Charity Digital Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

The last few years have been challenging for charities. A global pandemic hastened the speed of digital transformation for the entire sector, widespread inflation led to growing costs and more precarious fundraising, and charities have had to balance rising service demand with an uncertain economy.  

But many of these challenges have predated the pandemic – what’s changed is the way we rise to them. Evolving technology has allowed charities to innovate more than ever before, with advances in everything from web accessibility to digital fundraising. 

In this podcast, we’re joined by Tony Connor, Senior Director of Product Marketing at PIR.org, the organisation that looks after the .org domain name, to discuss how technology is developing to meet charity’s challenges, both old and new.  

Resources:

• .ORG Learning Center - .ORG Learning Center - .ORG Learning Center
• Charity Digital - Charity Digital - Home
• Top tech trends for 2024 - Charity Digital - Topics - Tech trends for 2024

Climate change is a recurring news topic, perhaps the most pressing issue of our age, and it’s essential that charities take action. It’s time for charities to build environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategies into day-to-day work. Our panel of experts discuss ESG and consider how charities can build it into strategies so they can implement meaningful changes. 

The session, taken from a recording from our 2023 Conference, features Jen Lowthrop from Feel Good Do Good, Charity Digital Senior Content Writer Laura Stanley, Charlotte Washe from In Kind Direct, Jessica Wrigley from Sage, and Amy Moore from Marie Curie.

Our 2023 Climate Action campaign may be coming to an end in December, but that doesn’t mean we should stop acting on climate change. Indeed, climate change won’t stop acting on us. 

Our survey ‘Climate change in the UK charity sector’ found that more than four in five charities are concerned about the impacts of climate change but the majority rate the sector at a six out of ten in how well they are enacting sustainability in their organisations. 
Clearly there is still work to be done. Our report showed that the sector lacked clear communication on sustainability among their peers, and while many charities praise the work of environmental organisations, they were unsure about what they could do to tackle climate change themselves. The responsibility for tackling climate change in the sector of course does not rest only with environmental charities, but they perhaps understand the challenges more than most.
Having discussed this challenge with guests from across the sector in our last podcast, today we speak to guests from environmental charities to get their say: what role does digital technology play in climate action and sustainability, what is the current state of affairs, and where do we have left to go? 

This podcast is sponsored by Salesforce.org - the dedicated social impact team of Salesforce that delivers technology to nonprofits, educational institutions, and philanthropic organisations so they can connect with others and do more good. Catch up with the Salesforce.org Gaming for Good podcast series here!
We’re back with a second Gaming for Good episode. This time, we focus on how gaming can be used to design services that put your users at the heart.  
In this podcast episode, we hear how Women’s Win has embraced gaming as a key element of their service delivery. Hear how they used online gaming to strengthen their mission, better understand the needs of their service users and support them in a creative and innovative way.   

Charity Digital Marketing Manager, Chris Hall, is joined by Shay Thompson (Founder at Level Up Link Up) and Nicole Matuska (Senior U.S. Program Manager at Women Win) to discuss how gaming can be incorporated into charity service design.

We’re living in a golden era of content. Charities are engaging with their audiences, donors and services users through digital content and channels like never before. But the demand for new content is continuing to grow.
But how can you win at content with limited time and resources? 
Today’s podcast episode is another release from our conference back in March. Charity Digital’s Marketing Manager Chris Hall is joined by three content experts. They chat about how you can create effective content, reach new audiences, build content into your digital strategy and much more!
Panel speakers: Rebecca Rae-Evans (Founder of Replay and Tech for Good Live), Donna White (Senior Head of Digital Marketing at The Prince's Trust) and Simon Banks (Video Strategist, Author and Speaker). 

This week, we bring you another session from our March conference. For this podcast instalment, we have an amazing case study showcasing how DataKind UK and The Welcome Centre worked together to implement AI tech to visitor data to work smarter and deliver more impact for their beneficiaries.  

AI can often seem like a scary, far-away concept for charities, when in fact it offers huge potential when it comes to service delivery, data and much more. The Welcome Centre’s innovative partnership with DataKind UK resulted in a programme that allowed them to help their service users at their most critical point.  

In this podcast, hear Welcome Centre Trustee Dr Andrew Tomlinson explain how innovative analytics and machine learning has helped them get a clear picture on their user’s needs and given them the confidence to go forward on their own.  

For this week’s podcast episode, we’re bringing you another release from our #BeMoreDigital conference back in March of this year.     This session is particularly relevant now. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, charities everywhere have had to quickly up their digital strategy, with some organisations starting from scratch completely. Digital is becoming such an important part of charity operations that it begs the question - "Should all strategy be digital or is digital part of a strategy?"    This episode brings together digital pioneers in the charity sector to discuss how strategy can make digital transformation a reality, the role of culture and leadership in implementing successful change and the steps to take towards a #BeMoreDigital strategy.     Charity Digital CEO, Jonatha Chevallier, is joined in the conference release by Caroline Rennie (Product Lead at Comic Relief), Lara Burns (Chief Digital Officer at The Scouts) and Pauline Roche (Producer, Broker & Journalist & Trustee of the Small Charities Coalition).  

Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, charities everywhere have had to adapt to new ways of working. For most charities, this meant a full, or at least part, conversion to remote working.     Now more than six months on, many organisations are still adopting ‘work from home’ as the norm. But the main question now is how are charities setting up remote or hybrid IT for the Long haul? What processes, tools and steps are they sticking with and what is being phased out, or twisted away from?     It’s clear that the topic of remote or hybrid working is an ever-evolving one. But the key question we explore in this podcast episode is, what does this mean for our IT systems?     Charity Digital CEO, Jonathan Chevallier, is joined by Sarah Broad (COO at NPC) and Philip Anthony (Co-Founder at Coopsys) to discuss what the new office looks like. The conversation centres around our tech learnings over the past few months, what charities have to do to keep secure, how they can best support their staff through changes, and much more. 

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This podcast is supported by CoopSys, the IT enablers for Charities.  For more info see coopsys.net.

Oops! Uploaded the wrong podcast, listen to Cub from the NCSC now! 

For a long time, cyber security has been seen as a purely technical issue, which in turn limited senior leaders ability to understand the risk and ensure it was being mitigated.   We have taken this session from our #BeMoreDigital conference back in March where the NCSC will explore how to prioritise the limited resources charities have at their disposal, focus on the biggest risks and reshape attitudes towards cyber security in your organisation.   Even though this session was recorded in a pre-COVID world cybersecurity needs to be applied now more than ever. Cub provides some top tips to keep the digital safety of your charity front-of-mind when considering digital tech.

Resources can be found online - https://charitydigital.org.uk/podcasts/embedding-cybersecurity-in-strategic-decision-making

This podcast is sponsored by Salesforce.org - the dedicated social impact team of Salesforce that delivers technology to nonprofits, educational institutions, and philanthropic organisations so they can connect with others and do more good. 

The world of gaming sometimes gets a bad reputation. However, time and time again gaming is proving itself otherwise and has become a highly lucrative fundraising market for charities.  
In this podcast episode, we discuss what gaming for good actually means and how charities can tap into this relatively new fundraising market. We also chat about the creative ways organisations have been using gaming as a tool for social good, as well as offering key tips for charities on how to get started with using the world of gaming for fundraising. Our guests also explain why charities of all shapes and sizes should be harnessing the power of gaming to raise money, start conversations and spread their message. 

For this episode, Charity Digital’s Marketing Manager, Chris Hall, is joined by Shay Thompson (Founder of Level Up Link Up and Video Game Host for McLaren and Bafta) and Will Coleman (Creative Lead at Salesforce.org).