Building stronger
Creating healthier
communities.
Charities in Canada are tackling our biggest social problems, identifying and filling critical gaps in services, and are essential to healthy and vibrant communities.
The Problem
Charities are Falling Behind on Digital
But the world is changing quickly — thought leaders have estimated that at least 40% of all businesses will fold in the next 10 years without figuring out digital transformation. Donors, a new generation of workers, and program beneficiaries are now demanding charities keep up with the digital advancements of all other sectors.
Unfortunately, the resource constraints charities face have led to years of delaying investments into digital, which has left the sector in a serious deficit that has only been made worse in the pandemic. With this massive disruption, charities will not survive if they do not make significant progress in becoming digital organizations that embrace technology and a digital-first mindset.
The Opportunity for Charities
Creating Mission-Driven Change Faster.
Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — organizational processes, culture, and experiences to meet changing organizational requirements and stakeholders’ expectations. Salesforce calls this “a reimagining of business in the digital era” — illustrating that it is a holistic change that impacts the entire organization.
EMPOWERING CHANGE
Digital Transformation
We digitally transform by changing our people, processes, tools, and mindsets. What that means in the charitable sector is reimagining service delivery in the digital age. It’s about identifying all types of opportunities and threats that digital technology makes possible. These might include:
Understanding Your Impact
The emergence of public data sets and sharing of data between organizations creates new possibilities for collecting and analyzing data to better understand and even predict the needs of the individuals you serve.
Growing Fundraising Results
Digital platforms make it possible for you to better steward donors and grow the lifetime value of a donor through segmentation and personalization — providing them with the right information, at the right time, and in the way they want it.
Improving Service Delivery
Digital platforms present opportunities for process automation that can improve service delivery and save time and money.
Continuous Learning and Growth
Effectively managing data and making it accessible, and using digital tracking allows for experimentation and testing and the ability to measure impact all leading to continuous improvement.
While individuals or a department can achieve pieces of digital adoption, true digital transformation requires a cultural shift and buy-in across the organization.
So, What’s Holding Charities Back?
Digital transformation is hard — even Fortune 500 companies have low success rates. It’s even harder in the nonprofit sector as organizations consistently prioritize direct program work, all the while contending with understaffing, revenue declines, and growing demand for services.
The prioritization of digital transformation is well understood in the business world, where resources can be prioritized for the shift. Charities need the same supports as businesses — or more. But they are starting at a disadvantage that other sectors don’t have to contend with:
They cannot go into debt to fund changes that will increase impact, sustainability, and efficiency but will not necessarily increase revenue.
“Lack of funding is the #1 thing holding charities back.”
They cannot divert significant parts of their budgets – which have little slack and are often tightly tied to strict funding agreements – to invest in skills training and new technology.
54% of charities don’t have the funding to improve their digital capabilities.”
Charities battle the persistent myth that overhead and salaries comparable to those of for-profits are a sign of mismanagement The result? They lack the required skilled staff.
“2/3rds of charities rate their skills “fair” or “poor” for 12 of 15 key tools.”
It’s time to invest in charitable capacity.
What is needed is a roadmap for charities to get started on their digital transformation journey, funding to do the work, access to quality training resources, and connections to professionals who can support their process. Thanks to our Founding Supporter, Mastercard Changeworks™, we have started to make this change.
We envision a charitable sector with the people, processes, and technology required to rapidly innovate, measure impact, and tackle even more of society’s most pressing problems.
LIZZ BRYCE, SVP, COMMUNITY and STRATEGIC INITIATIVES, CANADAHELPS
LOOKING AHEAD
Creating a Program to Benefit All Canadian Charities
Since our inception, CanadaHelps has looked for innovative ways to support the sector and democratize access to critical tools and programs from within the sector. We’re designing our program with the ambitious goal of scaling it so it can be available to every charity in Canada.
The learnings from our pilot will help us evolve the program and begin to offer it to more charities, understand and offer more supports to program participants, bring on more partners and offer more resources, and engage and co-create with our colleagues in the sector to share insights, offer new engaging content, and make big change.
Digital transformation isn’t easy, but it is necessary. We’re committed to being here for the journey.