Charity Digital Podcast

More than four in five charities see digital as more of a priority as a result of the pandemic, according to the 2022 Charity Digital Skills Report . Demand for digital services has increased, with 72% of charities actively working towards progressing with digital through tools, skills, infrastructure, and more. But what, exactly, does progress look like? The charity sector has grown significantly...

Web accessibility is increasingly a priority for the charity sector in efforts to reach more people and improve the lives of the people they serve. Around 1.3 billion people around the world experience significant disability, according to the World Health Organisation , representing one in six of the world’s population, many of whom are our beneficiaries, donors, volunteers, employees, leaders, an...

Content people are a nervous bunch. We write in darkness, surrounded by books, shrouded in mystery. Many of us picked our roles precisely because we did not have to speak, or because we could speak through writing. But, on occasion, writers and editors have good ideas. And, on even rarer occasions, we might want to share those ideas, with other people, in the actual real world. The Charity Digital...

More than four in five charities are concerned about the impacts of climate change, according to Charity Digital’s recent survey, Climate Change in the UK Charity Sector . Yet only 52% of charities say environmental sustainability features in their strategy. But what do these findings actually say about the charity sector? Charities may well be concerned about climate change, but are they taking m...

2023 has proved another challenging year for the charity sector. The Cost-of-Living crisis has provoked a Cost-of-Giving crisis, meaning many charities have been faced with less funds to deal with increased demand. But, as ever, we’ve seen charities prove their resilience with a host of novel fundraising solutions and creative forms of service delivery.  In 2024, charities will go even further. Th...

How you speak to your audience matters. From building trust, to being clear, showing respect and sensitivity, and differentiating your charity from others, it’s important that you get it right. Using the right tone of voice is about being intentional with your words in order to build the best relationships possible with service users, supporters, and other stakeholders. However, communications can...

Content is ever evolving, and it is now evolving at rapid speed. The content of today looks drastically different to the content of five years ago. And content in five years will look drastically different to the content of today. We want to discuss how it might look, the main changes that may take place, the core trends that are set to define the future of content, and so much more. Our guests di...

Three years after the beginning of a global pandemic, and now months into a cost-of-living crisis that shows little signs of slowing, the 2020s have been a tumultuous time for the charity sector. As we leap from crisis to crisis, charities face a rise in demand for their services, concerns over their ability to fundraise, and rising costs themselves in order to keep the lights on. For those workin...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already long impacted our lives, but recent developments in the technology have created a frenzy around its possibilities and risks. While some are excited about saving time and money with new AI technologies, others are sceptical and would much rather proceed with caution. The most common ways AI is used in 2023 are to respond to people via text or email, answer f...

There are lots of theories about life working in the charity sector. We’ve heard that it provides huge job satisfaction, that it is bureaucratic and frustrating, that it pays badly or well, that the benefits are few or many. Surveys suggest a sense of fulfilment, but also point to an unhealthy work culture, high expectations to go above and beyond, and a poor work-life balance. So we thought we’d...

Content bots are a form of generative AI that create content in seconds. ChatGPT, Jasper, and various other platforms generate content at overwhelming speed, averaging around 20-30 seconds to respond, offering complete articles, lists of facts, and even poems. The content bot can provide huge benefits to charities. But they also pose substantial risks, not just in terms of your organisation, but i...

We discuss how charities can use campaigns to tackle climate change, consider the role of digital technology, and reflect on what we have learnt from our own Climate Action Campaign

Tech has always played a paradoxical role in the history of climate change: as both problem and solution. Tech is one of the main drivers of greenhouse gas emissions and pushes us further into the climate crisis. Tech also helps us to limit our emissions and deal with the various impacts of the climate crisis. The choice rests on humans and our collective choices. We need to ensure that, now and i...

This podcast is sponsored by the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit organisation that powers the .ORG domain.  Looking after your cyber security is a constant process. Cyber threats grow more sophisticated, new tools to tackle them arrive on the scene, and charities must stay up-to-date in order to stay secure. In 2022, 30% of charities were able to identify a cyber attack that happene...

Reports of the death of written content have been greatly exaggerated. Blogs were the second most created form of content in 2022, according to research from HubSpot , while reports from Statista found that How To articles were the most popular content formats.  Whether it’s a blog, website home page, or a press release, writing is essential for communicating with your audiences, for establishing...

As a team, we are thinking a lot about climate action and how charities can get involved. Our 2023 Climate Action campaign aims to impart those findings to our audience. In this podcast, we think beyond why it’s important to talk about climate change to discussing how we and other charities can talk about climate change. We ask: how can charities talk about this complex issue in ways that are both...

Charity professionals are all too aware of the cost-of-living crisis. It has posed a dual threat to non-profit organisations: funds decrease as service demand increases. The crisis is the defining issue of 2023, so much so we’ve put it front and centre of our #BeMoreDigital Conference . This year, charities will need to work out how to tackle the challenges arising from the crisis. So in this podc...

User personas are an essential tool for charities. They are fictional representations or archetypes created to help you target and optimise various aspects of charity operations. Personas allow your charity to segment users, practice precise targeting for marketing campaigns, streamline volunteer management, improve donor recruitment and retention, and even boost efficiency around service delivery...

In 2020 alone, gaming platform Twitch raised $83M for charitable causes. While it might have started as a niche avenue, with only a few charities playing around on YouTube and Twitch, Gaming for Good has now become an enormous fundraising opportunity, one that also allows charities to reach a new – and generous – demographic.  This podcast will help charities navigate this fresh and exciting fundr...

It is not a legal requirement for UK charities to report on their environmental impact. Though sustainability is becoming an increasing concern to donors, beneficiaries, and investors, it can be difficult for charities to discuss their green credentials publicly and harder yet for them to know where to start building them.   In this podcast, Charity Digital’s host Laura Stanley (Content Writer) si...

There are now tech platforms to support almost every aspect of your charity’s work and operations. Each year, shiny new software and glittering platforms pop up, all promising to make your fundraising better, your services faster, and your marketing more targeted.  But with so much choice, how do you convince senior stakeholders that one thing is more valuable to your mission than another? It’s al...

Language: it may be easy to take it for granted but where would we be without it? You would not be reading this sentence, and I would not be writing it. Most importantly, you would not have the opportunity to hear the insights of our wonderful experts today – and then where would we be? In the work of charities, language can be a tool for many things, from building connections to tackling injustic...

Our latest podcast includes a discussion with people who have first-hand experience of using digital to achieve less with more. Justine Currell, Executive Director at Unseen, explains how smarter tech has allowed the charity to vastly maximise their services and save lives through swift action.

Over the past three years the sector has been required to adapt to changes like never before. Overnight charities plummeted into a virtual world of fundraising, ‘pivoting’ and ‘hybrid’ became part of everyday conversations, and service delivery depended on digital solutions. Now that we are well and truly out of the pandemic, fundraising is returning to a new normal.  In this podcast, our speakers...

COVID-19 drastically altered the landscape of fundraising. It undermined long-standing traditions, old assumptions, and ingrained expectations, and paved the way towards a brighter, more dynamic, and more digital future. Charities found stability in 2022, or at least some version of stability, but were immediately struck by new political, economic, and cultural challenges. In this podcast, Charity...