How WCVA, Wales Co-operative centre and other partners are working together to develop the digital capabilities of the voluntary sector in Wales.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the need for digital delivery into sharp focus and over the past year there have been many successful examples of voluntary organisations shifting and adapting to deliver services online. This change has opened our eyes to possibilities but also the importance of organisations being equipped to develop their digital offering.
As a result of this, thanks to Welsh Government funding, WCVA have been working in partnership with Wales Co-operative and several other partners to deliver projects that will help the voluntary sector in Wales develop their digital capabilities.
This blog provides an overview of the exciting digital projects now in progress.
DIGITAL DISCOVERY
WCVA works hard to continuously identify the needs of our members and the wider sector to ensure that the right support is available. We know that digital has been identified as being one of the challenges facing the sector especially following the pandemic and Brexit, and so we want to learn more about what exactly what support is needed in this space.
ProMo-Cymru have been commissioned to complete research on how the third sector currently uses digital. This will help us to understand and define what support is needed by the sector to inform future programmes. This research follows on from the acceleration of digital work during the pandemic and will help us to make sure that the sector is able to further the digital progress made during this time.
ProMo-Cymru will be conducting interviews with voluntary organisations across Wales, as well as collecting information from an open survey.
DIGITAL SKILLS AND CAPABILITY
There have been so many success stories of digital innovation being used to deliver voluntary sector services since the beginning of the pandemic, and it is important that as a sector we now build on these changes. However, leading change can be challenging and so providing training to ensure that leaders feel confident in delivering digital change for their organisation is essential.
The School for Social Entrepreneurs and Zoe Amar Digital have been appointed to deliver a new training course for the voluntary sector in Wales. The Digital Leaders course will help participants to develop their confidence in driving digital change by defining how digital fits into their organisational strategy and how to identify risks and opportunities in this space.
Through the training, participants will also get the opportunity to learn from one another, building relationships between leaders working in the voluntary sector here in Wales.
To learn more about this project, follow this link.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
In addition to the above, we are also working with Third Sector Lab to deliver hands on support to a number of voluntary organisations who have specific digital projects they need practical guidance on.
The Digital Potential Wales programme will empower the successful applicants from charities, non-profits and social enterprises to put their service users first and get the most out of digital.
The programme will foster a collaborative environment where participants are guided on how to develop their website so that it better meets users’ needs, how to deliver existing services through digital platforms and how to integrate internal systems to improve efficiency.
The six-week project is now underway, and we look forward to sharing the results.
LEARN MORE
If you want to learn more about how your organisation can develop digitally, be sure to take a look at the new digital toolkit.
Digital development is one of the key areas of focus for WCVA and Wales Co-operative centre and we will be providing updates on the above projects later this year. In the meantime, if you would like to share any examples of digital innovation or provide insight on digital challenges, please get in touch.