For many non-profits the cost and fear of digital is a big barrier. This often stems from past negative experiences and means charities often shy away from exploring digital options. However through technology, charities could achieve their goals in a more effective and cost-efficient manner.

The CAST Digital Fellowship is a comprehensive learning programme for nonprofit leaders. Senior staff develop a better understanding and use of tech and digital innovation. This enables them to become leaders of their organisation’s – and the sector’s – digital development.

The Workshop

We led a one day workshop with groups from the different organisations. To help us understand the challenges they were facing, the groups spanned all levels of experience within the charity. We led the participants through a set of exercises designed to help them:

• Discover the problems faced by both their service users and their staff.
• Identify the challenge that would be most suited to tackling through a digital approach.
• Explore varied solutions to the problem
• Assess the pros and cons of each solution and select one to be taken forward for further design and development

We then assisted the group to select the person that would be most suitable to manage the development phase. We trained this person in agile methodologies, Github and product ownership.

The Development

In collaboration with the product owner we took the idea from the workshop and created a prototype. This prototype was then taken out and tested with users to gauge its viability and the extent to which it solved the initial problem.

The Outcome

Following the work with CAST we worked with some of the organisations such as LCN and Bluecross, to take the prototypes forward, and transform them into fully working products ready for release into the world.