Digital skills and understanding are essential for charities. Whether it’s the best way to store beneficiary information or keep up to date with digital marketing best practices, digital plays an important role in every organization’s strategy.

Therefore, it is critical to have digital skills and understanding at board level for continued buy-in and support.

Why You Need a Digital Trustee

No matter where your charity is in its digitization journey, it likely needs some digital expertise at the board level. You may have a specific project coming up that would benefit from additional digital trustee support, such as designing and developing a new website, or developing a new digital marketing channel. Or you may need support at a more strategic level across all areas of digital. This may include developing a digital strategy and ensuring that digital is integrated into the organizational strategy.

As digital becomes an important part of every charity, trustees with specific digital experience can help keep pace with the rapid changes in the sector. Digital trustees will gain confidence in using more agile development methods can also bring That means the confidence and conviction to try new things using a more rapid testing and learning approach.

With the trust and support of the board of directors, a wider team of staff can easily test new ideas. One of the board’s key roles is to manage charity risk, but adopting a more open and agile approach can help charities advance new ideas and projects.

Skills a digital trustee can bring to the board

Digital skills come in all shapes and sizes. Below we look at some areas where digital trustees can help.

digital strategy

Whether you’re looking to develop a standalone digital or digital marketing strategy, or incorporate digital into your overall strategy, trustees with these skills are essential.

They can help you formulate strategies, fill in gaps, and determine what kinds of strategies work best for you right now.

digital communication

Communication is an essential area for all charities. Whether internal or external communication, digital will be key.

From help with general social media skills, to knowledge and experience in hiring the right digital agency, or help in determining the best newsletter tool for your charity.

While there are many specific experiences and skills in digital communications that are useful for specific channels and such, most digital marketing fiduciaries can offer more general support.

Agile project management

If you are looking to develop a more agile approach within your organization, a trustee with experience in this area will help the wider organization understand the benefits and advocate a more “test and learn” approach to your work. It really helps to become

digital design

If you are designing a new website or digital service, outsourced digital design support can help add a new perspective to designs developed by external agencies.

digital security

Experience in understanding digital security is essential to the safety of your organization and its beneficiaries. It also helps us ensure that we follow important guidelines regarding data protection. These areas are easy to forget, but support, knowledge, and reminders about what to do are essential.

digital fundraiser

In many cases, this is important to most charities, and a concrete experience of fundraising via digital can be of great benefit to your charity.

How to Find the Right Digital Trustee

Some of your existing trustees may be proficient in certain areas of digital that you may not be aware of. Here’s a quick guide on how to find a suitable trustee.

what skills do you need

Start by thinking about the skills you think you need. Take a look at the key areas above to see which areas are prioritized for your organization. Looking to grow your social media, build a digital fundraiser, or develop a better CRM system?

Make a list of the various skills you think you’ll need and give this to your trustee to see if there’s anything else they might add.

skills you already have

Once you have a complete list of skills you may need, it’s worth doing a quick digital skills audit across your staff and council. Maybe you already had some of the necessary experience and didn’t realize it. Next, you need to shorten your recruiting list.

fill the skill gap

Once you have a clear list of skills, you can start recruiting. You can’t always find someone with all the skills you need, but a digital person can have knowledge in many different key areas, even if he specializes in just one.

You can facilitate the trustee role on various job sites. Reach Volunteering also allows you to search for people looking for a digital trustee role.