Shared Digital Guides - nonprofits share how they use digital tools to run their services and operations

Shared Digital Guides is a Catalyst initiative, contributed by CAST in the UK. Catalyst is a network that connects non-profits with services and resources to make digital easier.  Organizations share guides to how they use digital tools to run their services and operations.

Even better, you can to copy, replicate, and learn from what they've done.

Too often organizations feel left alone to figure out their digital transformation. While they're anxious and stressed out, it's likely another organization has figured it out. What if there was a way to share those solutions?

That's what Shared Digital Guides offer.

According to Catalyst Shared Digital Guides "collects practical examples to help charities reuse and learn from one another’s digital services. We have been referring to those as recipes: they show the ingredients and steps needed to deliver a service. By charities, for charities, for inspiration or straightforward implementation. These recipes can be reused as they are, or tweaked as necessary.

We believe that re-using existing tools and code can help charities solve service design and delivery problems more quickly than building a tool from scratch. It can save time and money, and build a team’s confidence along the way."

What can you find there? Guides cover things like:

• To help deliver a service or to run internal operations
• In a normal, routine way or in a more innovative way
• To address a common, shared challenge or a unique and niche problem.

Here are some specific guide examples:

• Letting young people communicate with workers via WhatsApp
• Running an online group while helping people new to video calling learn to use video software
• Working more effectively using a sector specific CRM
• Letting young people get help via SMS using Twilio and Salesforce
• Providing support to website visitors using a web chat service

Organizations are encouraged to share, with the caveat "Most organisations have something worth sharing, but don't realise it!"

I've also found that even when an organization realizes they have something worth sharing, they're not sure how to do it, or find the time to share.

It's in that spirit the Catalyst works with organizations that submit an idea. Through a simple and manageable interview process that doesn't take too much time (2 40-minute interviews), Catalyst pulls together the information and then creates the guide. Organizations get a final review before a guide goes live on the site.

Open working and sharing is key to this approach. There are currently 61 Guides shared by 45 organisations on the site. You are free to use, reuse and adapt Guides to improve your services and operations. You can also republish the text of a Guide, with credit and link back to the Guide.