Update from November 2020

Welcome to the end of November 2020 issue of Digital WM News and our twelfth issue of 2020.


We continue to help you and your organisation/community-led group to increase your digital skills and knowledge in 2020.


In this issue we include:

• News including MWIT21 award nominations still open, West Midlands Open Data Forum National Data Strategy consultation, Tech Women 100 award for Kari Lawler, WM Funders new trustees and ambassador, Data4Good Festival 2021, Govt publishes grants data to 360 Giving standard, Voice4Change launch charity magazine for minoritised communities, Data Collective launched
•  
• Events and Training incl Digital safeguarding, Small Charities Data Hub launch, December Digishift, Tribute to John Popham
•  
• People: Kiran Kaur, co-founder and CEO of Girl Dreamer
•  
• Resources incl Marrying community insight with data science, Guides to TikTok, Digital advent calendars, Reducing data consumption, Trustees duties learning course, Persuading your leaders about digital
•  
• Vacancies: Localise West Midlands Coordinator (Jobshare)

We continue to increase digital skills and inclusion in the VCSE sectors, as part of Project 2020, by curating the most useful items we see on the web during the month.

As we said in last month's issue, this includes other stuff from the web, not nec. 'digital' or 'tech' related, more 'solidarity' work (credit to @touretteshero for this wording, via @dandawcp) 


Digital Stories request
We'd love to hear your stories of increasing digital skills and inclusion too.

Please email them to Pauline at RnR.Organisation@gmail.com, marking them for my attention.


Subscribers
For our new subscribers in November, we welcome you! We'd love to hear from you so please email or tweet us at DigitalWMNews.

Please note that this issue and all previous issues can be found on our website here


Readership
In 2020 we aim to reach at least one person in every small charity, non-profit and social enterprise in the West Midlands. 

You can help us increase our reach and increase digital skills in the West Midlands by encouraging your colleagues and friends to subscribe to Digital WM News in 2020. 

They can SIGN UP HERE to ensure they receive the latest issue as soon as it is published.


Regards


Pauline Roche,
Editor, Digital WM News

Midlands Women In Tech Awards 2021 still open for nominations



The second Midlands Women in Tech Awards (MWIT), launched in October in association with Methods Digital, is accepting nominations until January 15th.

Categories are Start-up Founder, Apprentice, Rising Star, Academic, Tech for Good, Innovator, Best Digital Lead and Shining Star.

Nominees must either be from the Midlands, work in the Midlands or make a contribution to the Midlands.

For more information email info@womenintechawards.co.uk


West Midlands Open Data Forum held consultation on National Data Strategy

Dr Mahlet Zimeta and Rachel Coldicutt

West Midlands Open Data Forum convened a meeting of members and other stakeholders to talk about the government's National Data Strategy on Wed 18th Nov with speakers Dr Mahlet (Milly) Zimeta, Head of Public Policy at the Open Data Institute and Rachel Coldicutt, Director of research consultancy Careful Industries.

The strategy was out to consultation until 2nd December and this deadline has now been extended to 9th December.


Tech entrepreneur Kari Lawler receives a Tech Women 100 award



One of the region's best-known young entrepreneur's Kari Lawler (17) has received a Tech Women 100 Award from We Are Tech Women, founded in 2015 to help women working in tech to maximise their potential.

Kari is an active member of regional politics, championing youth voices and diversity within digital and digital skills policy. She currently sits on the West Midlands Young Combined Authority board and has an observer role on the West Midlands 5G Board.

Full details of Kari and the award on the We Are Tech Women website.

Read Kari's story in her own words in this Twitter thread


WM Funders AGM - new trustees join Board and new Ambassador steps up



WM Funders Network and guests held the charity's 3rd AGM on 1st December at which 3 new trustees were elected onto the Board

The newly-elected trustees are: Lee Jagger, Charity Bank, Tina Costello, Heart of England Community Foundation and Austin Rodriguez, Solihull MBC.

Also confirmed at the AGM was a new Ambassador for the network, Dr David Owen of Rubery Owen. David was previously a long-standing Board member of the network.

Launch of Data4Good Fest 2021

The UK's festival for data use in the social sector flagship event has been announced.

The event, led by DatakindUK with a team of around 30 social sector partners including West Midlands-based social enterprise RnR Organisation, will happen on 10-12 May 2021

The team says

"We have two ways you can get involved in the festival content:

• Main programme: We are inviting those working with data in the social sector to deliver a session, talk, workshop, or panel at the flagship online event taking place between 10-12 May.
• Fringe events: We are looking for organisations and people who’d like to add their organisation’s own events to the Festival, to be included in our Festival Fringe programme. These events will be promoted by us, but delivered and organised by you.

For the main programme, please submit your contribution here!

The deadline for contributions is 11 January 2021"

£840,000 digital fund for charities opens for applications

 

The Sector Challenge Programme will award grants of between £5,000 and £10,000 to charities working in four different cause areas: early years, mental health and wellbeing, sexual abuse and domestic violence, and financial wellbeing.

Funding comes from Catalyst, a network aiming to grow the sector’s digital capabilities, and from a partnership between the The National Lottery Community Fund and Centre for The Acceleration of Social Technology (CAST).

The initiative is part of the £5m digital fund for charities announced by the three organisations in September.

Read the full story by Val Cipriani in Civil Society


The UK Government has published its 2018-19 grants data in the 360Giving Data Standard

On Thursday 29 October 2020, 16 central UK Government departments published open data about the grants they have made using the 360Giving Data Standard. In doing so, the government has joined the UK’s leading trusts and foundations who already publish their grants data openly in the Standard, to help us all have a fuller picture of grantmaking.

You can now get data about 43,000 grants that were active in 2018-19, with a total value of £32bn. This is an exciting development as it sets the precedent for more open data about government grants being published in future, which will help make significant progress towards our vision of grantmaking in the UK being more informed, effective and strategic.

Read the full story on the 360 Giving website

Charities 'underestimated and overshadowed’ says Bank of England chief economist

The social sector’s contribution is often “underestimated and overshadowed” meaning that it can be left fragile, according to the chief economist at the Bank of England.

Andy Haldane also said one “fragility” brought home by the crisis is around the adoption of new technology.

He said: “By and large I think digital adaptation has been speedier and more seamless than many might have feared. That is another example of our collective resilience. Nonetheless, it was clearly the case that many charities, like businesses, were somewhat short of being digitally match-fit.”

Haldane noted that users, as well as charity workers, need the skills and equipment to access digital services.

He added: “These frontier models are not yet fully in the mainstream or indeed in the bloodstream of all parts of the charitable sector, and the scope, the potential, for technology to unleash charities remains very considerable”.

Read full article by Harriet Whitehead in Civil Society 


Mencap awarded £1m of government funds to help organisations develop digital strategies

A new £1m fund being delivered by the learning disability charity Mencap will help support 60 partner organisations to develop digital strategies and move their services online.

The money has been [awarded] by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and the Pears Foundation to help the charity and its network of partners improve access to technology and help reduce loneliness among people with a learning disability. 

...Mencap’s new programme, called Let's Get Digital, will provide digital skills training for people with a learning disability, as well as access to equipment, internet access and ongoing support to use digital platforms...

Voice4Change England Launches Britain’s First Charity Magazine for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities

NOTE: All events subject to latest government guidance on responding to the Corona Virus 

 

Dec 8th 12.00-13.00
Beyond: Create effective design and digital roadmaps to adapt your services

- Knowing what to do first when there's lots to do

- Creating design and implementation roadmaps

- Writing clear briefs and plans to get things done, one-by-one



Dec 9th 12.00-13.00
Digital safeguarding: How to deliver safe services online

This virtual session organised by Tech for Good Brighton, Superhighways and Netsquared London will explore in more detail how to put safeguarding at the heart of your online service delivery during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The talks will be by Charné Tromp of the Centre for the Acceleration of Social Technology (CAST) & Eva Kestner of Against Violence & Abuse and Emma Anderson, Safeguarding Lead at Oxford Hub


 

Dec 10th 10.00-11.00

Small Charities Data: The latest and best data at your fingertips


 

Launch of the Small Charities Data hub.

A new resource pulling together multiple quantitative data on small charities all in one easy to access hub. The data, spanning over five years, highlights the financial pressure charities faced before the onset of the health crisis.

An initiative led by Lloyds Bank Foundation for England & Wales in partnership with the Small Charities Coalition, NCVO, LocalGiving, the FSI, Locality, 360Giving and more.

Dec 14th 18.30-19.30

Maker Monday: December 14th Online Edition with Hannah Redler Hawes

Online

Hannah Redler Hawes, Director of Data as Culture Art Programme / Associate Curator at the Open Data Institute (ODI) will be talking about Data as Culture (DaC), the art programme for the Open Data Institute (ODI)

Hannah's talk will concentrate on two recent DaC programmes: Copy That? Surplus Data in an Age of Repetitive Duplication, a research theme and originally physical, now online exhibition; and Rules of Engagement an online exhibition which asks those with power to reimagine how we work with data to ensure an ethical data future for everyone, guest curated by Antonio Roberts.

 

Kiran Kaur

Kiran Kaur, Co-Founder/CEO Girl Dreamer, Trustee NCVO, was announced as the Best Digital CEO in the 2020 Social CEO awards held on Thursday 12 November at the first ever virtual Social CEO Awards, hosted by Fundraising Everywhere.

The judges praised Kiran for her digital ambition and vision which has achieved fantastic results.

Under Kiran’s leadership Girl Dreamer has led crowdfunding efforts to raise £30,000 in 30 days, helped her organisation build a global community and grown their social media following to over 10,000 across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Her colleagues say, "She knows how to leverage digital and has done so by turning our tiny organisation into an internationally recognised name." 

Relationships first. Data second.


Image of how community inslght projects work from blogpost

"We have an amazing VCS and we have brilliant digital and data capacity within the Council — and joining up to collectively develop and understand needs feels like where we need to invest our energy".

Read about marrying community insight wth data science in this blogpost/case study by Emma McGowan on Medium


Charity guides to TikTok

"It offers a mix of video content, aimed at young adults and teenagers, most notably lip syncing and dancing. The app is the topic of increasing discussion in the charity sector because it offers plenty of scope for interesting fundraising ideas"

and

TikTok for charities by Amy Johnson on the Reason Digital website "dives into the latest social media hotspot and address the questions that charities want and need to know the answers to"

Digital advent calendars 2020

NCVO eLearning course on trustees duties

Trustees play an important role in making sure charities are well managed and can achieve their aims. Understanding your duties as a trustee will help you run your charity effectively, keep to the law and make a bigger difference.
 
NCVO, in partnership with the Foundation for Social Improvement (FSI), have created an accessible, interactive trustee eLearning course that you can study at your own pace, at a time that suits you.

Full details and pricing here

Helpful tool for delivering speeches

Something useful for anyone who has to make a speech.... turn your laptop or tablet into a teleprompter by pasting the script: cueprompter.com

HT @NicTatano on Twitter


How to persuade your leaders about digital

Reason Digital tweeted some highlights from their Digital Fundraising webinar on Dec 3rd, including a gem on website donation tools 

All listed vacancies are in the West Midlands - positions are listed by closing date (unless otherwise stated); please note we will only list vacancies where salaries (or a range) are stated

7th December, 12 noon
Localise West Midlands
Coordinator (Job share)