Catalyst Digital Teams available to help charities respond to COVID-19

Are you a network of charities in need of digital support? Catalyst Digital Teams offer expertise to help you respond and adapt.

Every charity across the UK is trying to deal with the enormous implications of the COVID-19 crisis. Many critical face-to-face services need urgently redesigning. Staff and volunteers everywhere are going through rapid operational changes to the way they work together.

We want to offer some help.

Catalyst is making available Digital Teams to help charities who need support right now with digital challenges. Catalyst Digital Teams will be made up of a combination of digital, design and data expertise to help charities go through urgent, sometimes radical transitions.

What are Catalyst Digital Teams?

The teams will be made up of experts drawn from a national network of Catalyst partners. (If you would like to join this network, please complete this form and we’ll be in touch).

They will be funded and made available at no cost to the voluntary, social or charitable organisation that needs their support.

Initially, a small number of Digital Teams will be available to organisations that identify as an anchor organisation, infrastructure body or federated charity or organisations that support, connect or coordinate a network.

We plan to learn quickly from working with these organisations and expand availability.

What will Catalyst Digital Teams do?

Catalyst Digital Teams will work alongside charities to help understand and respond to urgent challenges by:

• Building skills and capacity required for rapid change to services and operations
• Helping charities quickly learn about challenges and priorities across networks and communities
• Designing, developing and implementing service changes or entirely new services
• Helping identify and pull in wider resources being made available to help charities through the current crisis
• Capturing what is working (and what isn’t) to contribute to shared practice, tools and design patterns that equip the sector now and into the future.

Who is eligible to apply?

Initially, we will focus on working with organisations that identify as an anchor organisation, infrastructure body or federated charity; or organisations that support, connect or coordinate a network of voluntary, social and community enterprises.

We are looking to work with these kinds of organisations first because they are able to cascade the support Digital Teams offer out to other organisations in their networks or local areas.

If you are an anchor organisation, infrastructure body or federated charity, or an organisation that supports, connects or coordinates a network, and you are interested in applying for support from a Digital Team, please fill in this form or contact us by email at hello@thecatalyst.org.uk.