Charities need to think more like digital start-up companies
Howard Lake | 18 July 2014 | News
Charities are going to need to think more like start-up companies – coming up with lots of ideas to test – if they are to keep up with the speed of advances in digital technology.
Presenting a session on digital fundraising at the Institute of Fundraising national convention last week, Dan Martin, from digital agency WPN Chameleon, said charities did not have the resources to be on every digital platform.
“There is absolutely tonnes of stuff out there – so many platforms from social media to smart TVs – that we can’t catch up because it is going to fast and we should not even try – it is a losing battle,” he said. “More important is to deliver a great experience by sticking to the established platforms.”
Charities ought to match their digital media to their strengths in providing content – for example, if a charity has a lot of images, then Pinterest is a platform it should consider.
[quote align=”right” color=”#999999″]’We can’t catch up because it is going to fast and we should not even try'[/quote]
The key to keeping up with advances in digital technology was to think more like a start-up company, which develops and brings to market a lot of new ideas knowing that only a few will succeed. Martin said that charities were currently “generally less sophisticated” than early adopters, such as retailers, of new digital ideas.
“So thinking like an organisation such as Google in the future will be important for digital fundraisers. That means generating and taking to market ideas that are not yet perfect – sticking stuff out there to see if gets the take up.
“You’ll need to plan to fail with some of these, but as Mark Zuckerberg [founder of Facebook] said, it’s better to be done than perfect.”
Photo: start button by Naypong on Shutterstock.com
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.