Digital Trustees started in 2022 in an effort to diversify trustee recruitment in the third sector. Too often, boards recruit within their own networks, leading to homogenous groups of skills and identities.
Still in 2024, 41% of charities do not have a digital trustee (Charity Digital Skills Report, 2024). It would be considered ridiculous if the same stat were true for trustees with financial or governance skills. We feel it should be the same way with digital.
Without this digital leadership at the highest levels, the third sector risks falling behind in an increasingly digital world. Digital Trustees addresses this by connecting skilled professionals with charities and third sector organisations, ensuring that their missions remain relevant and impactful in the digital age.
About the initiative
In person and online events
Digital Trustees aims to get digital on the agenda of every charity board in the UK. Through monthly matchmaking events and sharing resources and experiences, we’re making it easier than ever to connect charities and professionals from tech, data, design, IT and other digital backgrounds.
The aim of the events is not simply to recruit digital experts to charity boards, but to raise awareness about the need for digital skills, and get charities started on a digital journey.
Outreach work
We continue to play the critical role of translator between the third sector and the tech sector, ensuring mutual understanding and shared goals. We offer third sector organisations 30 minute “Get Your Board On Board” sessions which help them to consider how digital leadership could benefit their organisation
To help demystify trusteeship in the tech sector, we make connections with tech leaders. Through one to one calls and email support, we signpost them to relevant resources, like Getting on Board.
Digital Trustee Profiles
We’ve developed a profile system in which both digital trustees and charity boards can submit profiles.
The platform’s efficiency ensures that even those who can’t attend our live events can still connect, making digital expertise more accessible across the UK charity sector. By removing barriers to participation, we’re opening up trustee roles to a wider and more diverse pool of talent.
Impact and success stories
In the last two years, our initiative has attracted 397 registrants, including 89 new registrants this year alone. Our matchmaking site now features 129 profiles, connecting charities with digital professionals, and leading to a number of success stories.
In 2024, 28% of participants found a potential match during an event, and even more connect asynchronously using our matchmaking profiles.
Cycling Without Age England:
User researcher Hannah Wallwork attended one of our events and became a trustee for Cycling Without Age England. Hannah has since been instrumental in improving their digital strategy, leading to increased engagement with their online volunteers and service users. Read her blog post for the full story.
Charity Finance Group:
Hugh Wallace, a digital expert, became a trustee for the Charity Finance Group after attending one of our matchmaking events. and since then has been using his knowledge to provide input and give a digitally-focused steer. Read more about his experience.
By bringing their expertise to those boards, digital trustees like Hannah, Hugh and many more are making a difference in the ways that charities deliver their services. In turn, digital trustees gain professional development opportunities and enter the charity sector.
Lessons learned
Event flexibility
After receiving feedback from participants that our sessions felt rushed, we extended their running times by half an hour. Since making this change, participants almost never stay into this extra time, which we hold as additional time to connect, but by having a less strict finish time, their experience is much better.
Future plans and sustainability
Looking ahead, we plan to further develop the matchmaking platform to include AI-driven recommendations and a more robust filtering system. This will enable us to better serve both charities and digital professionals by suggesting matches based on evolving needs.
We will continue to host online events every two months, and occasionally in person where possible. We’ll also continue our outreach within the third sector with our “Get Your Board on Board” sessions.
We’re also excited by the success of our October Digital Trustees event in Glasgow – having events both in person and online allows us to make our events accessible to those in remote areas, but also facilitate real life connections when we can. We received fantastic feedback from the event, with one charity even finding two potential trustees.
We worked with CodeBase Glasgow to deliver the event, which meant we could draw from a fantastic pool of tech talent from their networks.
By continually improving our processes, we aim to ensure that Digital Trustees remains a sustainable and scalable solution for the third sector.
Looking ahead
For third sector organisations looking to enhance their digital strategy, we recommend starting by evaluating the digital skills present on your board and seeking out gaps where new expertise is needed. SCVO has a fantastic and free to use Digital Skills Checkup tool.
Initiatives like Digital Trustees can be an excellent first step to bringing fresh perspectives and skills to the table. We encourage third sector organisations to explore our resources and attend one of our upcoming matchmaking events to begin their digital journey.
If you’d like to chat about the Digital Trustees initiative, please contact robyn@thirdsectorlab.co.uk
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