Choose your own adventure: Can you help us map the journeys charities take to be more digital?
What we’re looking to do
Over January and February 2020 we are seeking out those real life warts and all stories of charities that have started their journey to become digital. This doesn’t happen overnight and we know that they will have important stories that we can all learn from. Like those great childhood books, ‘choose your own adventure ’, there are lots of important, difficult and exciting choices to make.
Why this is important
Our ambition builds on our research last year, which built a picture of the shape and nature of digital maturity frameworks. It was complicated! We found and examined 50 key digital maturity diagnostic tools, guides, reports and codes of practice. They cover 19 different areas of digital maturity, but their definitions, milestones and evidence were patchy.
The crucial finding is that we actually don’t know how charities should best develop their digital capacity or how this differs between smaller or larger charities. We also don’t know as a sector how they actually do in practice, how their journey unfolds, which areas of digital matter most at different points or when support is needed most. We want to cut through all the jargon around ‘digital maturity’ and share what happens in reality as charities change how they work through digital.
We plan to capture stories from those who have been there and got the T-shirt, to create a set of journeys that others can learn from and respond to, building on the actionable stories being curated by Catalyst and IVAR’s research in to making tech imaginable and useable for small voluntary organisations
How to get involved
We’re looking to speak with charities with a turnover of between £100k and £100m. Whether you’re a charity CEO, a digital product manager or involved in frontline service delivery — We’re interested to talk to those working in charities who can tell us most about your experience, story and the detail of improving digital in your organisation.
We want to talk to those in organisations who have made good progress and used digital maturity support to do so. We’re also interested to talk to those people doing amazing work around digital, data or technology without accessing any support, or funding for this.
We’re hoping you might want to get involved by:
- Telling us your story. All you need do is drop us an email to Nissa (nissa@thinksocialtech.org) and we can book in a call. You can do a call alone or with your colleagues.
- Nominating others. If you know of a charity or person working there that has done great things with digital then do nominate them and put us in touch or forward this to them and ask them to get in touch.
Those who take part in the research will also have the opportunity to take part in an interactive session learning with 10–15 other charities on 12th February in London, kindly hosted by The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. We will immerse ourselves in the stories; try and learn as much from each others’ experience as we can and then create a set of stories that we can share. If you are interested in attending please do get in touch (this is a research session so is only open to charities participating in the research) — we will also be able to offer travel and accommodation expenses.
What happens next?
At the end of this project we will have a selection of journeys to share, identifying experiences that are common to charities at key stages in their journey. We hope these can help other charities choose their own forays in to digital. We also hope that they will help those providing digital maturity diagnostic tools, consultancy and support signpost to the right advice and resources to response to key needs, challenges and moments of uncertainty.
