Charity people: “Get free help with almost any digital challenge by asking a question on Digital Candle“
Digital / techy people: volunteer your time!
I think this is a lovely idea, which I heard about thanks to my friend Joe Freeman with whom I worked for several years in the charity sector, so I signed up as an expert.
Charities, big or small, can ask a question on the online form and the people behind Digital Candle will match them to a techy-minded digital expert who may be able to help. Both sides are put in touch and, if it’s something that the techy person can help with, then they arrange a ~1hr telephone or Zoom chat and discuss options. The aim isn’t for the techy person to go in all guns blazing and swamp the charity person / people with all the answers but to listen and bounce ideas around.
See what other people say about it on Twitter: https://twitter.com/search?q=digitalcandle.org.uk&f=live
Typically charities might want help with digital marketing / social stuff and this tweet shows a screenshot of some typical skills the techy folk have (text based version below).
Text based version of the screenshot in the tweet above.
- Volunteer Management Systems
- Salesforce, CRM, WordPress, Drupal, Server administration, html/css, business analysis [text cuts off]
- Data strategy, data management, data science, service design
- digital strategy & transformation, social media marketing, social media advertising, content [text cuts off]
- UX Design
- Service design, User research, Online learning design
- Digital strategy and marketing, web content, UX, SEO
I don’t really know how to do any of that (except HTML and maybe some basic social media marketing – I can send a few tweets / blog posts / Facebook posts out about an event for example) but as you can see from the existence of this blog I can do some technically-minded things that might be useful. At the end of this post is a copy of my application to be an expert (which was successful despite being obviously considerably less techy than the average, or rather my techy skills are in a slightly different domain maybe).
My experience as a digital expert
I had a meeting online with two people from a charity (I won’t name the charity as I haven’t asked their permission) and one of the things we chatted about was coming up with some possible ways to get more photographs of the work they were doing (that they could use in marketing material or in annual reports etc) and then getting those photos uploaded so everyone in the charity could use them, and manage and tag them appropriately so they’re searchable.
One way might be to encourage everyone at the start of the event (at the ‘all hands’ housekeeping meeting at the start) to take photographs, and upload them or make them available to someone else who might do the uploading and tagging. Volunteers might not be aware that they can take photos in a public place (obviously being a bit more careful if children are present) and don’t need complicated model-release forms.
Flickr lets you batch edit photos so they call get the same name and tags at once and you can put the photos in an album to keep them all together (and make the photo or album private so it’s only available to staff).
I think it’s helpful to note that this example includes both a technical discussion (how to tag, where to store, what platform to use) as well as a social one (empowering and encouraging staff to take photos, and to take responsibility for uploading them, also agreeing on categories and tags etc). Almost any digital discussion can benefit from considering it as a sociotechnical thing – people and technology.
My application
“My expertise might be a bit niche – I am not a developer and can’t code but am pretty comfortable with the more technical side of Twitter (I suppose I’m a ‘power user’) and regularly blog on that and other topics https://howtodotechystuff.wordpress.com/index/sitemap/ and also share “Oooh I think people should know how to do *this*” on the hashtag #MildlyUsefulInfo https://twitter.com/search?q=%23MildlyUsefulInfo&f=live
If someone’s trying to find something on the internet, or find a deleted file or something like that I might be able to help. But in terms of ‘how best to reach Audience X with a well-timed Tweet and evaluate its effectiveness’ – not so much 🙂
I used to work at Diabetes UK as a Science Information Officer for 8 years, did a bit of tweeting from our medical conference, but don’t currently work in the charity sector (since 2012) so it’s probably changed a lot (!) since then.
Also, I don’t know if the one hour chat is intended to be self-contained – I may not know the answer to something but I’m very good at finding stuff out and assessing it. But if it’s a ‘how do I do X?’ with the hope of a complete answer within an hour then there are probably better ‘digital folk’ on your register.
This is the first I’ve heard of your service so I will go and have a wander around your site – I wonder if you have a list of frequently asked questions, which could be useful both in providing generic answers as well as scoping out what areas people are more likely to need help with. (I am thinking of the Restart Project which has repair parties to help people fix broken elecrical and electronic equipment – they make a note of all the devices and problems and can feed back to manufacturers that ‘this connector keeps breaking’).
Should this text be destined for an ‘About Jo’s expertise’ page, feel free to prune bits out as suits 🙂
What an excellent scheme!
Jo”
How to do various techy things 