Digital Things & Charities … play, learn (and dance!)

I started this morning by tweeting the link to a video that is guaranteed* to make you smile and dance around the office. It’s the Crypt Covers version of Ghostbusters (a film which is 31 years old this week!) by the wonderful Hope & Social. (* keep your receipt, i’ll exchange it for something else if it doesn’t work)

Then reading through my e-mail I found this infographic released today from the Technology Trust which neatly sums the sections of the latest Lloyds Bank Digital Index (March 2015) that relates to charities. It’s enough to wipe the smile off your face and to make you bang your head against that brick wall. Or is it?

At first what concerned me was that almost 70% of charities don’t think having a modern responsive website will increase their funding, that only 23% of Charities are investing to improve digital skills and that over a quarter of charities think that they have done all they can online(!). Really? The Internet is quite large!

However, rather than being upsetting, this gives us a great opportunity to do more with the organisations we know, support, volunteer and work with.

Learn as you ‘play’ with digital technology, experiment with social media tools to increase fundraising and try out new online tools. For example these links show ways that Periscope and Slack can be used in the nonprofit sector. No direct financial investment is needed in increasing your digital skills, but of course increased digital skills is likely to be the end result as you become more confident in the way these tools can be used to promote the aims of the charity. Directly coupled to this is the (free!) bonus that by experimenting with new digital technology organisations will not long be thinking ‘they’ve done all they can online’.

Ways we can promote this in our organisations is another topic to think about and to discuss at VCSSCamp on 30th June.

As for wildly leaping around the office … it’s back to Hope & Social for the (free bonus!) answer   

Here’s the full Technology Trust infographic for you.