Building resilience in Bolton: the impact of digital skills on local charities and communities

Bolton is a vibrant town, with strong communities and a well-loved football club whose charity, Bolton Wanderers in the Community, has been supporting residents of Bolton for over 30 years. Communities in Bolton, however, face multiple challenges, including high levels of social deprivation. There are 1,672 Voluntary, Charity and Social Enterprises (VCSEs) in the area who exist to support the people of Bolton, but they themselves, in the years following a pandemic that drove interaction online, can find it difficult to find and connect to those who need them. Bolton CVS, an infrastructure organisation dedicated to supporting charities in Bolton, identified a critical need to support them with digital capacity building so that these communities could reconnect, and Bolton's VCSEs could reach the people they were founded to serve.

The Bolton Digital Skills programme was the solution, an innovative approach that brought together the support of Bolton Wanderers Football Club, Bolton Wanderers in the Community, Bolton CVS and Lightful. It was an initiative designed to see how empowering a network of nonprofit organisations in Bolton with digital skills could positively impact them and their communities.

How digital can create impact for charities

The ability to leverage digital is critical for charities, especially those serving local communities. Digital allows organisations to collectively advocate for issues at scale, reach a wider audience, and generate vital funds online. Despite the need for digital transformation,less than half of nonprofits have a digital strategy in place. There is a huge demand for bridging the digital skills gap across the sector, according to the Charity Digital Skills Report, 72% of UK charities are struggling to progress digitally due to their finances, headspace and capacity. Providing digital capacity building can support charities to become better storytellers, better digital campaign planners and better fundraisers, making them more sustainable, resilient and able to thrive.

Lightful’s Building Resilience in Digital Growth and Engagement programme (BRIDGE), provides 6 months of digital capacity building for nonprofit organisations, like those in Bolton. BRIDGE puts digital at the heart of fundraising and communications - helping charities keep up with the constantly evolving digital world, build resilience and improve their sustainability. Lightful has delivered BRIDGE to more than 3,000 nonprofits in over 90 countries. From last year's longitudinal study, which surveyed participants of BRIDGE from the last 5 years, we learned that BRIDGE helps charities positively impact their communities (95% of respondents agreed) and increases their ability to fundraise (average self-reported increase of funds raised YOY was 79%).

The success of the Bolton Digital Skills programme

In November 2022, 50 small charities were selected from Bolton CVS’ network of VCSEs based in Bolton to participate in Lightful’s BRIDGE programme. A third of participants were just starting out with their digital journey, and a further 54% were entry level or curious about digital. Only 11% described themselves as having digital as a focus of their strategy.

Over the course of six months, this collaborative effort equipped these local charities with the confidence and skills necessary to thrive in an ever-evolving digital landscape. Their participation in this programme resulted in significant strides in confidence levels, particularly in digital fundraising and strategy. Remarkably, 100% of exit survey respondents achieved their primary objectives. On average, the cohort witnessed an increase in social media audiences, with an astonishing +620.61% surge in Twitter audience engagement across the cohort. This heightened social media presence even led to one participant securing a £200,000 grant from the National Lottery Community Fund.

From our longitudinal study, we know that 100% of participants from this programme think that the lessons they learned during BRIDGE had a positive impact on the community they serve. 90.9% of Bolton participants who responded to the survey use the skills from the programme at least weekly and said that BRIDGE has contributed to the success of their organisation. Participants highlighted the positive improvements in community engagement and funding as some of their top results from BRIDGE.

“We now receive some online funding which was not happening before the programme and as a collective we now work closely with other groups in the area to market our offerings in a unified online strategy.” - Great Lever Connected

“Our finances increased quite a lot and our community engagement” - The Darren Deady Foundation CIC

Keep reading to find out more about the impact of the programme one year on, as we catch up with one of our Bright Spark participants, Sapphire Partnership.

Coming together in Bolton to celebrate

To celebrate the successful completion of the Bolton Digital Skills programme, a special event was held at the University of Bolton stadium. The Mayor of Bolton, Cllr Mohammed Ayub, who was the esteemed guest of honour, presented Certificates of Completion to all participating charity representatives, commending their commitment to enhancing their digital competencies.

Phil Mason, CEO of Bolton Wanderers in the Community, The Mayor of Bolton, Cllr Mohammed Ayu, Dawn Yates-Obe, CEO of Bolton CVS, and Vinay Nair, CEO & Co-Founder of Lightful.

The BRIDGE graduation event.

Some of the Bolton Digital Skills programme participants with their certificates of completion.

Amplifying the voices of young adults with Sapphire Partnership

The Bolton Digital Skills programme had an exceptional impact on charities in Bolton. One of the charities that participated in the programme was Sapphire Partnership, who support young adults with neurodiverse needs and disabilities. They launched their very first digital campaign #dontdismyability immediately after BRIDGE. This innovative campaign sought to change the negative connotations that surround having a disability by showcasing some of the amazing young adults Sapphire Partnership works with. One year on from the programme, we spoke to Jen McVeigh, Programme Manager at Sapphire Partnership, to catch up on how BRIDGE has impacted their work.

Jen shared with us how the campaign highlighted stories and experiences from these young adults and encouraged everyone to embrace difference by focusing on the positives that having a disability can bring. By engaging the young adults with the campaign, they helped foster a feeling of inclusion and belonging, as well as being heard and seen in their local communities.

As well as featuring the young adults, Jen and the team encouraged them to get involved running the campaign using digital platforms.

“We had a full week of activities for the young adults and promotion from ourselves throughout Facebook, our young adults took over Facebook and Instagram, and they ran it all, which was brilliant.”

The campaign was really successful in spreading the message of ‘don’t dis my ability’, Jen explained: “We still have people talk about it and mention it. These, the slogan, the strapline. We still use it all the time. Although it was a week-long campaign, it's kind of something that is kind of embedded in everything, which is really good.”

Maximising impact for a second year

This year, Sapphire Partnership have set their sights on running a different kind of campaign.

“We decided that we wanted to do something a bit different this year, and with the cost of living and everything else going up, we didn't want to ask for donations of money, because we know how hard that is for everybody at the moment. So we decided that we wanted to run a campaign asking for people to donate the time. It's called ‘Give More In 2024’.”

Give More in 2024 is encouraging people to volunteer their time, and bring different activities and interests to share with the young adults. The activities so far have included pet ferrets, drama classes, craft sessions, music sessions and even something as simple as a cup of tea and a jigsaw puzzle. So far, the campaign has been really successful, they are well on track to hit their volunteering hours target, and it is having a positive impact on both the young adults they support and the volunteers taking part.

When planning the campaign Jen also explained how BRIDGE had underpinned the process. The team at Sapphire Partnership still use a lot of the tools and resources obtained during BRIDGE, and leveraging digital channels was helping Jen and the team to get the word out about Give More in 2024.

“We've not got many people in through hand in leaflets. So it's all been through sharing on our socials and on our website. And then when people have come in and done something. We've promoted that as in, look how amazing it could be, if you wanted to do it too. So yeah, it's 90% of our people coming in, donating, have done that through looking at socials and on the website.”

The impact of BRIDGE, one year on

One year on from the programme, Jen explained that she was still using the tools and knowledge from BRIDGE, saying she was 100% more confident in not only using digital tools, but in doing her own research on emerging technology: “Instead of it being an unknown world it's more: I don't know what that is, let's find out. It's not scary.”

Digital can be a powerful tool to bridge the gap between online and offline worlds. Jen agreed, saying...

BRIDGE is also helping Jen and the team at Sapphire Partnership to build relationships with other charities in the community.

“On our socials, it's helped us to connect more with partnerships in Bolton and further afield. It's helped us to promote things more, events and fundraisers that we're doing, and also to show people what we're doing more. When we did the work on storytelling and looking at how we tell our story online, and what we can do in different kinds of posts - even I learnt things like how doing lives and stories is so much more powerful and more watched than just a post, which was completely new to me. We've learned about how to use it better in order to connect with more people. And obviously that's improved things here, as our young adults are getting better at it, and we've got more interaction with people, as they know who we are.”

For Sapphire Partnership, the BRIDGE programme provided crucial digital tools and confidence, enabling them to effectively use social media and digital platforms for outreach and engagement. This digital empowerment has strengthened their connections within the community and with other charities, demonstrating the significant impact of digital skills on small nonprofits. The Bolton Digital Skills programme has showcased perfectly how empowering small nonprofits with digital skills can have a ripple effect through local communities, bridge the gap between online and offline worlds, and increase impact in lots of different ways.

How can we deliver more impact in Bolton?

Our work in Bolton continues. The achievements of the 50 ambitious charities who participated in The Bolton Digital Skills programme have shown unequivocally that digital skills capacity building creates positivity that not only benefits the participants, but the networks of individuals they serve. Charities that are able to use digital to connect with their communities are better equipped to engage them, creating more space for connection, through volunteering and campaigning. There are over 1,600 more charities in Bolton who would benefit from BRIDGE. As our partnership with Bolton Wanderers in the Community and Bolton CVS continues, we look forward to supporting more of these incredible, community-minded and mission driven charities to leverage the power of digital in the future.