Our Charity Digital Innovation event series
At our latest breakfast event for Heads of Digital in the Charity Sector, we explored the barriers to digital innovation and how to overcome them.
We’ve spent the last twenty years helping nonprofits build digital products and services to reach new audiences, create new income streams, digitise off-line services and increase impact.
Many of these products sit in the ‘innovation space’, which means they can be hard to fund, procure and deliver.
Our ‘Charity Digital Innovation Series’ is about exploring these barriers to innovation and sharing success stories and practical tips about how charities can innovate more effectively.
And, where better to host it than at the top of the iconic Gherkin in London!
The venue was obviously great – could I formally request all future events are exclusively held in skyscrapers? (Seriously though, a venue where the food is actually good makes a big difference!)
Adam Haworth, British Lung Foundation
Our speakers
Particular thanks go to our our speakers:
- Kat Excell from MQ talked about the process they’re going through to build and test a new product to engage the public in mental health research (and how this could be a major future income generation tool for the charity).
- Lizzie Wrobel talked about how Sue Ryder procured and kicked-off an innovation project to build a pioneering new video counselling service, which will extend the reach of their bereavement support.
I found the event very useful, engaging, and informative, while not being overly explicit as these events tend to be sometimes. I walked away feeling like I’d gained a lot of knowledge from my peers, and I thought the interview set up was particularly interesting!
Nikhil Lakhani, MS Society
Our guests
We were joined by a roll call of Digital and Innovation Leaders from Barnardo’s, Action for Children, British Red Cross, Breast Cancer Now, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Children with Cancer UK and more.
Thanks again for the invite and for hosting such a great event. Really enjoyed it and wished we could have had a bit more time.
David J Cole, ONE Campaign
When’s the next one?
The next event in our Charity Digital Innovation Series, for Heads and Directors of Digital, will be in the New Year. The details will be shared before Christmas. Follow us on Twitter or email [email protected] to be included on our invite list.
Find out more about how charities can overcome barriers to digital innovation
Olly has written this great piece for Charity Comms, with actionable recommendations for challenging the common barriers such as procurement, funding and risk-aversion.
