Social sector funders need to adapt for technology innovation

Current funding models are strangling charities’ ability to develop digital products & services

You’re on a treasure hunt. You know the loot is buried at the North Pole but you’re still a hundred miles away. Your guide will go no further in the freezing tundra. His hands emerge shaking from inside his parka, a map in his left palm and a compass in his right. Since your guide must find his way home you can take only one. Which do you choose?

Developing digital tools, products and services is a lot like navigating in the arctic circle. The constantly changing landscape is difficult to survey and navigation errors can be extremely costly. You won’t lose a leg to frostbite but taking a wrong turn can mean turning back empty handed with nothing to show for your efforts.

Maps are broken

The technology sector kissed goodbye to waterfall project management years ago. This type of sequential forward planning is the equivalent of a map in the artic. Plan everything out and then hope nothing changes so the map remains accurate.

Since we’re unable to predict the future, incomplete information is assured, with inaccurate plans the consequence. Yet this approach dominates the social sector and is reinforced by funding organisations.

Choose the compass

Ambitious but cash-strapped tech startups face the dual challenge of a chaotic operating environment and meagre resources — much like artic adventurers. They must learn and adapt quickly or die.

They know that if their maps aren’t already out of date, they soon will be. So they’ve devised a safer, more efficient way of reaching their destination with imperfect information.

Technology startups learn through iterative experimentation. They cycle repeatedly through short bursts of planning, building, measuring results and adjusting course. Plan. Move. Measure. Repeat.

This is like wandering the tundra armed with a compass. It’s almost impossible to walk in a straight line but you must keep moving to survive. The more often you glance at the needle, the shorter your path to the north pole. The approach is known as agile project management.

Agile project management

Digital teams adopting agile methods ask ‘What is the smallest increment of our product/service/platform that we can build in order to learn something?’

While less comforting that having a detailed route plotted there are big benefits to working agile over waterfall (or compass over map):

Social organisations need these risk and cost-reducing methods desperately but outdated funding and budgeting models are preventing their adoption.

Funders must adapt

Funders must recognise that it’s impossible for charities and NGOs to plan technology projects precisely and accurately before beginning them.

With relatively small sums (£5–20k), the right technical help and the right approach, social organisations can:

Some grant-makers like Comic Relief and the Nominet Trust understand the value of chunking investments and a lean approach, but can’t always provide the capital to take projects to scale. Institutional funders have the firepower but haven’t adapted their application, selection and measurement methods to suit these technology endeavours.

Social problem solvers are used to working with constraints and are quick to seize opportunities. It won’t be long before they realise the compass is superior and adopt the working methods of tech startups.

However as their guides in inhospitable terrain, it’s up to funders to nudge intrepid social organisations toward an approach that will keep them safe and maximise the likelihood they reach their destinations.

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