Zoe Amar, director, Zoe Amar Communications Visit the CharityComms website to view slides from past events, see what events we have coming up and to check out what else we do: www.charitycomms.org.uk

1. Getting buy-in from the top: ensuring your digital
vision is realised
19 October 2017

2. Where is your leadership team at with digital?
"Don't underestimate the
value of water cooler chat on
social media. It shows that
your organisation is human.”
Social media must be linked to your organisation’s goals. Where are
you going and how are you going to get there ?
Many of your goals can be achieved through social media.

3. What we’ll be looking at today
• Making the case for why leaders need to engage with digital
• How to sell digital to your board
• Best ways to engage leaders

4. The business case for investing in digital

5. To make the business case you need to know
where you are

6. What is digital?
“Anything you can do with a smartphone.”
“A lifestyle.”
“A mindset of connectivity helping your charity develop better
relationships.”
“It’s not a thing. It just is.”

7. Want your leadership team to invest in digital?
Show them the evidence.

8. Charities who are more digitally mature are
• 28% more likely to report an increase in turnover or
funding than less digital charities.
• Better at saving time (87% stated this in 2016, compared
to 68% in 2015.)
• And 52% state cost savings are one of the advantages of
being online, a significant increase from 33% in 2015.
Source http://resources.lloydsbank.com/insight/uk-business-digital-index/

9. What barriers might be holding your charity
back?
• Lack of skills (57%) and funding (52%) are the biggest barriers.
• Half of the charities who responded (50%) say that their charity is facing other challenges that
are seen as a higher priority than digital.
• A lack of the right infrastructure but also the wrong culture, and a lack of confidence and agility
with digital are also holding charities back.
• Just under a third want more digital leadership in their charities.
• Ways to tackle barriers: the business case, peer activity, and reframe.

10. What could a digitally mature charity do?
• 75% say it would help them increase fundraising, whilst 71% believe it would help them
widen their network and 69% believe they could deliver their strategy more effectively.
• 60% think that more digital skills would help them create better services, develop and retain
staff (57%), support more beneficiaries (56%), and co-ordinate volunteers more effectively
(50%). This indicates that the messages about the economies of scale offered by digital and
the opportunities to be more efficient and save money are hitting home.
• 53% think that digital skills could help increase influence with policy makers and the media.

11. What could make the biggest difference?
• Unless boards and leadership teams develop their digital skills, 66% are worried that they will
miss out on opportunities for digital fundraising.
• More than half are worried about giving competitors an advantage (53%), losing touch with
their audience (53%) or their charity becoming irrelevant (53%). 51% are worried it could
damage their brand and reputation.
• 58% are concerned that their charity will only ever use digital at a tactical level, not adopt it
strategically.

12. My top tip: show them where you are at
Couch to 5k Marathon Olympian
Strategy No digital strategy Stand alone digital strategy Digital is part of your
organisational strategy
Culture • Risk averse
• Siloed
• Slow to act
• Low investment in digital
skills
• More collaboration
• Increasing appetite to
‘test, learn and improve’
• Becoming more agile
• Some investment in digital
skills
• High appetite for risk
• Collaborative
• Data driven
• Hiring for, coaching and
sharing digital skills
Leadership Digital skills not represented
among exec
Some digital skills on exec team Distributed
Board No digital trustees A digital trustee Everyone is a digital trustee
Success looks like… Vanity metrics Focus on engagement and
supporting organisational
strategy
Digital part of business goals

13. Time to pitch to your neighbour!
• Imagine the person next to you is on your leadership team.
• Tell them the top 3 reasons why your charity needs to invest in digital

14. How to get boards to invest in digital

15. How does your board compare?
• Almost three quarters (71%) of charities cite their board’s digital skills as low or having
room for improvement.
• Owning digital at board level is vital for sustainability and growth. A 2015 McKinsey study
found that 35% of boards at high performing organisations sponsored digital
programmes.

16. Digital is now part of charity governance

17. Help your board understand that if they invest in
digital it can lead to amazing opportunities.

18. Best ways to engage leaders

19. Tip no 1: people invest in people- and their
stories
E.g. Tell them how increased digital fundraising could help you fund more clinical
trials or mental health support groups, not just save money

20. Tip no 2: show them how your beneficiaries are
using digital
Use insights from personas, user journeys and user stories to show how the people you
support are using digital

21. Tip no 3: how are other organisations in the
same space using digital?
Appeal to your leadership team’s healthy sense of competition.

22. Tip no 4: break digital down into a series of
steps to make it manageable

23. Tip no 5: find a sweetspot
• Where do your needs and theirs meet?
• Use your own and anecdotal knowledge of how your leaders operate

24. Tip no 6: The ‘I’ll just leave this here.’
What can you do to get them to think it was their idea?

25. Let’s see what you’ve learned

26. Tell your neighbour how you’re going to make
the business case for digital differently

27. Thanks for listening
Do take a look at the resources on our site
Zoe Amar MCIM
Director, Zoe Amar Communications
zoe@zoeamar.com
077 644 98168
@zoeamar
www.zoeamar.com

28. Visit the CharityComms website
to view slides from past events,
see what events we have
coming up and to check out
what else we do:
www.charitycomms.org.uk

29. Digital tools and
channels: make the most
of your digital presence
19 October 2017
London
#charitydigital
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