The Centre for Acceleration of Social Technology has been awarded £1.12m from the Big Lottery Fund for charities developing digital products to “transform their service provision”.
CAST will use this money over three years to help improve the sector’s understanding and use of digital, in order to improve engagement with communities.
The funding will finance two initiatives. The first of these is an intensive product ‘accelerator’ programme, which will work closely with 12 charities across the UK over three years to build new digital services.
The second initiative is a set of learning tools, templates and publications delivered on and offline that will offer wider sector support around digital development and help participating organisations to share their learning.
The accelerator model was previously tested through CAST’s FUSE programme – a one-year programme funded by Comic Relief, which merges lean and agile processes with the “scale, networks and reputation of established charities”.
Dan Sutch, co-founder and director of CAST, said: “The digital revolution isn’t about apps and websites; it’s about a fundamental change in the way we find information, people and support. At the heart of great digital development is a shift to user-led, test-driven design, working closely with people and their communities to create effective and empowering services. We urgently need to engage community organisations to join this revolution, and harness the potential of digital technology to achieve their mission.
“We’re hugely excited about helping the sector achieve this with Big Lottery Fund’s backing. This is not just about building digital capabilities, but also the skills, processes and tools that put people at the heart of development and services. The programmes we’re developing will enable non-profits to do this and to thrive in the digital age.”
CAST’s FUSE programme has overseen the creation of Breast Cancer Care’s new community support app, BECCA, and QuidsIn, Oxfam’s digital payment service for families on the cusp of food poverty.
CAST will begin inviting applications for its digital accelerator later this year, with the first two charities starting in 2017.
It said it will be looking for “voluntary and community sector organisations operating a tested non-digital model of intervention, which have shown an appetite for engaging in digital transformation, and federated organisations with local autonomous branches but have a national scale”.
More information is available here.
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