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Large charities look to expand IT collaboration

IT | Gareth Jones | 10 Feb 2010

Several household-name charities are talking about sharing IT functions and even staff as part of a new service offered by the Charities Consortium IT Directors Group.

Following discussions on the topic at CCitDG’s December meeting and the offer of assistance from Socitm Consultancy, VSO strategy leader Stuart McSkimming (pictured) organised a workshop which was attended by representatives of ActionAid, Action for Children, British Red Cross, Christian Aid, RNIB, RSPB, Save the Children UK, V&A Museum and WaterAid.

The initiative would be an extension of a shared out-of-hours helpdesk scheme that has been running successfully for the past three years by VSO, British Red Cross, ActionAid, WaterAid and Christian Aid.

McSkimming said: “Now that we’ve made it work for overnight helpdesk services, we’re saying ‘let’s expand this out to other services and look at which other charities we could bring into the initiative’.”

He added that in order for any extension to be viable, it would need a strong governance model with leadership from CCitDG and would have to be funded by the umbrella body’s members.

CCitDG chair Sarah Winmill, who was present at the workshop, will now report back to the board on the proposal.

Better prices

Collaboration on procurement could involve creating a register of what software member charities are using, and buying items collectively to ensure better prices and contracts.

In terms of staff, McSkimming said there was a need for a central broker to share skills.

“Between the charities we have quite a lot of knowledgeable staff and also the freedom to share some of them, but don’t have the process to do so.

“So say we have a really good project manager in VSO, and Save the Children are trying to get a bit of work done but don’t have that, we are looking at putting in place a brokering service so that we could link those two charities together.”

He added that disaster recovery is another area where there is appetite for collaboration, while the original group of charities is already looking at sharing videoconferencing technology.

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