Charities of all sizes can reap the benefits of awards and grants. Massive budgets and huge teams are not necessary to get recognised – charities just need a compelling story and the right strategy in order to stand out.  

This episode is the first of a three-part podcast series with Public Interest Registry that pulls back the curtain on how to successfully apply for awards, amplify your recognition, and turn visibility into meaningful funding, attention, and donor support.  

In this podcast, we’re joined by Tony Connor, Senior Director, Product Marketing at Public Interest Registry and Darren Dannelly, President & CEO of The Center for Courageous Kids, who will walk us through what makes an application shine. Our guests will talk candidly about crafting a standout submission, how to showcase impact with clarity, and what judges actually look for.  

Whether you're a first-time applicant or refining for a second shot, this is your inside edge. 

Find out more about the .ORG Impact Awards: https://pir.org/for-orgs/org-impact-awards/

We know that digital technology can be transformative in helping charities achieve their goals, whether it’s reaching new supporters or delivering more services. But there remain challenges around how inclusive digital technology is, with millions of people in the UK unable to get online.  

This is a particular issue for the charity sector, whose purpose is reaching as many people as possible, from supporters to beneficiaries. Indeed, our report, Digital inclusion in the UK charity sector, revealed that 82% of charities are concerned about digital inclusion, with more than half finding it difficult to reach service users due to problems with digital technology.

In 2024, we launched a digital inclusion campaign to help address these problems. In this podcast, we explore what we’ve learned about digital inclusion as part of our campaign, sharing insights from our report and from working closely with charities engaged in tackling the issue. 

Join us as we discover more about charity attitudes towards digital inclusion and what they can do to prioritise it in the future. 

Useful resources:

Charities are mission-led organisations, with service delivery at their core. They help to uphold society with vastly ranging activities such as personal care, advice, research, advocacy, care for animals, environmental protection, community and cultural activities, religious events, and so much more.

But too often, the conditions that charities work within can get in the way. Recent years have financially squeezed charities, putting pressure on the services they deliver, and harming the communities who use them.

Working to achieve their ideals with limited time can also leave charities tied to traditional ways of operating, lacking the opportunity to overhaul their approach to be more effective, efficient, and empowering to those who use services.

In this podcast, we explore how charities are making the best of the current service delivery landscape, improving services with digital, and engaging with service users in new ways.

Have your say! Take our Reimagining Services survey: https://charitydigital.org.uk/topics/reimagining-services-take-our-survey-11931

Understanding artificial intelligence (AI) in 2025 feels like a mammoth task, with new tools emerging out of seemingly nowhere at a time where we’re trying to get to grips with the existing ones.  

For charities, the process of getting to know AI is yet harder. With a low threshold for risk, and vital services needing to be funded and delivered, charities have limited time and resource to dedicate to AI, despite its future potential to make charity operations more efficient and give us that time back. 

This podcast aims to help. In this episode, we are joined by Adam Graham, Managing Director of Qlic IT, to discuss the opportunities and use cases of AI in the charity sector. We explore how AI can be used in the charity sector, how to create an effective AI policy, and share practical advice for your next steps on the AI journey. 

When websites and other elements of the digital world are poorly designed, people with disabilities experience significant barriers, causing frustration and getting in the way of independent daily life. 

According to the Charity Digital Skills Report 2023, 58% of charities say their products and services are accessible to some extent, while 53% feel they are monitoring accessibility and diversity of users effectively.  As a sector, we can do better.

In this podcast, recorded at Charity Digital's Digital Inclusion Summit in June 2024, we are joined by a panel of experts to share advice and learnings to help the charity sector improve its digital accessibility. You can find the video recording and additional resources here.

Host: Tara Lee, Account Manager, Charity Digital

Panel: 

Social media can feel dizzying. Platforms are fast-moving, ever-evolving, and always demanding, with new rules, new trends, new styles, and so on. It can be tough to keep up. And charities can post without considering their users, their audience, even their own communities. That means posts can exclude the very people you want to serve. 

This podcast, hosted by Prue Watson, Senior Social Media Manager at the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) will delve into some practical tips for social media accessibility, including how to add and write image descriptions, how to use emojis and hashtags, and how to make your video content accessible.

The session was recorded at our Digital Inclusion Summit in June 2024. You can find the the video recording and additional resources here. 

Charities are tempting targets for cyber attacks, as custodians of sensitive data and funds needed to deliver critical services. But with concepts like multifactor authentication, access controls, and patch management to contend with, looking after your cyber security can seem like a daunting prospect, particularly when coupled with limited resources and technical knowledge. 

However, cyber security needn’t be intimidating. Many of the scariest sounding concepts can be relatively simple. With the right training and technology to help, charities can empower everyone in their organisation to look after their cyber security, from the newest volunteer to the most senior board member.

In this podcast, recorded at Charity Digital's Digital Inclusion Summit in June 2024, Rick Wilhelm, Chief Technology Officer at PIR.org (the organisation that powers the .Org domain name), we explore how charities can create a fear-free means culture around cyber security, with response plans, education, and tips on how to spot potential cyber threats. 

You can find the slides and video recording here, as well as more sessions from the Digital Inclusion Summit 2024.

Good Things Foundation is the UK’s leading digital inclusion charity, powering the National Digital Inclusion Network, National Databank, and National Device Bank. In this podcast, recorded at Charity Digital's Digital Inclusion Summit in June 2024, Good Things' Group CEO Helen Milner OBE gives an overview of Digital Nation 2024 - why digital inclusion matters, what is already happening to fix the digital divide, and what more needs to be done - including by the next UK Government - for a digitally inclusive nation. 

You can find the video recording and slides here.

Misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories can be a problem for charities by negatively impacting upon service users, employees, and volunteers. Here, charities’ responsibility is two-fold: avoiding spreading misinformation themselves and quelling false information about their cause.

Ensuring trustworthy online information is an aspect of digital inclusion, supporting people to make the most of the digital resources available. Media literacy skills are a key element of this, empowering digital users to safeguard personal and societal health and wellbeing. It’s also up to organisations to do their bit in countering the spread.

In this podcast, we explore how false information spreads, its impacts, how charities can avoid spreading it, and approaches to address misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories about your charitable cause. 

Useful resources:

The last few years have been challenging for charities. A global pandemic hastened the speed of digital transformation for the entire sector, widespread inflation led to growing costs and more precarious fundraising, and charities have had to balance rising service demand with an uncertain economy.  

But many of these challenges have predated the pandemic – what’s changed is the way we rise to them. Evolving technology has allowed charities to innovate more than ever before, with advances in everything from web accessibility to digital fundraising. 

In this podcast, we’re joined by Tony Connor, Senior Director of Product Marketing at PIR.org, the organisation that looks after the .org domain name, to discuss how technology is developing to meet charity’s challenges, both old and new.  

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