Three-quarters of UK charities are failing to adapt to digital

Charities in the UK are failing to adopt digital agendas in their organisations.

According to research from Eduserv, 75% of charities have no IT strategy in place to support digital transformation, which puts at risk their ability to raise funds, deliver new services and improve efficiency.

The research comes from the Delivering Digital Transformation in UK Charities report, which surveyed 100 heads of digital and IT at UK charities. The research also found a lack of digital literacy in 66% of UK charities.

UK charities are also facing a divide between IT and digital. The report stated 52% of charities lack a clear definition of the responsibilities between the IT and digital teams.

Some 71% of digital teams said they cannot do their job without a good relationship with IT, yet 57% described their relationship with IT as average or poor.

The ability of IT and digital teams to collaborate effectively will be critical to the health of their organisations in the future

John Simcock, Eduserv

“The key learning from this is that stakeholders from across the organisation need to be involved in key decisions driving digital," said Neil Gunn, digital strategy adviser at WWF – a major advocate of the "digital first" approach in the charity sector. 

"As digital teams we need to work together collaboratively with other departments and functions to make digital transformation a reality,” he added.

The survey also found that digital teams were concerned that an inability to deliver digital transformation would affect fundraising (73%), reputation (71%) and the ability to deliver services (59%).

The research found 56% of organisations planned to address the digital/IT divide in the coming year.

“Even with these changes there is a long way to go," said John Simcock, charities director at Eduserv. "IT and digital teams must recognise that their ability to collaborate effectively will be critical to the health of their organisations in the future.”