Digital agency dxw has spent the past ten weeks providing support to charities seeking to digitise parts of their services, as part of the Catalyst and The National Lottery Community Fund COVID-19 Digital Response Definition programme. The fund is a partnership between The National Lottery Community Fund and the Centre for The Acceleration of Social Technology (CAST), supported by the Catalyst network.
For the project, dxw has spent ten weeks with representatives from four charities, which were selected for the programme based around the specific area that they wanted to explore – digital service design.
Together, dxw and the charities have worked to identify the main focus areas for their digital transformation programmes and support them through workshops, coaching and support to deliver this. The charities have focused on designing digital strategies and shaping their digital projects, and are given opportunities to present their learnings back to the group. All the while, the work they complete will be linked back to the organisational vision of their individual charity.
dxw, acting as a digital support partner, has been required to report back to CAST every three weeks to assess the progress of the project. CAST has set outcomes and indicators for dxw to meet during this time. For the duration of the project, all partners and charities involved are encouraged to be open and collaborative, creating notes, blog posts, and sharing their experiences.
Isobel Croot, head of strategic services at dxw comments on the project, “We’re excited to be collaborating with CAST to support the grantees taking part. Our goal as an agency is to support these charities in becoming user-centred and not solution-focused, so they get the most from digital. It’s important to refocus and open up possibilities beyond an off-the-shelf solution they can afford, and instead turn their attention towards designing a way of working that suits them and improves the reach and quality of their services even with limited resources.”
Gillian Challinor, Head of Network Delivery at CAST adds, “Collaborating with dxw has been a great experience. This was an unusual programme in the sense that dxw worked with 4 unique charities at the same time, all with varying strategic and transformational needs. Isobel did a brilliant job of building confidence and embedding digital skills within these organisations. The term ‘digital transformation’ and ‘digital strategy’ mean different things to different people. dxw understood this and took a very inclusive approach that culminated with each of the four charities ending with a clear vision and strategic direction – a fantastic result.”
With charities often using disparate legacy systems and finding themselves with a single expert within the team, one of the project’s key aims is to encourage organisation leaders to prioritise digital service design approaches and upskill staff to build the confidence they need.
Challinor adds, “Charities have been prioritising digital since before the pandemic, but Covid has definitely accelerated it. Organisations are now questioning how they keep that vital human connection whilst using digital solutions to provide services. They certainly won’t ‘go back’ to where they were before. A move towards a more blended approach is inevitable, where supporting people digitally while focusing face to face efforts on specific groups becomes the way forward.”
Croot concludes, “Charities deserve recognition. They’re under so much pressure, especially in the past year with the added challenges from the pandemic. Throughout everything they are embarking on transformational work to make things better for the people they support, and we’re excited to play a part in that.”
The post dxw propels charities’ digital projects forward through collaborative project appeared first on .
