Thank you to those who filled out our recent annual survey sent to everyone attending training or accessing support over the past year. With 124 completions, we were overwhelmed with positive and constructive feedback, and are sharing some headline findings below.
Your outcomes
It was great to find out you were achieving tangible organisational outcomes as a result of attending our training or accessing one to one support. The top five were:
- Develop staff/volunteer digital skills
- Spend less time on administrative tasks
- Collect better data from our community
- Find useful insights from our internal data
- Improve our online presence (website/social media)
Our approach
The way we deliver our services is important to us and key to maximising our impact supporting small charities and community groups. So it’s a testament to our team that feedback about your interactions with us did mirror our collectively agreed approach to our work. We are: Relationship-centred; Capability-minded; Committed to value; Enthusiastically curious and Community-spirited.
Here's just a few quotes illustrating these approaches brilliantly!
Thank you for your remarkable work helping small charities and BAME communities access valuable learning and training opportunities. Your efforts remove barriers created by limited budgets and knowledge, making these essential resources accessible to organisations and communities that would otherwise go without.
You are friendly, approachable and knowledgeable. I never feel stupid for not knowing things. You are patient and fun without it being contrived. I like the shorter sessions also, they are easier to fit into the day.
I find all the team approachable, helpful, thoughtful and inclusive. You are keen to try new things and showcase new ways of working.
Our improvements
Always eager to listen and adapt to improve our services, the three things we learned that we need to get better at were:
- Not to overpromise - be more realistic regarding the scope of support we can provide
- Communicate more when next steps might take longer than envisaged
- Respond to tech support tickets in a more timely fashion
It's hard when we have finite resources but want to help everyone! But we do understand that's not always helpful for you, so being clearer about what we can realistically do and when, is important. Sometimes we may need to just say we can't help right now.
Your priorities
Respondents identified a wide range of digital, data and tech priorities for the year ahead which will inform our service development plans and resourcing going forwards. The top five number one priorities were:
- Better use of data - including impact reporting and data visualisation
- AI - both using it and following best practice whilst using it
- Improving websites
- Developing or starting to use a CRM (or some kind of database)
- Upgrading devices, along with improving security of systems
With social media a close sixth!
What's next?
There's still more insights to draw from your responses and we'll follow up proactively where specific support was mentioned.
With some funding tapering or coming to an end for us this year, the survey feedback will really help us find funding and generate income to continue our work at current levels. We'll also be looking for partners to collaborate with and identifying other relevant support we can signpost to where appropriate or capacity dictates.
In the meantime, find out more about our current programmes, training and resources!