Here are some examples of how ICT could help you achieve your goals:
1. Better service delivery
- Make it easier for people to communicate with your organisation, using email, telephone, your website and text messaging.
- Reduce missed appointments by using text messaging to confirm times and remind clients
- Use remote monitoring systems to ensure the safety of tenants or residents.
- Take laptops and other mobile equipment to community centres to provide computer and internet access to support community activities.
- Use text messaging to create an anonymous sexual health service for teenagers.
- Provide internet access at your community centre for those people who don’t have it at home
2. Better access to information for managers
- Collect, manage and report performance information to help run your organisation better
- Prepare information for monitoring and report to funders.
- Identify trends, problems and possible solutions
3. Better financial management
- Accounting software records income and expenditure and helps take care of VAT, tax and PAYE and the requirements of the Charity Commission
- Use spreadsheets to manage project budgets and produce reports for trustees, managers and funders
4. Better client records
- Keep client contact information in a database on your network to support shared work inside the organisation as well as with partners, funders and other outside bodies
- Use remote access services to enable staff to access up-to-date information when visiting clients
- Monitoring data can be collected from the client record system rather than collated manually
5. Better information for your community
- Computers and the internet can help to collect, manage and publish useful information to support telephone, online or face-to-face advice services.
- Information can be provided 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
- Online information can support community campaigns, such as accessing government statistics to back your case or tracking the voting record of your local MP on a key issue.
- Using an interactive website means members of your community can check information and update it when they see mistakes.
6. Better staff development
- Encourage staff and volunteers to use the internet to keep up to date with key issues in your field.
- Encourage staff and volunteers to share ICT skills and ‘top tips’ to help the organisation run more smoothly.
- Online learning courses can be a flexible, low cost way of improving capabilities and knowledge within your networks.
- Share knowledge with peers informally through email and online forums
- Subscribe to specialist online information resources such as magazines, or news from professional bodies
7. Better fundraising
- Use the web and email to identify potential funders and research your bids.
- Set up a payments system on your website to make it easier for people to donate money.
- Use free checklists and professional advice from fundraising sites to improve your fundraising skills.
8. Better external communications
- Use desktop publishing to design and print leaflets, flyers, stationery, newsletters, annual reports, posters, t-shirts and postcards.
- Set up and run websites, email lists or online discussion forums to promote your cause or make links with potential partners.
- Deliver high-quality presentations using a laptop, digital projector and PowerPoint.
- Run campaigns and mobilise support using print, email and the web.
- Use video to overcome literacy barriers
- Run a local radio station through a website
- Tell local stories and raise awareness of local concerns through a community website, using podcasts, bulletin boards or photo-sharing
9. Better internal communications
- Share information and work files with colleagues on a server
- Use remote access, email, internet telephone services and video conferencing so that staff and volunteers can be flexible and work on multiple sites.
- Make sure induction packs, internal policies and other key documents can be found easily using an intranet.
- Help trustees, volunteers, partners, funders and other stakeholders feel part of your decision-making process by using email, bulletin boards, etc
10. Better administration
- Manage your information in a more methodical way and spend less time finding things by using a shared file server
- Use mail merge to save time when sending out large numbers of documents – whether in the post or by email.
- Use shared calendars and email to schedule meetings.
- Save time and money by sharing resources such as printers, rather than transferring information from PC to PC.
- A web-based timesheet system enables remote staff to log time spent on projects
