Digital Voice Receives Charities Aid Foundation funding for Essential Capacity Building
Earlier this year Digital Voice received a core grant from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) supporting the organisation to increase our capacity in several key areas, allowing us to develop the business and ensure our sustainability through investment in core capacity, training and support for project delivery. Already we are seeing the results of this development with Digital Voice, reporting a substantial increase in the number of people we’ve been able to help, compared to the previous year.
Behind the scenes Digital Voice’s core team have worked hard to increase the efficiency of our infrastructure but there have been some very visible new developments too. An increased focus on our digital communications has had a direct impact on awareness of our Digital Voice’s varied offers, with DigitalMe proving to be an especially popular programme. The CAF grant has also enabled Digital Voice to invest in expanding team capacity, including new freelance project managers and facilitators, coming from a wide range of specialisms, to meet the increased demand for our services. We were also able to create new roles for our core team, including a Development Manager and Project Coordinator.
Digital Voice have utilised the capacity building to take our expertise to a wider audience through several events, partnerships and April’s digital conference in association with Connected Voice. This full day online event focused on aspects of digital skills for the voluntary sector, reaching over 80 participants.
As we grow, Digital Voice have been careful not to lose sight of the value of all our team members, or their personal development and wellbeing. Our recruitment and training processes and agreements have been reviewed to ensure they are as fair and beneficial to both parties as possible, ensuring participants also get the highest quality experiences. Impact measurement has also been a priority of our capacity building programme and we are going ahead with new systems for monitoring and evaluating all our programmes to continue to develop our offers based on customer need and experience, while leaving room for innovation and creativity.
The addition of a Kickstart youth placement has already increased Digital Voice’s communications and systems capacity, while providing a vital development opportunity for a local young person. We plan to expand on this commitment to young people’s development by working with local university students to offer future work experience opportunities, building on the market research partnership we had with Northumbria University back in May.
Along with our investment in people, the CAF funding has allowed Digital Voice to invest in technology, a core component of our business model and our commitment to all things digital. An example of this included embracing digital hardware management or MDM (mobile device management) for remote technical support via Jamf.
The CAF Resilience Fund was focused on communities hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Funding was distributed to organisations such as Digital Voice to enable them to “adapt and thrive; and to continue to deliver the services that support the needs of beneficiaries whilst also building organisational resilience.”
