Laura Dawson, chair of Charity IT Leaders has called for better communication between the finance, fundraising and IT functions.
Speaking at the organisation’s relaunch party last night she said that one of the problems for most organisations at an individual and at a sector level is that: “Fundraising doesn’t talk to IT, IT doesn’t talk to finance and nobody talks to HR.”
She hopes to build stronger links with sector bodies such as the Charity Finance Group (CFG) and the Institute of Fundraising, and said: “We need to be the go-to people for those groups for IT issues.”
The networking group for heads of IT decided to change its name from the Charity Consortium IT Directors Group to Charity IT leaders at its annual conference last year. It revealed its new logo along with plans to reconstitute as a charity incorporated organisation (CIO) earlier this month.
Dawson added that she wanted to get more people coming to the group and added that: “Encourage people below us to be the IT leaders of the future.”
CEOs must lead on digital strategy
Meanwhile a report out today urges chief executives to play an active role in their organisation’s digital strategy and communicate more with their digital teams.
Digital media agency Cogapp compiled the report by surveying 100 digital managers in charities and six interviews with charity chief executives.
More than half the digital managers thought their senior management team has a poor understanding of digital. Three quarters of those surveyed said that their organisation had a digital strategy but 65 per cent said this was not monitored by the senior leadership team.
The six main recommendations are:
- Own and drive your charities digital ambition – the best digital projects are those with clear leadership from the top.
- Maintain a strong chain of command to your head of digital - often they are two or three steps removed from the CEO.
- Keep the position of digital in your organisation under review – doesn’t ‘belong’ to any one area, digital managers have found themselves reporting to IT, marketing, press or fundraising departments in the past but most now fall under the communications umbrella.
- Operationalise digital – consider how services for beneficiaries could be provided digitally or whether new platforms could be developed.
- Invest in digital as infrastructure not marketing – websites are as important as offices and ICT infrastructure.
- Make your senior team more digitally literate – encourage your CEO to tweet.
The full report can be downloaded here.
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