2020 CharityComms Digital Conference

The pandemic changed everything. Digital initiatives that would have taken months (if not years) to come to fruition, have been dreamed up and rolled out almost overnight in some cases. Here at CharityComms, we’ve been blown-away by the real-world impact of this transformation. There has never been a more important time to adapt – as COVID-19 continues to increase demand on charities already facing huge financial pressures. In these punchy 15-minute talks, we’ll hear from digital leaders about how they’ve been responding and what they’ve learnt. There will be an opportunity to ask questions after each session.              

In late 2019 Save the Children UK initiated a new agile operating model. In fundraising and marketing this meant new multidisciplinary teams delivering all brand, fundraising and campaigning work. Of course, it would have been nice to have a year to embed the approach, but two months in and the UK went into lockdown. Despite the challenges, the agile mindset that can benefit organisations at any time has been especially impactful during this period of uncertainty. Team empowerment, speed of shifts, and a short-term planning cadence are a few of the topics Gemma will explore in this lightening talk.

Both our work and personal lives are now being lived out online – digital transformation is happening in real-time. In particular, exciting digital things have been happening at the Scouts. In their talk, Lara and Amy will share their transformation work and what they’ve learnt over the last 7 months – from rolling out systems to aid remote working to Scouting by Zoom with #TheGreatIndoors campaign.     

Winter is a time when missing loved ones plays on the mind and the focus of many charities turns to ‘in memory’ campaigns. Amelia and Hannah from St Barnabas Lincolnshire Hospice have put together an easy ten-step plan to turn an ‘in memory’ campaign entirely digital. They will talk through how they have given this year’s Light up a Life appeal a new lease of life and how their famous Torchlight Procession has gone virtual because of coronavirus restrictions.    

The pandemic has changed how charities fundraise and connect with their supporters, to meet changing human behaviour. At The Bike Project, agile planning allowed them not only to survive but thrive. With digital at the heart of their organisation, Jess and Muna will talk about how they brought to life a bespoke digital fundraising challenge to continue bringing in revenue, cement deeper engagement of the cause with supporters and set the future for how fundraising may look for the charity. 

Make yourself a cuppa. Maybe even dig out a fancy biscuit. Then head back to your desk for our breakout chats (starting at 11.30) where we’ll be exploring challenges and solutions for digital leaders at this time. As always, our events are packed with delegates who know their onions when it comes to digital. This is your opportunity to bring challenges to a small group for brainstorming.            

Parkinson’s UK began its transformation journey in 2016, which is why when the pandemic hit it was able to work through lockdown with minimal interruption. It’s culture, infrastructure and communication channels were already optimised for remote working and it was well placed to adapt service delivery and engagement models at pace. Julie will share some of the learnings from this journey – to help other digital leaders adapt at this critical time.  

Zoe Amar will take you through a process to review your digital strategy in the light of the fast-moving events and economic volatility of the pandemic. From understanding how your supporters’ needs and behaviours are changing, mapping what’s going on in the external environment and anticipating key challenges ahead, you’ll learn how to reset your strategy, plan for the next phase of the crisis and stay agile so that you can respond to the challenges and opportunities ahead. 

While digital inclusion was already an important issue before Covid-19, there’s no doubt that it has now become an essential one. At Citizens Online it sparked renewed enthusiasm for ‘thinking outside the box’ and exploring new solutions to familiar problems. The sense of emergency was often matched by adrenaline-fueled Zoom calls, new Trello boards and Google Docs determined to turn talk to action. “If not now, then when?!” was a familiar reflection. In his talk, Bryan will share the work that his organisation has been doing over the last eight months and offer his top tips to charities struggling to reach their offline audiences.   

In this talk, we’ll hear about how the YoungMinds website and social media went from just another comms channel to delivering a vital service and becoming a key part of their organisational strategy. Zoe will tell us why this was an important distinction to make and what it meant for their digital communications. We’ll also hear about how they gathered user insight as they transformed this service – testing and learning along the way. 

Even before the pandemic, everyone was talking about digital transformation. Now it’s much more urgent, but you have less time, resource and budget to make it happen. Using practical, real life examples, this talk gives you the inside track by busting some myths and uncovering costly mistakes to avoid. You’ll leave with clarity on what to do, what not to do and what to do more of.

We know some of you will want to continue learning today, while others will prefer to come back later. That’s why we’ve commissioned a range of pre-recorded presentations so that the rest of your day is up to you. Happy watching! 

Our recent survey showed 47% of organisations did not have a D&I strategy at the beginning of 2020. In this session, we will look at the latest trends in digital recruitment and offer advice on how organisations can develop recruitment processes that enable them to hire the best possible talent. Matt and Kate will talk through some of the key elements of our Inclusive Recruitment Guide, offering advice on how your organisation’s recruitment processes can be adapted to ensure that they are inclusive to all.              

Benevolent funds are a less-known part of the charity sector, and those that know these charities often think of them as old fashioned and technologically adverse. In this talk, Hannah will be showcasing examples of where both large and small grant-giving charities have rapidly adapted their services during lockdown to continue to help those that need urgent assistance. These examples (from a range of charities) will provide ideas for ways you can better assist your service users, no matter what the future holds.

The PBC Foundation is a small UK-based charity supporting people around the world with Primary Biliary Cholangitis – a rare, long-term, auto-immune disease. In his talk, Robert will share lessons from their digital journey showing how transformation on a limited budget has enabled them to better support people living with this condition. We’ll learn about how they built an interactive app to promote self-management; an event that was rolled out globally online; and their isolation-busting Facebook live social sessions which helped to combat loneliness during lockdown and beyond. Robert will offer his top tips for small charities looking to make the most of digital to increase impact.

In this panel discussion we’ll be exploring how we can ensure our content is diverse and inclusive. We have invited a panel of comms professionals to explore some of the following topics:

• Representation – telling authentic and nuanced stories and the difficulty with short form
• Inclusive and participatory storytelling – working with people with lived experience
• Reviewing language, formats and Images
• Making equality, diversity and inclusivity part of your comms strategy
• And much more!

Make yourself a cuppa. Maybe even dig out a fancy biscuit. Then head back to your desk for our breakout chats where we’ll be discussing diversity in comms. This is your opportunity to bring your thoughts, suggestions and challenges to a small group for brainstorming    

A Social Media crisis can really take its toll on your team’s mental health, especially during a global pandemic. In their talk, James and Lizzie will use real life examples of how the NSPCC has dealt with crises and difficult (often emotionally triggering) content to explore its impact on both organisation and individuals. We will hear how the team has bounced back from crisis looking at how they’ve changed culture and process to be ready in future. James will also touch upon how the pandemic restrictions have affected their crisis response and offer this advice for the steps your organisation can take to shore-up process and culture.  

In this session, we’ll be taking a look at what film work has been achieved in 2020 despite production limitations. Morever has focussed sharply on using user generated content for everything from: brand awareness, to fundraising films and even Christmas campaigns. Abi will share insights on execution and impact – focussing on reach, engagement and conversion stats. In the second part of the session we’ll look towards 2021 and ask: what’s next for UGC? With her top three predictions as to how filmmaking techniques will continue to evolve to circumvent circumstances and deliver bold creativity, together with value-for-money.

In his talk, Ash will share how Parkinson’s UK devised and evolved its decentralised content approach over the last two years. Ash will explain how they operationalised their strategy and how they broke it down into everyday tasks and processes to deliver and govern consistent content. This session will be great for any content creators and leads who would like to see a real example of how you turn a strategy into a methodology as Ash will offer a behind the scenes view that shows how a charity keeps churning out great, consistent, audience-first content.  

The pandemic isn’t just cutting us off from colleagues, it’s cutting us off from our supporters and service users too. We all know that great digital content and experiences are designed with a deep understanding of their target users at heart. But there’s a problem. We need better digital content and services more than ever, and yet we can’t research and build empathy with our users like we used to. Or can we?

In this talk we’ll look at how lockdown might just be the best thing to happen to your user research ever. Matt Haworth, tech for good expert, shares with you the tools and techniques they’re using to build empathy and understanding of a more diverse range of users than ever before whilst working on real charity projects. We’ll look at 5 takeaway tools you can use to do the same.

We know some of you will want to continue learning today, while others will prefer to come back later. That’s why we’ve commissioned a range of pre-recorded presentations so that the rest of your day is up to you. Happy watching! 

Developing propositions that help build lasting supporter relationships More onion strategist, Claire Donner, will be sharing insights and top tips on developing and live testing a supporter proposition. Claire will draw on recent experience working with Sustrans developing communications to recruit and build lasting relationships with a broad range of supporters.

At Pause we work alongside women in our Communications projects to make things better and amplify their voices. We know the women we work with are the experts in their experience.  With COVID-19 we’ve had to rethink how we involve and co-produce Communications content alongside women. Since March we’ve co-produced an animation, involved women in an influencing project and supported women to be on our podcast – all through digital means. In this session you’ll hear from a the team involved in the projects and we’ll talk about what we’ve learnt – what really worked and what really didn’t!

In these troubled times, our countryside can help restore our happiness, health, and wellbeing. In his talk, Sam will show how, despite the chaos of the world outside, CPRE, the countryside charity, engaged more people than ever before with its ‘Join the regeneration’ brand awareness campaign. By the end of the campaign it had generated over 9 million impressions and 1.7M video views across all channels. It worked with The Good Agency to create a 60 second film using only stock footage. They’ve still never met (in person) as a project team. It co-ordinated the whole campaign remotely, running social and display ads, and achieved something they didn’t think possible. Sam will give us the inside story along with his top tips.

There are still many myths surrounding hospices and in particular children’s hospices. These myths can influence how families, healthcare professionals and supporters feel. With a small budget, the Rainbows Hospice set out to develop a video to dispel these myths. In his talk, Mike will explore the production and distribution process including how they used a multi-channel approach involving media, PR, ambassadors and people with lived experience to create an award-winning video with zero budget.

The pandemic has given many of us the push we needed to explore how our events, whether small scale meetings and workshops or major conferences and festivals, can work online. Taking your event into a digital space opens up lots of new opportunities, but pulling off an incredible virtual event takes more than good technology. Faith and Chris will share with you the many lessons they’ve learned over the past eight months, talking through what it takes to plan and deliver a compelling virtual event, and how to ensure you achieve the same level of impact as you would expect to achieve from your ‘in person’ events programme. They’ll touch on how to plan your event to work for a new, online audience, how to market an online event effectively, technical guidance to support you in the practical delivery and how to retain a strong brand experience throughout your event, even when your only window to your audience is a computer screen.

What does the future of digital fundraising in the UK look like? Good question. In this session, we’ll explore key digital fundraising trends across different types of fundraising, understand what’s holding us back currently, identify opportunities for growth, and delve into ethical digital fundraising. We’ll also talk about what digital transformation might look like for organisations both big and small.

With more donations being made through your website than ever before, it’s important that those donation journeys are working hard for you. How can you maximise the conversions of RG and cash giving? How can you make the journey both engaging and relevant to the donor and yet effortless for them to donate? WPNC are considered the leading experts in digital donations and manage the online donation experiences for several of the top 50 charities. In this session, Vicky Reeves will share some of the insights on how to improve your online donor journeys from engagement-based giving, the UX tips that make a difference and the latest in payment technologies.

Make yourself a cuppa. Maybe even dig out a fancy biscuit. Then head back to your desk for our breakout chats (at 11:35). This is your opportunity to bring your thoughts, suggestions and challenges to a small group for brainstorming  

Social distancing restrictions have put huge pressures on charities to find new ways to fundraise and get communications out to the public. In this talk, the NSPCC team will share five things they learnt about pivoting their fundraising and comms online during the pandemic. This includes using agile project management, responding to audiences, improving delivery of virtual products, trying new channels and developing new governance to improve cross team working.

Want the lowdown on the digital fundraising trick that most charities are missing? Two words: Marketing Automations. Through case studies, benchmarking data and real examples, Keira Roth from Engaging Networks will take you on a journey that will inspire your supporters to give from day one. This hands-on session will give you takeaways you can implement immediately, as well as access to an online training course. Join this session for new skills and ideas to increase your online income. 

BookTrust’s Nicki Taylor and Sharon Jones will explain how social media has helped create one of their biggest annual fundraising activities – the Christmas Appeal.  They will share what they have learned along the way – from creating a big impact, to adapting and optimising messaging in response to their audience’s reaction, to maximising a limited budget – while keeping storytelling at the heart of the campaign.

In their talk, the team at Guide Dogs will explain how a traditional fundraising event was transformed in response to Covid and how the simplicity of the ask drove one of the highest levels of online celebrity support of any of their campaigns. They’ll share insights from the campaign as well as offering top tips for running virtual fundraising events.

We know some of you will want to continue learning today, while others will prefer to come back later. That’s why we’ve commissioned a range of pre-recorded presentations so that the rest of your day is up to you. Happy watching! 

As a small charity, it can be hard to prioritise digital, but since COVID-19, charities have started to learn just how key digital is to all aspects of growing a small charity. Faye and Heidi will talk through how prioritising digital has seen a growth in their social media by over 30%, raised over £140,000 as part of their #WalkforEndo campaign, and grown their support network to become the most diverse it has ever been.

Every penny counts, and never has that been truer than in today’s current climate. Which makes selecting the right digital fundraising partner more important than ever. In this engaging session we discuss the top five considerations to ensure you select the right partner. Including staying ahead of the ever-evolving digital landscape, looking at the commercial aspects, supporter engagement, collaboration and security.

In this session, we’ll talk about why and how you should be applying TV network strategy to your online fundraising content. Every TV network has a range of channels catering to specific audiences through relevant shows. You should be creating ‘channels’ of content for each of your charity objectives and then themed seasons of episodic content for each channel; using this approach, you can target your stakeholder groups with relevant stories and information, and drive home your fundraising message.