All things digital

Edition 11 – Wednesday 3 June

Free digital communications support for charities
Media and marketing experts are offering their time and expertise for free to help charities meet the digital communications challenges they are facing during the Covid-19 outbreak. The support is being offered through the Media Trust’s Volunteer Platform, which matches communications experts with charities in need of help.

The Media Trust has also made a digital resource hub available to offer further help. The Media Trust’s guide to volunteering helps those in the media and creative industry learn more about employer supported skills based volunteering initiatives.

Edition 10 – Thursday 28 May

The small charity guide to increasing Twitter engagement
Charity Digital has put together a useful guide on how small charities can get more out of their Twitter account. This is really useful if you are new to social media management or want to refresh your thinking and approaches.
#TopTip:
Keep checking those analytics – daily! It gives you a good idea what works with your audience. What was your top tweet? And why?

How digital is helping Mind support their network
How two weeks of questions, ideas and speedy testing changed the way Mind is working locally and nationally.

New digital funding and online support for charities and non-profits
Three top tips for organisations applying to Comic Relief and Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s new £230,000 Explore programme.

New service recipe: Knaresborough Connectors
How the charity used a variety of Google tools to connect residents who are self-isolating, with those able to support them.

Ten young people’s charities using digital in cool ways
Quick overview of how ten charities have taken their young people’s services online
Useful because:

• It’ll give you a glimpse of what’s possible. Could you copy that?
• It includes links for more info on the services you are inspired by

An Accessible UX (user experience) checklist for charities. By Charity Digital
Useful because:

• It’ll give you a basic understanding of what UX, or user experience is
• It’ll show you how to think about using UX principles to make your digital services and content more accessible to your users

How the Scouts went through ‘digital transformation by pandemix’
The Scouts had to ramp up their digital activities overnight when lockdown started. Find out how it got on

The rise of ‘No Code’. The future of charity digital services?
No Code is already making it easier for charities to begin building digital services. We’ve got an article coming about this.
In the meantime, this article is useful because:

• It explains what ‘No Code’ is (yeah, it’s probably what you think it is)
• It shows, with examples, how services can be built without code
  [I haven’t got a clue what this all means, but I’m sure somebody out there will]

Edition 9 – Wednesday 20 May

How to select the right digital tool for your charity, and feel good about how you chose it
Assemble is a new step-by-step process to take the pain out of choosing third party tools and software. For charities and social enterprises who want to make good tech decisions, in the right way.

A guide to staying connected
Local Trust has produced a guide to staying connected and a digital toolkit to help those of us who maybe aren’t as confident in the big wide world of digital. See the full guide here

Miro – realtime whiteboard for remote collaboration
Introduction to an online collaboration tool many charities are beginning to use across their remote teams. Miro is useful for charities because it:

• Acts like an office whiteboard with extra features, while also being faster, neater and more flexible
• Has a free package but also offers charity discounts on paid packages

You can watch here

What is essential? – TNL’s Digital Fund May Learning Event
Monday, May 18th, 15.30 – 17.00 (free)
Useful because it:

• Will stimulate your reflections on what has become essential for your charity since the pandemic started
• Will help you think about what you don’t want to continue with as your charity moves into the pandemic’s next phases
  Register here

DigiShift Zoom call: Digital Content and User Needs
Thursday 14th May, 14.00-15.30 (free)
Useful because:

• It’ll give you real examples of how using the right words and content can make your digital services work better
• It’ll give you some hands on techniques you can go away and try

Replacing live events and face to face contact in the Covid-19 pandemic
Article by Outlandish, about a new platform they built for the European Union Youth Orchestra.
Useful because:

• Shows how easy and quick it can be to build an integrated online community platform using common web tools
• Includes clear descriptions of the end result with screenshots showing online events, downloadable resources and discussion forums
  See how they did it

Digital Safeguarding Resource Pack 40 page guide published by Against Violence and Abuse.
Useful because it:

• Describes online safeguarding principles and implementation steps better than anything we’ve seen so far
• Lots of situation specific advice relevant to different types of online service delivery
  Get the pack

Edition 8 – Wednesday 13 May

Media Trust puts together guide on accessible technology and communications
The Media Trust writes: “With more of us working remotely than ever before, it is so important that our disabled colleagues are not left out and locked out by inaccessible communications.

“Fortunately, the digital platforms and technology we use for work is at its most accessible ever, and this is only being developed further as the weeks under lockdown go by.” The guide covers the available tools and resources. To download the guide, click here

How Samaritans are using digital and mobile to respond to lockdown
Samaritans have faced a host of challenges as a result of lockdown.
Find out how they’re overcoming them

How to plan your next steps during lockdown
Catalyst and Zoe Amar Digital are jointly offering two free ‘what next?’ webinars, designed to help charities work out next digital steps during Covid-19.

Take Five: the best content from around the Catalyst network
Read some key learning and advice from our charity partners.

Creating empathy in online services
Read part one of our series about maintaining the human connection as services move rapidly online.

Edition 7 – Wednesday 6 May

Taking an inclusive approach to remote working
Business in the Community have produced a toolkit offering insight and advice on how employers can take an inclusive approach to support employees likely to be working from home during the pandemic.

It has identified four key areas for employers:

• How to take an informed and people-centered approach to the crisis;
• How to ensure the basics are in place;
• Suggestions on how to adjust communication styles to reflect new working practices;
• How to help carers care.

Online on a shoestring
SSE Fellow Hannah Broughton has created a free Virtual Workbook designed to support small to medium social enterprises who are looking at taking their services online with a limited budget. It covers everything from putting together an online offer, to safeguarding, online adaptations and impact collection.
You can download it here

Replacing drop-in services with an online chat
Catalyst provides a seven step guide to setting up an online chat for your beneficiaries

New platform showing how other charities are delivering their services
A collaboration of organisations has created a platform that collects practical examples of services charities have delivered digitally, which other charities can reuse and learn from. More information can be found here

Edition 6 – Wednesday 29 April

For quick advice on all things digital…
For quick advice from over 1,600 charity folk, go to Digital Charities Slack. Sign up is easy and you can ask about literally any charity digital subject.

Deep, structured and supported
If you’re wrestling with a service delivery challenge, or trying to work out what type of online help your users need, or how they might access it, then Online Design Hops will guide you through the process from start to finish. The difference from training courses is that Hops are experiential. So by the end of your Hop you’ll have moved forward with your challenge and learnt about digital service design. Sign up here

Shifting services online
A case study of how SafeLives adapted its services to tackle domestic abuse during COVID-19. How one charity shifted more services online while experiencing a surge in demand and a drop in income.

In-depth and tailored
For in-depth advice from an expert, go to Digital Candle. You submit a request, get introduced to one of 170 experts then arrange a 1hr call. You can ask about any charity digital subject. Or you could try #CrisisConnections, a similar free service set-up as a direct COVID-19 response.

How to make digital content and influence people
Lloyds Bank Foundation has produced a series of downloadable guides which can help you share strong, impactful communications when maybe you don’t have a lot of time. It covers building your brand, video content, social media, web design and influencing.

Edition 5 – Wednesday 22 April

How do you maintain a sense of team remotely?
An article on CharityComms’ website canvasses opinion from the sector on how to maintain team spirit during the lockdown.

There are a variety of ideas on the website, but our primary mode of ‘togetherness’ at Action Hampshire seems to be via a very, ahem, wide ranging Whatsapp group.  Posts in the last week have covered such high-brow topics as: baking, Supervet, baking, silly Do Not Disturb signs, baking, pets doing household chores, baking, not eating carrots, baking and origami.  Love my team!

Online training
Catalyst have produced 6 useful tips on how to move your training services from face-to-face to online.

Zoom bombing
Superhighways has put together five top tips to avoid being ‘Zoom bombed’ i.e. letting people into your Zoom meetings who really shouldn’t be there, and possibly have something quite unsavoury to contribute… Take a look at the blog to keep your Zoom meetings secure

Digitising therapeutic services
Catalyst have also produced a case study showing how Young Somerset digitised their one-to-one therapy service in just one week.

Edition 2 – Wednesday 1 April

The Small Charities Coalition has a page on remote working, with links to these publications by CAST (Centre for Acceleration of Social Technology).

• How to stay connected when working remotely
• Getting started with Zoom
• Getting started with Skype Video
• Getting started with Google Hangouts
• CAST practical guide to remote meetings. Includs participation, running the meeting, hand gestures, tools we use, and technical setup

Coping practically and emotionally during the Covid-19 outbreak
Only partly about homeworking, but with practical ideas about how to deal with what is going on around you while you are working (or trying to).

From desk jockey to badass remote worker in a few easy steps 
Shelly Palmer, 8 March 2020. Produces a daily newsletter on advertising, marketing and technology. He starts this article with “The sociology of productive remote working is much more difficult to master than the technology. Said differently, learning to work by yourself is harder than you think it is. Here are a few tips that will unlock your inner badass remote worker skills.”

How to work remotely in a time of coronavirus
Looks at “the technological solutions which enable distributed working, and the adaptations to culture and ways of working that are involved”, based on the experience of a real organisation.

Working from home during the coronavirus pandemic
Info

Covid-19 working from home risk assessment
Info

Cyber risk warning as coronavirus spurs remote working
Info

HR has a critical role in these remote working times
“Remote working does not mean people are sent home to fend for themselves.”

Edition 1 – Thursday 26 March

Working Families
Working Families are offering their “Managing remote/home workers” resources free of charge.  Download here

Freebies
There are masses of resources on offer to support you with remote working. Amongst them:

• The Catalyst is providing digital guidance and support for charities
• Digital Candle is offering a free one hour of digital guidance for charities