Digital transformation
for charities

A volunteer coordinator updates three spreadsheets after every event. A fundraiser checks several systems to understand a supporter’s history. A service manager spends the end of each month assembling figures for a report.

Each task may be manageable on its own. Together, they can take hours away from fundraising, supporting people and delivering the charity’s work.

Digital transformation for charities means improving how the organisation operates and serves people through better use of technology, information and processes. It can start with a small change: a clearer booking process, connected records or a volunteer rota that people can actually keep up to date.

The goal is to make the work easier and the service better. This guide explains how to choose a useful starting point, work within a limited budget and introduce changes your team can sustain. The examples and figures are illustrative, not client results.

Start with the pressure on your team

Before comparing software, ask staff and volunteers which recurring tasks cause the most difficulty.

Where do they copy information between systems? What gets missed when someone is away? Which reports take days to prepare? Where do supporters or service users need to contact the charity because the process is unclear?

Walk through recent examples. A spreadsheet may contain an important process that nobody has documented. An apparently unnecessary phone call may be how a staff member identifies someone who needs extra support.

Write down the outcome you want to improve. For example:

We want volunteers to see available shifts and confirm their availability without the coordinator exchanging individual messages with everyone.

This is a useful project brief because it identifies a task, a group of people and a source of work. It leaves room to assess whether existing tools can solve the problem.

Look across the charity’s connected activities

A charity may interact with the same person as a donor, volunteer and event attendee. Separate tools can make that relationship difficult to understand. Equally, some information should remain restricted to the team delivering a particular service.

Aim for appropriate connections and clear ownership of information. A single system is useful only if it meets the needs of the people using it.

Choose one area to improve first. Trying to replace every system can stretch the time available for training, data preparation and support.

Set priorities against your mission and capacity

The most visible technology project is not always the most useful one. A new app may attract attention while a modest change to administration gives the team more time to help people.

Assess each potential project against five questions:

1. Who benefits? Identify the staff, volunteers, supporters or service users affected.
2. What improves? Specify time saved, fewer errors, better access or a more reliable service.
3. How often does the problem occur? Use recent records rather than relying only on recollection.
4. What does the change require? Include implementation effort and ongoing responsibility.
5. Can you test it on a manageable scale? Choose a pilot with a clear owner and review point.

Some needs may take precedence because the existing process is unsafe or unreliable. For discretionary improvements, favour a project where you can observe the benefit and support the change with the people available.

NCVO’s digital leadership and skills guidance covers both leadership involvement and barriers for staff and volunteers. Use that wider perspective when planning the work: software selection is only one part of the project.

Work through a small, realistic example

Imagine a community charity that runs weekly activities, recruits volunteers and holds occasional fundraising events. Its coordinator uses a shared inbox and several spreadsheets. When a volunteer cancels, the coordinator sends messages individually to find cover.

The charity decides to pilot a clearer rota process for one activity.

The pilot does not need to replace the charity’s donation platform or rebuild its website. It needs to work for the coordinator and the volunteers taking part.

Test an ordinary week and a difficult one. Can a replacement coordinator understand the rota? What happens when someone cannot log in, two people request the last place or a session is cancelled?

Use the answers to improve the process before adding more activities.

Choose tools your charity can sustain

Start by checking what your current software can already do. An unused feature, a better configuration or a simple integration may solve the problem.

When considering new software, ask the supplier to demonstrate your actual tasks. For the rota example, watch someone create a shift, assign a volunteer, record a cancellation and export the records. A broad feature list is less useful than seeing the complete process.

Compare the full commitment:

• Subscription charges, transaction fees and limits as usage grows.
• Setup, data cleaning and migration work.
• Training for staff and occasional volunteers.
• Support availability and what happens when a key administrator leaves.
• Connections to the tools you intend to keep.
• Your ability to export usable records and attachments.

Ask whether charity discounts are available, what evidence is required and how renewal pricing works. Treat a free licence as one part of the cost assessment; someone still needs time to manage the system.

Custom software can make sense when a distinctive service cannot be supported adequately by existing products. Define who will maintain it and how that work will be funded. For routine needs, configure or connect established tools where they fit well.

Connect information without opening everything to everyone

Begin by agreeing where each important record belongs. Your supporter database may hold contact details and communication preferences, while your payment system records transactions and your finance system records accounting entries.

Decide how updates travel between them and who resolves disagreements. Avoid matching people solely by name, and review uncertain duplicates before merging them.

Access should reflect the task. A volunteer checking event arrivals may need a registration list but no access to donation history. Service delivery notes may require a separate, restricted environment.

Before migration, identify the records you actually need to move. Test a sample, check the result with the people who use it and agree how corrections will be handled. Include account access, backups and recovery in the operational plan, particularly where continuity depends on one person.

These are practical design decisions to make early. Connecting systems should reduce repeated work while preserving the boundaries that people expect around their information.

Make adoption part of the project

Ask a few staff and volunteers to try realistic tasks before rollout. Include occasional users and people who are less confident with technology. Their difficulties often reveal where the process needs clearer language, fewer steps or better support.

Training should focus on the tasks each person needs to complete. A volunteer may only need to confirm availability and report a change. An administrator needs to understand permissions, corrections and exceptions.

Give people:

• A short explanation of why the process is changing.
• Instructions for their own tasks.
• A named person or channel for help.
• A clear date when the new process becomes the normal way of working.

Avoid leaving two competing records in use indefinitely. If you need a transition period, explain which record is authoritative and who reconciles differences.

Make sure knowledge is shared. Document essential administration and assign a backup owner so the system remains usable when a staff member or volunteer moves on.

Keep services accessible beyond the screen

Digital improvements should account for how people actually access your charity. Someone may share a device, have limited mobile data, use assistive technology or prefer to speak to a person.

Test forms and messages with the intended audience. Use clear language, request only information needed for the task and make confirmation easy to understand.

Where a phone or in-person route is needed, connect it to the same underlying process. A staff member should be able to record a booking or request on someone’s behalf without maintaining a separate shadow list.

Measure whether people complete the task and receive the service. The percentage using an online form is only part of that picture.

Measure benefits in a way trustees can assess

Agree the starting position before the pilot. Record the time spent on the task, common errors and the experience of the people involved.

For the volunteer rota, an illustrative target might be to reduce coordination from four hours to two hours each week while maintaining shift coverage. That would release around eight hours over four weeks if achieved. It is a planning assumption, not a promised result or an automatic cash saving.

Combine quantitative measures with feedback. The GOV.UK guidance on measuring service success recommends drawing on several sources, including user research and operating costs, rather than relying on digital analytics alone.

Link the results back to the mission. If time is released, explain how it will be used. If access improves, show who can now complete the process more easily. A concise account of those changes is more useful than a dashboard full of activity counts.

Build a practical first roadmap

Your initial plan can fit on one page: the problem, intended benefit, pilot scope, owner, budget, support arrangements and review date.

First, understand the current process and establish a baseline. Next, test the proposed approach with a small group. Then run a supported pilot and review the evidence before expanding it.

Allow time for the less visible work: preparing records, writing instructions and helping people through their first attempts. A technically complete system still needs a workable introduction.

For a broader approach to assessing processes and choosing between configuration, integration and custom software, read Digital transformation: start with your workflows.