The charity sector is “lagging behind” other sectors such as travel and retail when it comes to embracing new technology, according to Annie Dare, special advisor to Martha Lane Fox the digital champion at Race Online 2012.
Speaking to delegates at the Association for Interactive Media and Entertainment (AIME) Empowering the Charitable Sector with Interactive Technology II conference yesterday, she said that she wanted to “address the low digital capability within the charitable sector” as not enough charities were fundraising online.
She said that Race Online 2012 had made supporting those in the charitable sector more of a priority for the next year and that along with the Big Lottery Fund, NCVO, the Charity Technology Trust and AIME, it was pressing the Office for Civil Society.
One of the main challenges facing the sector, she said, was the levels of awareness, especially among small and medium-sized charities, about the support that is already out there such as IT4Communities, a charity which connects IT professionals with volunteer projects.
She said: “We need to join this stuff up and make it as easy as possible for the 50-year-old CEO to know how they can draw down the support they need to do that good work.”
She encouraged the sector to collaborate more and suggested that more people should sign up to IT4Communities, and engage with Navca and local community volunteering organisations to “actually share some of those skills and inspire some other charity chief executives about what technology can do for their business”.
Later in the day Marcus East, CIO of Comic Relief, also called for more collaboration within the sector and said that last year when Comic Relief told charities applying for grants to look at each other’s business plans and do peer reviews the overall quality of the applications improved as a result.
Dare also said that it was important to make technology a priority to attract talented professionals, and said: "We need to make it seem like the charity sector is absolutely the most enticing place for technologists to go and work."
