteers should encourage each other to understand how beneficiaries, supporters and other stakeholders use digital channels and how this is changing their behaviour.
• Leaders will need to develop the right mindset for digital amongst staff and volunteers, such as being open to trying new ideas and a willingness to collaborate.

Behaviour change

• Charities who are just getting started with digital could take small steps and learn as they go with online tools.
• Leaders of charities who are established users of digital will need to map and identify the current hallmarks of their culture, understanding the extent of change required and the actions that would increase this.
• Staff and volunteers should be encouraged to be open about any skills gaps they have in digital and be empowered and supported to progress their own development.
• Charities may also wish to consider how their organisational structures can support digital, such as creating a more flattened structure, where appropriate.

Ownership

• Whilst strategic initiatives and specific products should have specific owners within each charity, digital needs to be involved in everyone’s role, from trustees to volunteers. The ways in which this is achieved will depend on each charity’s aims and individual roles and responsibilities.

Test, learn and improve

• Charities need to be open to challenging their established ways of working. They should test assumptions about how beneficiaries, supporters and other stakeholders use digital, learning from data and improving what they offer as a result.
• In order to do this successfully, charity staff and volunteers should be encouraged to be curious, share and try out new ideas and to fail effectively, doing things differently as a result of learning from what works and what doesn’t.
• Any risks involved in innovation should be managed, for example by piloting new products with small groups before rolling them out more widely.

Collaboration

• Charity staff and volunteers should take advantage of the opportunities digital offers to collaborate on projects, using online tools or different ways of working, such as an agile approach.
• Charities could work with organisations both in and outside the sector on mutually beneficial digital initiatives, e.g. a charity working on a pro bono partnership with a tech company to develop a digital product that could help their beneficiaries. In doing so, both parties should be clear on what they each bring to the partnership, and learn from being exposed to different ways of working.
• Charities could consider sharing digital assets for the benefit of others where appropriate and compliant, such as sharing skills, data, code or APIs with other charities or stakeholders who share the same goals and values. They should encourage the reuse of these assets and insights where applicable (e.g. by asking other charities who have more experience with digital to share what they’ve learned).