Digital trustees: post-event reflections
Written by Alina Kadyrova
After a long break, Tech for Good Live was back on July 22 with an online meetup on Digital Trustees (you can find the recording of the event on Youtube here). We invited three people with different backgrounds to talk about their experiences of being a digital trustee, recruiting one or facilitating this process:
A digital trustee: Pauline Roche is a digital trustee West Midlands Open Data Forum and regional charitable funders group WM Funders Network;
Chief Executive of a charity that recruited a digital trustee: Michelle Hill, Chief Executive of TLC: Talk, Listen, Change, which delivers a range of integrated support aimed at safe, healthy and happy relationships;
CEO of an agency that facilitates the work of charities and recruitment of digital trustees: Janet Thorne, the CEO of Reach Volunteering. Reach connects up people who want to volunteer their skills with the charities which need them.
Who are digital trustees anyway? Quick googling suggested that a trustee in a charity is responsible for overseeing a charity’s development strategy and management of financial and non-financial assets. The work of trustees (also so-called board members, governors, councillors or directors) is often voluntary, but charities depend on it as a crucial source of independent advice and control.
Below is the summary of what our guests talked about: who are digital trustees and who they are not, what they are doing, how to recruit one or become one.
Who are digital trustees?
Digital trustees are user-centred, outcome-focused, and data-driven people who are appointed to work on a charity’s digital skills and strategy. They work alongside other board members to see how digital can help to achieve charity’s strategy and what risks and opportunities it presents.
Who digital trustees are not
A digital trustee should not be the digital trustee who is the only person responsible for digital skills and activities in a charity. A digital trustee should work in collaboration with other members of the board. Hiring a digital trustee is not equal to hiring a digital team to deliver a digital project – a trustee overlooks and advises, but not implements a new project.
Why does a charity need a digital trustee?
Charities need digital trustees to broaden the skill set of their boards and become more flexible in adjusting their operation to the changes like the COVID crisis. Many charities, however, lack the digital skills and digital strategies: as 2020 Charity Digital Skills Report showed, half of the interviewed charities had no digital strategy at all, and about two-thirds said that their board’s digital skills have a room for improvement. As Michelle Hill explained, these two reasons - an expectation of the digital to be an important part of charity’s development and lack of digital skills among the board members was the primary motivation to hire a digital trustee to join the board of TLC: Talk, Listen, Change. Adding digital trustees to the board let the charity increase the diversity of the board and representation of the charity’s mission and vision.
Janet suggested two useful guidelines for charities that helps to determine if they need a digital trustee - Do I need a digital trustee checklist and Trustee digital checklist.
What does the work involve and how much time does it take?
As Pauline explained, digital trustee work takes from 2-3 days a months to several days per year. The tasks she often deals with include all things digital: organising and chairing online events, identifying and contacting speakers, engaging with the followers, advising, connecting different actors.
How to recruit digital trustee?
Before putting an advert for a digital trustee, a charity should clarify a - desired skill set and experience, b - the expected strategic role of a future trustee, c - time commitment. A charity could also think about how different trustees will work together. For example, TLC: Talk, Listen, Change decided to use digital collaboration and co-creation tools for trustees to share news and information.
Charities can search for digital trustees through the posts on social media, LinkedIn, Reach, charity groups and related communities like Tech for Good Live. There is always an option of approaching people directly!
How to become one
One of the most important things in becoming a digital trustee is having an interest in charity’s work. Becoming a digital trustee will require patience, the ability to listen and ask questions and good networking skills. It is good to remember that charities are usually looking at the whole profile of a person’s skills and how they can contribute to the board depending on what charity is looking for.
Janet gave a list of things to consider before applying for a digital trustee role:
What do you want to do?
What does the charity need from a digital trustee?
Size, the structure of the organisation
What transferable skills do you have?
How much time have you got?
How often are you expected to attend the meetings?
Who are the board?
How long is the post?
How healthy are the finances?
Where to find digital trustees positions: Reach, CharityJob, ACEVO, and approaching charities.
Benefits
Listening to all the expectations from a digital trustee, one might ask - is it even worth it? What can you get from being a digital trustee? From the personal and professional experience of our speakers, the role of a digital trustee comes with a privilege and joy of making a difference in the work of charities and subsequently, communities. The benefits of having digital trustee on the board are plenty: more active engagement between the board and organisation and online engagement on Twitter, also being able to easily adjust to the new normal of remote communication and remote delivery of services, which extended the coverage of charity’s work.
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It was good to be back! The event was good fun and very educational, at least for me. We hope that some of our community members will decide to become a digital trustee in a local charity - if so, get in touch and we’d be happy to hear from you.