The Charity Digital Skills report started in 2017 and has since become the annual barometer of digital skills, attitudes and support needs across the sector. The Charity Digital Skills 2023 report marks three years since the sector came into isolation, triggering a wave of teleworking, digital service provision and online fundraising. Between 2020 and 2021, there were positive changes in the way charities used digital technology and learned about the impact that the strategy, leadership, skills and trustees have on digital progress.
The other major change in 2023 was the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Google Bard and Microsoft co-pilot. Since the spring survey was closed, there has been an explosion of interest in AI, with many charitable organisations asking what this could mean for them, how they could use these tools and whether they should use them.
In summary, the report aims to:
- Follow the evolution of the digital priorities of charities after the lockdown and during the cost of living crisis.
- Understanding the main trends in the evolution of digital use by charitable organisations.
- Identify the support and funding that charities need to advance in the digital field, including barriers faced by marginalised groups, so that we can advocate for change.
- The extent to which charitable organisations have skills gaps and what they need to increase their digital knowledge and trust in the digital environment.
Highlights of the report:
- The biggest challenge faced by more than half (57 %) is the need to refine staff and volunteers. This is closely followed by 41 % of respondents who say they are busy in fire-fighting and lack the ability to prioritise digital issues.
- 42 % also use digital technology to explore ways to work more efficiently in the context of the cost of living crisis.
- The largest skills gap for this group is the learning of users on websites (61 % of them are poor) and keeping up to date with digital trends (e.g. Tik Tok or ChatGPT), with 56 % saying they are poor.
- Other major skills gaps include the use of data to inform decision-making and the use of digital tools for monitoring and evaluation, the use of SEO (Optimisation of the search engine), half stating that they are weak in this respect (55 % in both cases).
- Almost half (47 %) say that CRMs represent a significant challenge for their organisation (compared to 54 % of all responses)