This year’s Charity Digital Skills report paints a complex picture of a sector in which, according to the authors, tech use “has evolved and yet overall digital progress remains static.”
Zoe Amar and Nissa Ramsay write, “We can clearly see the impact of the cost of living crisis on charities and their organisational development. A lack of capacity, headspace and financial pressures are all preventing progress with digital.”
These dynamics may not be unique to the third sector; many readers will recognise challenges represented by budgets, data management and decision making, and artificial intelligence (AI).
The 2024 report includes findings from a survey of 635 organisations, with responses often diverging between small and large charities. Overall, 64% of small charities say they are at an early stage with digital – either ‘curious’ or ‘starting out’ (terms defined in the report), whereas amongst large charities, this figure was 26%.
However, budget challenges for both large and small charities were found to be similar, with large charities highlighting funding needs in ‘capacity for organisational development’ (59%), ‘training for staff and volunteers on digital or data’ (37%), and ‘to develop our digital strategy’ (37%).
Across all respondents, 43% of charities say they most need funding to access training for staff and volunteers, an increase from 36% last year and “a prominent theme in the open responses for over 40 charities.”
The most significant barriers to digital progress amongst charities are:
Data skills and capabilities jump out as a particular challenge. The report authors describe charities as lacking confidence with data, with 31% of respondents saying they are poor at, or are not engaging with the collection, management and use of data. In addition, a third of charities (34%) say the same about data-informed decision making.
Given that 1 in 4 charities say data is a high priority (rising to 37% of large organisations), this is a significant challenge in the third sector, as it is in many industries (see Marketing Week’s Career and Salary survey).
In digital marketing specifically, a third of charities (31%) say they are poor at using website and analytics data, with only digital fundraising having a larger skills gap (41%). For comparison, only 13% of respondents said they were poor at social media.
Growing staff/volunteer digital skills was the fifth most selected digital priority amongst the whole sample, but placed fourth (52%) for larger organisations, below ‘using data to improve services or operations’ (58%), increasing online fundraising and using AI tools (both 53%).
As an interesting addendum to these assessments of digital capability, 1 in 5 charities (19%) say their board has low digital skills, with little digital interest, understanding or support. Only 28% of charity respondents say they have a board with good or excellent digital skills, down from 32% last year.
The findings in the report relating to AI can be summarised as showing a sector which is engaging with this new technology, but perhaps in an ad hoc fashion that requires more training to ensure proper guardrails are in place.
Whilst the proportion of respondents who say AI developments are relevant to them is down from 78% to 65% this year, more than 3 in 5 (61%) are currently using AI day-to-day. The key stat here is 45% of charities said they are using AI tools ‘informally’.
The most popular uses and functions of AI tools are:
A lack of skills and expertise is cited by 50% of charities when it comes to this new tech, and a lack of training to upskill by 34%.
The findings in the report as a whole highlight what can be a vicious circle for organisations as they seek funding for digital capability in a time of squeezed finances.
Download the report here.