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Developing a digital strategy for your charity or organisation
Read time: 12 mins Added date: 26/07/2024
Developing a digital strategy for your organisation can help you reach your goals. Whether you’re leading an organisation or managing a single project, we’ll guide you through the process.
Why have a digital strategy
Think about what you want to achieve by going digital. Do you want to help people learn more about what your charity or organisation does? Maybe you want to find ways to engage volunteers. You might even want digital tools to help your team work better together.
It’s tempting to go ahead and start using digital tools straight away. But if you have a strategy document, it will help shape and test your approach.
- Avoid making poor decisions about which tools you’ll use
- Focus on the impact on your organisation
- Share your objectives with others
How your digital strategy supports your organisation’s goals
Your strategy should show how digital can help your organisation achieve its purpose. So, keep your main goals and strategy in mind, as you go through this process.
It’s good to work with others as you create your digital strategy. They can help come up with ideas, research digital tools and test solutions. In the meantime, this guide will help shape the steps you’ll take with your team in creating it.
What to include in your strategy
As you build your strategy, keep in mind what you want to achieve. What is your ultimate outcome? Your strategy should help you achieve this outcome through digital solutions. Digital solutions are digital tools, products or services that can help you achieve your goals.
Define your goals
Look at your organisation's objectives. Rephrase them as problem statements or goals. This can highlight the areas where digital support might help.
Start by looking at the overall vision and mission statement of your organisation. Your vision is your long-term goal. For example – ‘To be the UK’s number one provider of warm spaces.’ Your mission shows what you do. So, it might be ‘To provide free, warm, safe and welcome places for people to get access to food, community and support across the UK.’
Once you have these, you can now write a set of SMART objectives. Each one should help the overall aim of your organisation.
For each objective, shape them into a goal or a problem statement. For example, ‘we need to be quicker responding to messages from our users’. These will form the focus areas of your digital strategy.
Don’t worry if you find this difficult at first. You can always come back and refine it later.
Review your objectives
Now you’ve expressed your objectives as problems or goals, it’s time to look at each one in turn. Ask yourself: could a digital solution help us solve this problem or reach this goal?
Note that you may solve some of your problems without digital input.
Don’t worry too much about these – you can always return to them once you start your research. Focus for now on the problems and goals that you think would benefit from digital input.
State the role digital will play
You should now have a list of the goals or problems where you think digital solutions could help. Taking each item on this list in turn, ask: what exactly do I want a digital solution to do here?
For example: attract 20% more supporters within 1 year. Using social media or other digital channels might help the charity or organisation attract a wider audience.
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Do your research
Once you’ve worked out the challenges or goals that digital solutions might help with, it’s time to find the right digital tools to help.
When you’re researching digital solutions, focus on what their role would be. It’s easy to find a particular product that excels at what it does. But you need to ask: will it help solve our problem? Will it help us achieve our goals?
Knowing where to start your research can be hard. Part of the process is finding out what’s available. Using your list of goals and problems is a good place to begin your research.
Type your problem statements and goals into a search engine. You may find lots of new ideas and products.
This is a good way of starting to find solutions you haven’t even heard of yet.
Research other organisations
Look at other charities or organisations like yours. Check out their websites and social media pages. What do they do that could also work for you? What do they do that you really don’t like?
Now widen your search to other organisations. Which ones do what you want to do really well? Research their use of technology.
It’s easy to spend lots of time on this, so set yourself a time limit for your research. Work with others so you take in different perspectives.
Understanding the products you research
At this stage, the ‘how’ is high-level. It’s there to show you know the solutions you’ve picked and how to apply them. You’ll be looking at estimated costs, benefits and other relevant information.
This will help with the next stage: prioritisation. For example, you might want to use a certain system because it's good for your audience and makes your organisation really stand out. So you look more closely at the details. If you find out that the cost is too high, you might then prioritise a different idea or goal.
What are the costs
There are three main resources to consider when working out your costs:
- People
- Tools
- Money
People
Who is going to do the work? This may depend on who is available. Or you might be able to recruit or outsource particular tasks.
Plan the work in terms of roles and skill levels rather than specific people. Estimate how much time you’ll need from each role and use this to estimate the cost.
- How much will it cost to develop, launch, test and manage?
- Don’t forget your day-to-day running costs. You could also estimate the time it takes to post content, check data and respond to questions
- Special skills needed? Add 10% to salaries or use a contractor
- Don't forget recruitment costs and agency fees, as well as employer costs (NI, pension, etc.)
- Add in some management time to your budget for bigger teams
You can search for similar roles and salaries on the web.
Tools
Do you need to buy any tools? This could be software (such as web design or planning tools) or hardware (like data storage or mobile devices).
You may not have specific products in mind but if you do, make a note of them.
- Don't agree to anything long term until you are sure. Try before you buy or get the minimum number of licences for the team
- Always ask for discounts or see if you can get free trials or donations
- If it's a complex or pricey system, finding the right tool can be a project in itself
Money
We’ve looked at people and tools - the main things to cost out. There are a few other things you might want to think about when working out your costs.
- Work out how much you need upfront for purchases, plus any regular costs (such as maintenance fees)
- Bear in mind PR or advertising costs. Do you need to buy images or pay for translation?
- If you are storing customer details, do you need legal help?
- Think about adding 10% to your budget as a buffer
Understand the benefits
So far, you’ve looked at how certain solutions might solve the problems or achieve the aims of your organisation. And you’ve gathered info about costs and considerations. Now it’s time to look at the benefits, so you can measure them against the costs.
Benefits for your users
Who are your users? They are the people who will be using the digital solutions you’re proposing in this strategy. They might be your volunteers, fundraisers, partners or the people your organisation helps. Whatever they do now, going digital will mean doing things differently, so let's get to know them a bit better.
Personas
There are lots of ways to describe your users. We’re going to look at using 'personas'. A persona is a fictional character you create. It represents a group of people who will use your digital solution.
Creating personas will help you focus your strategy on the kind of people it's most likely to affect.
Personas can help you:
- Pick the digital platforms that are right for them
- Decide when and where to share your ideas online
- Work out how to help people get the best out of your digital content
Focus on what is important to them, removing things that might get in the way.
Persona types include:
- Beneficiaries: People who might use the services you offer
- Donors: Individuals, corporate, grant givers
- Volunteers or Fundraisers: People who run events, hold raffles, work in shops
- Partners: Those who work with you regularly
- People looking for specialist information: Press, policymakers, researchers, government agencies
- Team members or volunteers: People who are going to use the new digital solution
Building your personas
Your personas can include information on:
- Name, age, location. What their role is – in life and for the organisation?
- Family, work, hobbies and interests. What they enjoy, and what they don’t.
- How (or if) they use technology. What devices, sites and apps they use.
Create three to five well-rounded persona profiles to represent your main user groups. Try to put yourself in their shoes and create real people. Try not to create stereotypes!
If you already have personas, you can take this as a chance to check they are up to date.
Benefits for your business operations
What benefits will your ideas bring on a day-to-day basis? Here, we’d like you to think about the routine tasks and activities that take place in your organisation.
- Income generating – for example, a social media-based fundraising campaign
- Time-saving – Like a tool that speeds up your contact with service users
- Reaching your target users – For example, using an online marketplace to reach the right buyers
- Expanding your audience – If you promote your service through a website or social channels
It’s a good idea to jot down your thoughts about these benefits for your organisation. Note how you might measure these – this could be money raised, time saved, or supporters added.
Measuring impact
Measuring impact can show how you’re working towards your target. It also helps you see what isn't working. So, you can stop doing it - or do it differently - to improve your service.
Only collect what is useful to show the impact against your objectives. Check what your software can offer you or use Google Analytics for number of users, number of visits, etc.
- Reality check: Review your key objective. What do you want to achieve? Check your choices against this objective
- Sense check: Do your plans feel right for your mission, your audience, your brand?
- Accessibility: Who are you excluding? Is there a section of your audience who can’t reach your content? How will you address this?
Decide where digital can help.
Rank your ideas
Once you’ve researched potential solutions, you need to decide how to prioritise them.
When you prioritise, you’re working out how important each option is, compared to the others. The aim is to work out which ones you want to use. You’ll also get a feel for the ones you want to start first.
We’ll look at two methods you can use to help you prioritise.
Using a pros and cons list
If you want a quick and easy way to prioritise, try this.
First, write the idea at the top of a two-column grid. Name one column ‘pros’ and the other ‘cons’. Then, list all the benefits of the idea in the pros column, and all the disadvantages in the cons column.
Think about everything you found in your earlier research, like costs and impact on end users.
Using SWOT analysis
The term SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
Here, instead of two columns, you draw a 2 x 2 grid. Use the top-left square to list the strengths that come from the idea. In the top-right, list any weaknesses you’ve noted. The bottom-left square is for opportunities that the idea could bring. And in the bottom-right one, list any potential threats – what factors might cause issues for your organisation.
You need to consider that a SWOT analysis is more complex than a basic list of pros and cons.
Which method to use?
You might decide to use one or both methods. They each have their benefits. Pros and cons lists are quick and easy to make, and can be helpful for small, low-cost or low-risk projects. SWOT analysis means viewing different aspects of your solutions. It can highlight gaps in your research and give you a deeper understanding of the solutions.
For example: if an organisation used a SWOT, this may help them see that they need to do more research to understand the product more, by analysing the threats.
Create a high-level plan
Your digital strategy should so far have started to show you what digital solutions to use and why. It won’t have shown you much of how to adopt them.
Once your strategy has been agreed, it’s worth bearing in mind that the next thing you’ll create is a more detailed project plan.
A plan explains in detail how you’ll carry out the strategy.
- What the team need to do: A full list of activities and tasks
- Who does what: Roles and responsibilities
- Timescales: A detailed schedule that lists all fixed deadlines, check points and dependencies
- How the team will manage it: This will state who looks after things like finances and resources, as well as how you’ll manage risks and changes.
Share your strategy
You’ve readied your strategy and plan. It’s now time to share them. Before you do, take a moment to think who will be reading it.
Are you writing a paper for the CEO and Board? Inspiring a new team? If your organisation is new and it’s just you, you might even be writing a plan for yourself. It could also be all of these.
Once you understand who you’re writing for, it will be easier to communicate in a way that suits them.
Give your ‘stakeholders’ - those who have a stake, or a special interest in what you’re proposing, time to read your strategy. They’ll also want the chance to discuss it with you.
When you write your strategy, there should always be an ask. This could be funding, sign-off or a commitment to be part of implementing the new solutions. Bear this in mind, as it will help you communicate your strategy in a way that makes the document’s purpose clear.
- Send out your strategy before your meeting, so everyone has a chance to read it first
- Make it clear what you’d like to happen next and when
- Leave plenty of time for questions
- If you have asks, state clearly when you need them delivered by to achieve your launch dates.
Once you’ve agreed your strategy and plans, you can then focus your efforts on making them happen.