Principle 5

Skills

Everyone who works for a charity, from trustees to volunteers, staff and partner organisations, all play a fundamental role in helping charities progress with digital.

Confidence, motivation and attitude are huge factors for digital success. Technical skills and soft skills, such as questioning, persuading and influencing, are equally important.

Download the Code principles (PDF)

3 quick actions for charities

Check your job descriptions for your staff - do they include digital skills as part of the person specifications?
Learn from the digital natives in your team - ask them for their top tips for managing your newsfeed, for example using TweetDeck
Review your team’s skills to assess whether there are training gaps within your team/or whether you need to recruit for a new team member to implement the digital elements of your strategy

Read the principle

Best practice for charities

Charities should aim for digital skills to be represented at all levels of the organisation. You can use these best practice guidelines as a checklist to measure how your charity is progressing in this area.

We have outlined the best practice based on the size of your charity. We define small charities as those with an annual income of £1 million or under, and larger charities as those which generate over £1 million of income a year.

Small Charities

Overall success looks like:

Leaders will have an understanding of the digital skills of their teams. Gaps will be identified and a plan to close them should be in place, with the aim of helping the charity achieve its objectives and attracting, developing and retaining people with good levels of digital skills.

Understanding their skills

Charities should understand and be able to state with confidence the digital abilities of staff, volunteers and trustees (e.g. "our staff are proficient with managing data") whilst understanding where the gaps are and how to support their team in closing them, whether through mentoring, training or other ways of learning.

Recruitment

Charities may need to think creatively about how they attract staff or volunteers with digital skills (e.g. by developing partnerships with local technology companies).

Skills development

Digital skills should be developed in line with benefits for the charity such as increased impact, understanding beneficiaries’ needs, staff motivation, increasing productivity and efficiency (e.g. using online tools to edit a shared document easily). Where specialist digital staff or trustees are recruited, charity leaders should be clear on the purpose of the appointment and how this can be supported by the rest of the organisation.

Skills sharing

Charities should also consider opportunities to maximise digital skills sharing within organisations (e.g. through reverse mentoring or informal coaching).
Charities could also consider creative approaches to sharing skills. For example, where they have identified a need for specialist digital skills they could ask a tech company for volunteers or other forms of pro bono advice.

Large Charities

Overall success looks like:

Skills audit

Where they have capacity to do so, charities should measure and map the digital skills they have amongst their staff, volunteers and trustees, identifying any gaps and what knowledge, experience and resources are required to close them. Ideally, this could include both qualitative and quantitative data, such as interviews and gathering statistics (e.g. staff confidence with channels) through a survey. It may also include real time data analysis where appropriate.
The audit should include technical skills (for example, an understanding of digital fundraising, computing principles and analytics) as well as soft skills that assist digital progress, such as persuading and influencing, coaching and mentoring.

Recruitment

Charities may need to think creatively about how they attract staff or volunteers with digital skills (e.g. by developing partnerships with organisations who can source digital volunteers, technology companies or universities).

Skills development

Staff, volunteers and trustees should aim to grow their digital skills as part of continuous learning, regularly evaluating progress and broadening their knowledge. This learning could be undertaken in a number of formal and informal ways, including face-to-face training, mentoring, online courses, advice from colleagues and learning by doing, such as trying new digital tools.
Charities should consider how digital skills development can contribute to the confidence, motivation and satisfaction of staff, volunteers and trustees, investing in mindset as well as skillset.
Digital skills should be developed in line with benefits for the charity, such as increased impact, understanding beneficiaries’ needs, staff motivation, increasing productivity and efficiency as well as agility.
Where staff, trustees and volunteers have high levels of digital skills, they should be stretched and challenged further, e.g. by involving them in developing innovative digital projects.
Where specialist digital staff or trustees are recruited, charity leaders should be clear on the purpose of the appointment and how this can be supported by the rest of the organisation.

Skills sharing

Staff, trustees and volunteers with strong digital skills should share learnings and insights with colleagues and other charities.
Charities should also consider opportunities to maximise digital skills sharing within organisations (e.g. through reverse mentoring or informal coaching).
Charities could also consider creative approaches to sharing skills. For example, where they have identified a need for specialist digital skills they could ask a tech company for volunteers or other forms of pro bono advice.

Case study:

NSPCC

Find out how NSPCC is using the Code to increase their impact, work with their senior teams and take practical steps towards digital success.

View case study

Principle 5

Skills

3 quick actions for charities

Best practice for charities

Overall success looks like:

Understanding their skills

Recruitment

Skills development

Skills sharing

Overall success looks like:

Skills audit

Recruitment

Skills development

Skills sharing

Case study:

NSPCC

Resources

How to develop your team’s digital skills by DataKind UK

Intro to product management free online course from General Assembly

Platypus Digital’s free Control R Programme

Free digital marketing course from Digital Skills Scotland

Google’s free Digital Garage training programme

Future Learn’s free digital skills online training programme

Media Trust’s free digital skills training programme

How We Teach Digital Skills at PwC

Deloitte Human Capital 2017 report

Building a digital workforce

Which digital skills do you really need?

Why charities need to invest in digital skills

Why Digital Skills Are Important For Employers

Increasing the digital capacity of trustee boards

7 things you can do about the Code in 30 minutes a day

7 things every small charity can do about The Charity Digital Code of Practice

Explaining the Charity Digital Code of Practice

Superhighways Leadership 101

Trillium guide to the Code

Code masterclass

An Introduction to The Charity Digital Code of Practice

Next Principle: Managing Risks and Ethics

Principle 5

Skills

3 quick actions for charities

Best practice for charities

Case study:

NSPCC

Resources

Next Principle: Managing Risks and Ethics

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