In this article we will concentrate on the strategic processes which are needed to help us in the VCSE sector to begin the transformation which will benefit our beneficiaries and our organisations.
Establishing, developing and overseeing strategy is the remit of the board of a charity. Boards need to be supported in identifying the strategy to drive their mission, develop it during the different stages of the organisation and oversee its management by those to whom they delegate that responsibility.
That strategy should include the use and regular review of technology to make the delivery of services and activities more efficient. It should also aim to decrease the time spent on repetitive routine tasks which could be automated.
Our data – owning, showing and sharing
Civil society organisations gather lots of data, usually at the behest of funders. Boards need to appreciate what data the organisation is collecting. They should encourage management to use, share and combine it with other data so the acquired knowledge can be used to make better decisions.
Organisations like the charity DataKind UK works with data scientists (people who examine and analyse data). These data scientists volunteer their time with Datakind to help other charities understand and use their data better. There are also schemes like Pro Bono OR whose members, operational researchers, volunteer to help organisations to make operational improvements using data. A similar organisation, Pro Bono Economics, helps charities understand and improve their impact and value, also using data.
Strategic digital footprint
But strategic digital footprint isn’t only about data. It’s also about raising your digital profile through accessible social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
In RnR Organisation we are constantly encouraging VCS CEOs, Trustees and others working in the sector to be more active online. Using platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook make such activity more accessible and cost effective.
Supporting trustees on social media
Organisations and their management need to explore how they can support trustees to use these digital platforms.
Are trustees on LinkedIn? If they are, are they leveraging their contacts to support the organisation? This includes not just financially but also by opening doors, by creating or supporting partnerships, by communicating about the brilliant work done by the organisation and its staff?
Are trustees in groups that are relevant to the organisation where they could lead or contribute to discussions? Do they reblog posts from the organisation’s website? Do they keep an eye out for opportunities and send them on to the management?
Are trustees on Twitter? If they are, are they retweeting the organisation’s tweets to their contacts, thereby increasing the reach of the organisation? Are they sharing organisational and topical news, making new contacts, raising awareness of the issues faced by the charity’s beneficiaries?
On Facebook, where many voluntary organisations and community groups find a natural home, trustees could be equally active. They can post event photos, spread organisational news amongst their networks, publicly respond to organisation invitations and invite others to get involved.
Facebook is a great place for new people to find out about your organisation, and trustees could be involved in this.
Using technology to develop a framework for a strategic process
And what about the governance meetings themselves? Are they just events where decisions are already made and trustees just go along and sign where they’re told to?
Or are they events where participation, including by those not in the room, is encouraged, including through using social media? Live tweeting VCS meetings is not very common, but the public sector live streams some of its meetings so our sector must consider this as an option. It can help us recruit new members, volunteers and trustees who are growing up in an age where this is the norm.
How many boards use video conferencing such as Zoom, Skype or Google Meet Hangouts to enable people to participate in everything, maybe excepting the most sensitive matters?
What skills are we expecting of trustees?
At RnR Organisation we suggest that essential digital skills, as outlined in the Department for Education’s Essential digital skills framework, should be a given.
We think most trustees should be able to:
Handle: Find, manage and store digital information and content
Communicate: Communicate, interact, collaborate, share and connect with others
Transact: Purchase and sell goods and services; organise your finances; register for and use digital government services
Problem-solve: Increase independence and confidence by solving problems using digital tools and finding solutions
Be safe and responsible online: authenticate online accounts and email, set secure passwords and privacy settings, identify secure websites, recognise suspicious links
What next?
If you or your organisation wants some strategic help to take any of these ideas forward from people who understand our sector, please contact us for a discussion about how we might work together.
It’s Spring 2020 and people’s lives in all parts of the world are being affected by the Covid 19 Pandemic.
The short and medium term effects, including changes in how we use technology, are likely to go on for some months.
The long term effects will go on for years.
Video conferencing using Zoom
In our sector, people who never used video conferencing before this pandemic are having to suddenly get their heads around the various platforms in order to have meetings, deliver services, keep helping their beneficiaries.
Zoom, a platform developed for business purposes, for big organisations with IT departments, seems to have become the goto platform. At the end of April 2020 more than 300m people were logging on to use it every day.
Internet evangelist and social videographer John Popham observed about the Zoom phenomenon:
My timeline is full of people raising privacy and other concerns about Zoom. What I don't understand is that I am seeing people using it for one-to-one family interactions. Why? Surely Skype, FaceTime, Houseparty, Hangouts are better options for that kind of thing? #Covid19
And this is where we come in with some more information about alternatives to Zoom.
Most people will have heard of these others of course, but it might be a good reminder of what they can do, and a chance to reconsider which platform is most suited to our needs.
No IT department?
If you’re not a big organisation with an IT department, other video calling options as alternatives to Zoom are available:
Google Hangouts Meet – free group video call with up to 10 people, group chats (typing text) for up to 150 people – here’s a good article about how to use hangouts including how it works if you don’t have a Google account
“A Council for Voluntary Service (CVS) is a type of charity in England. CVSs are “the place at which local voluntary and community organisations speak to each other”. They offer a wide variety of services and support for local organisations, for example training, or advice on funding”
We held our first ever Digital WM News online meetup, a Brum digital meetup, on 15th April 2020, organised by Pauline Roche from RnR Organisation.
The meetup was for Digital WM News subscribers and others in Birmingham and the wider West Midlands, to allow social changemakers to check in with each other and share information during the Covid19 lockdown.
Event participants
Participants in 1st Digital WM News online meetup: Top row: John Dunford, Nivi Morales, Stuart Ashmore, Edward Walden, Pauline Roche; Bottom row: Vicky Kangurs, Claire Bickley
Participants updated each other on their latest activity, mainly in the light of responding to the pandemic .
Pauline has been on several CAST / Catalyst / Third Sector Lab video calls and several TechSoup meetups. She has issued one Digital WM News Covid19 Special 1 and is working on a second Special issue. As a trustee of the Small Charities Coalition she has assisted the helpdesk as well as providing some staff support and attending specialist meetups.
Online webinars attended include Donor engagement and Improving membership organisations as well as Net Squared London’s excellent and timely ‘Human connection in a time of social distancing‘ with Deepr colleagues. Another useful webinar was Cybersecurity and WFH. She also found time to pitch and run a ThingsCamp session on Social data.
Vicky shared that she is launching the Birmingham Charity Meetup on 28th Apr at 2pm. Email vicky@tabbytiger.co.uk for information. Speakers are TBC but topics will include wellbeing and working from home.
Vicky is also organising the next Midlands Charity Comms meeting on 11th June. Topic is ‘comms on a shoestring’ but this may change or become adapted to be more relevant in the coming weeks. Any suggestions for speakers from charities or NFPs who do an excellent job of communicating with stakeholders on little/no budget would be appreciated.
For Sandwell, Stuart says COVID-19 support information is available at www.scvo.info – you just follow the link from front page. Some is Sandwell specific, some more general. A new befriending scheme gas been created – Sandwell Together. General CVS activities are continuing using remote technologies, but also support with things like furlough etc.
John has continued to work with Dev Society’s normal partners, helped coordinate response from social tech orgs, as well as working with CAST, Social Tech Trust and other funders to help connect charities with support.
Edward continues to offer service design and digital skills consultancy to community businesses and other charitable organisations across England.
As a front end developer with special interest on accessibility / universal design / user center, Nivi has offered tech support for Covid 19 Kenilworth Support . She has come across some free volunteer management software from a company called Team Kinetic.
RnR Organisation was delighted to see the involvement of WM Funders Network (WMFN) in the 1st national data4good conference in 2018.
We saw it as a potential opportunity for others attending the conference to influence WMFN members in how they may use data in their own organisations. During the event, some funder representative attendees expressed an increased interest in the uses of data, even if their organisation hasn’t currently got staff resource to engage in such development.
Smaller funders, data and data sharing
Smaller funders do not always see the benefits of data, and data sharing, and WMFN also has members for whom the cost of paying to attend events like this might be an issue. Combining attendance at this important event as part of their annual membership package was a bonus for them.
Engagement opportunities for conference delegates
Access to fifteen local funder representatives meant the opportunity for other conference attendees to, amongst other things:
Expose funders to messages about what conference organising partners and other delegates would like them to do with their data and the data from their beneficiaries Encourage funders to share their data and demonstrate how to do it Encourage funders to get charities/groups they fund to share their data Encourage collaboration (WMFN will continue to support member organisations in the West Midlands, including around data, and other regional funders networks could do likewise) Impact evidence of including smaller funders
Future steps with funders and data for good
As conference partners and others have written about the merits to the sector of getting more funders to share and explore their data, thus supporting the decision to encourage funders to attend the conference, this decision enabled a wider and better-informed breadth of discussion to take place.
We hope to see an increasing number of funders at future data for good events.
Reading
There is good impact evidence to back up the participation of small funders with information in articles like these:
We’ve been talking about charity data for a few years, working to increase data literacy and data sharing in and around our sector. We were one of the nine partners in the first Data for Good conference in Birmingham in 2018.
The conversation around data and it’s use by charities is developing so we decided to collate some of the resources we have come across and/or used. We’d be pleased to hear about others.
Sources and links to information on data about and for charities
Charitybase – free, open source database, API and web app which provides public information on the activities, locations and finances of the 168,000 charities registered in England and Wales.
CharityChoice – charity directory, providing detailed information on over 160,000 registered UK charities
Grantnav, 360 Giving – supports organisations to publish their grants data in an open, standardised way and helps people to understand and use the data to support decision-making and learning across the charitable giving sector.
Housing Databank June 2019, Shelter – brings together government data on housing need, supply, affordability and other issues at a local, regional and national level.
UK Civil Society Almanac 2019, NCVO , 2019 – definitive resource on the state of the voluntary sector. The Almanac produces insights on what voluntary organisations do, their income and spending, workforce, volunteers and the sector’s impact
Organisations
360 Giving – charity which helps UK funders publish open, standardised grants data, and empowers people to use it to improve charitable giving.
Charity Digital – charity which helps other charities accelerate their missions using digital technology
Datakind UK – charity which supports charities and social enterprises large and small to work on and with their data using data science
NCVO – infrastructure organisation which champions the voluntary sector and volunteering
NPC – charity which supports charities, philanthropists, funders and social enterprises to maximise their social impact.
Operational Research Society – charity which helps inform strategic, tactical and operational decisions as well as assisting in the design of public policy.
Pro Bono Economics – charity helping charities and social enterprises improve their impact and value
Royal Statistical Society – charity which advocates the key role of statistics and data in society, working to ensure that policy formulation and decision making are informed by evidence for the public good.
Investment Spotlight report 2019 – examines the investment performance of the UK’s top 5,000 charities in terms of income and assesses the size of the charity investment market over the past 10 years.
Where are England’s charities? by Dan Corry, 16th Jan 2020, npc – author uses data to ask if the current distribution of charities around the country is what we would want in an ideal world and explores what government, funders and charities could do about it.
Technology and the understanding and usage of data can help us in the VCSE sectors. Digital tools and approaches can help us work better, sometimes freeing us up to spend more of our valuable time helping our beneficiaries, sometimes allowing us to make better decisions and work smarter.
The concepts we need to get more familiar with in the sector include digital, data, transformation, ownership, impact, collaboration and sharing.
Work smarter
We all need to work smarter – digital technology and data will help us to do that. We need to increase the digital and data literacy of everyone, but especially those in our sector.
We are not the only ones in society doing the work that we do but there is no shortage of need and time is not on our side. If we do not transform our organisations, there are other organisations, without our understanding of local community needs, who will come into the ‘market’ and say they can do the job better than us.
We need to reclaim our mission and prove the need we serve, using technology and data, including our own, to improve our processes and prove our impact.
Transformation using technology is in the best interests of our beneficiaries and our organisations.
Data
We are constantly having to rely on data produced by the statutory sector. We work to encourage the VCSE sector to understand, value, use and share our own data, amongst ourselves and with trusted allies.
We attended a datadive run by the charity Datakind UK in June 2014 where data scientists gave up a weekend to examine the data of 4 separate charities, eventually producing dashboards or data visualisations which helped each charity show its impact.
Net Squared Midlands, a tech for good group, part of a global network of people interested in using web or mobile technology for social good, organises meetups where VCSE organisations can meet and get support from digital advocates who want to support work in the sector by sharing their technical skills.
103,000 (52%) charities have all five skills (up 4% since 2017).
2.4 million (58%) SMEs have all five skills (down 1% since 2017).
Less than half (49%) of SMEs in the West Midlands have all five Basic Digital Skills – the lowest of any region.
In the third sector, charities from the South West and Wales have the lowest Basic Digital Skill levels (45%) – this is flat year-on-year.
60,000 (30%) charities and 655,000 (16%) SMEs have low digital capability.
only 18% of SMEs and 8% of charities have taken the step to optimise their services for mobile use.
Since 2014, charities’ growth in digital usage has surpassed that of SMEs. Some of the largest changes include:
Nearly one-third (29%) of charities now use Cloud-based IT systems, this is 15 times more than in 2014.
Two-thirds (65%) of charities are now accessing Government Digital Services, more than seven times as many as in 2014.
There are now nearly one million SMEs and charities on ‘the cusp’, with four of the five Basic Digital Skills, up 34% in one year.
Tools and resources
There are many tools, resources, organisations and events to do with technology for non-profits, many of them available to us in the VCSE sector at low or no cost. Many of the tools and resources are designed and maintained by people who believe in tech for good, including volunteers.
We also recommend organisations and events like VCSSCamp, the unconference for voluntary sector infrastructure organisations (CVSs and Volunteer Centres etc) at which you can network with and get support from other organisations in the sector who are also engaged on this same transformation journey.
Allies
We have allies in this work, people who work in the public or private sectors but who also want to ‘give something back’.
Organisations like Datakind UK bring together charities and data scientists to enable the data scientists to examine the charities’ data and help them understand the patterns in the data which will help them do a better job.
Meetups like those organised by Net Squared local organisers attract ‘techies’ who are civic-minded and want to work with us to help us find solutions.
What technology many charities need
As far back as 2015 a national charitable funder ran a pilot programme which was to help charities use technology to create change in the lives of certain groups in society.
The funder was clear that there were a number of things this programme would not cover and these were:
Upgrading of internal IT systems
Large-scale capital costs
Updating of websites and routine social media campaigns
Exploration events or hack days
Staff or volunteer training
Capacity-building to make an organisation more ‘digital ready’
We think this is a handy list of work which does need to be funded by some funder(s) and we continue to work to identify and seek dialogue with, and share information about, funders who will fund these areas.
Resource-saving tools
What are the tasks you need to do? Of these, what are the time-consuming ones which could be automated?
How much time do you spend answering the same queries over and over, organising events, arranging meetings, travelling to meetings, keeping up to date, managing projects, updating documents, finding out what your members think?
How much money do we pay for simple website maintenance and updates?
Tools like Eventbrite, Doodle, Skype/Hangouts, Google alerts, Trello, Google Drive and Survey Monkey can save us time and money in times like these and we should be using them more. Links to these and other tools can be found in Charity Catalogue, a curated list of useful resources for UK charities brought to you by a committed group of volunteers and the SCVO Digital Team
“The voluntary and community sector (VCS) has accommodated the move from early computers to flat screens, to laptops, blackberries, smartphones, iPads etc etc. We have accommodated changes in programme applications – online, monitoring through prescribed databases and spreadsheets, and reporting on pre-set and template programmes. Smart/digital systems, big/open data, ‘Smart Cities’ programmes are all processes and programmes that will benefit the sector in developing, delivering, monitoring and reporting services.
The question for the VCS is not about whether, or how, we engage in ‘digital by default’ [see Government Digital Service], but how do we proactively lead/shape our involvement within the ‘technological journey’.
While the public sector is planning reforms and changes based on technological developments, there are growing concerns over our sector’s ability to take part in and respond to the continued changes”.
Future articles
In the other articles in this series we look at the strategic and operational processes we in the sector need to be aware of and implementing if we want to achieve the transformation to ‘digital by default’ that is so badly needed.
If you or your organisation wants some strategic help to take any of these ideas forward, please contact us for a discussion about how we might work together.
The mapshows all 13,653 charities that were registered with the Charity Commission in September 2016, and had registered with a postcode that falls within the West Midlands.
The layers tab on the right allows for filtering by category of activity (proportional by income), the search function on the left searches by charity name.
The layers are ordered by frequency of type (with 82 umbrella bodies and 2383 religious orgs).
James Bowles made this map following a suggestion by Pauline Roche from RnR Organisation.
Pauline recognised how useful such a map would be, not only for all the charities on the map, but also for existing and potential funders, including individuals who might want to support a charity in their area.
We aim to develop and support a more creative and collaborative mindset amongst people working in and governing the VCSE sector so that they know how to use the internet and digital technology more efficiently in order to help their beneficiaries. This should also increase their efficiency and productivity e.g. automating repetitive tasks. We are also hoping that by the end of the project they will be more able and willing to use freely available digital tools and software.
We are exploring essential issues and activities not currently supported by the major tech for good project funders.
We envisage that the objectives will impact on the VCSE Sector in the following ways:
Developing capacity to ensure an organisation becomes ‘digital ready’ or digitally improved
Providing or developing appropriate staff/volunteer training
Exploring and increasing organisations’ digital footprint to include updating individual websites and engaging in routine social media campaigns
Organising and running Exploration events or Hack Days to aid development and delivery of activity
Reinforcing/increasing capacity/usage of current system.
Exploring need for upgrading of internal IT systems
Developing project / economic reasoning for (large scale) capital investment in IT
We will achieve the delivery of the Project 2020 objectives through these three themed areas:
How could digital identification help UK charities to more effectively collect information about people using their services?
Do charities need to prove who people are, ensure that they are legally eligible for services or to record and recall information about them? If they do, what worries them about the process?
Could Yoti Keys help people to take ownership of their background information and how they share it when accessing multiple, or repeat, services?
Nissa and I explored the most effective use cases for the Yoti app (which verifies legal identities or key personal details, like age) among UK charities.
We also explored the use cases for Yoti Keys, Yoti’s offline solution, which is a product in development that enables charities to register and subsequently identify people accessing their services without needing a smartphone, documentation or connectivity.
You can find more information about Yoti’s social purpose here.
How charities got involved
We told people who worked for charities based and working in the UK that we’d love to hear from them.
We were particularly interested in hearing from them if they had a need to legally identify people.
We also wanted to hear from people who could potentially use the offline Key to help prevent people from having to tell their story every time they access a service, or to help their organisation better manage and monitor people’s interactions with their service .
What happened next
The research ended in late September 2018, with a first look at our findings coming out later that year.
Nissa’s insights from the research were published here.
Yoti continues to work towards delivering the best possible products and services for UK charities. More about their social purpose here
Tech and data for good
We aim to develop and support a more creative and collaborative mindset amongst people working in and governing the VCSE sector so that they know how to use the internet and digital technology more efficiently in order to help their beneficiaries. This should also increase their efficiency and productivity e.g. automating repetitive tasks. We are also hoping that by the end of the project they will be more able and willing to use freely available digital tools and software.
How could digital identification help UK charities to more effectively collect information about people using their services?