What we know about data and digital skills in the sector

By Giselle Cory, CEO of DataKind UK

Today’s Charity Digital Skills Report provides us with the most complete picture of attitudes towards data and digital in the social sector to date.

A few big trends come to the fore. One is that there are significant unmet funding needs for data and digital. Unfortunately, this isn’t surprising, as a significant number of the larger infrastructure funding pots have closed down this year. This drop in access to digital and data funding is a real concern for the sector, particularly given that these needs are clearly a high priority for many charities, who see the power of data and digital to transform their impact.

Another theme that comes up is the need for access to the right skills, particularly in data collection, use, and management. Data skills still fall far behind digital skills. As the report highlights, what comes next is crucial — charities now feel able to look to the future and plan in response to the unexpected changes the pandemic wrought. This proactivity is where data can make a huge difference in insight, planning, and prediction — yet most don’t feel their organisation has strong skills in this area.

But there’s reason for optimism too — half of respondents (51%) consider it a priority to use data and insights more effectively to improve services and operations, an increase from last year. Considering that many charities struggle to make the case for better data use as a route to greater impact, it is heartening to see more people recognising this as a priority.

Something that really comes through is the complexity that comes alongside some of these changes and improvements. For example, there are significant concerns around client data use and collection, and a desire among many charities to improve their data privacy and security.

There’s also a growing interest in using tech suppliers who share their ethics and values. These concerns indicate that the sector wants to be a leader not only by using data and digital — but also by doing so responsibly, centring their values and the needs of their users.

There is a strong appetite for pro bono support. 59% of respondents said they would find it very helpful to access free support from experts. As well as continuing to offer our free data science support to charities, we’re also working in partnership with other pro bono service providers to help charities navigate the large range of free support available to them.

At the moment, interest in effective and responsible data use is high, but confidence is sadly still low, so we want to do everything we can to support charities to build their data skills and capacity. We hope a huge part of this will be the Data Collective, a network for those who use data in the social sector, which after its pilot in 2021 will be soft launched this summer.