The Finnish digital support scene is diverse and has much to offer to people needing digital support. However, digital support still requires further development.
Moniheli DigiUp project, launched in June 2021, aims to address the digital development needs of multicultural organisations, which were further increased by the coronavirus pandemic. The project aims to assess the capacity of multicultural organisations to operate in a digital environment and to provide the necessary digital support and training to organisations.
In the beginning of the project, we faced the challenge of finding cooperation partners who are providing digital support to organisations. In 2022, we started cooperating with the Blue Ribbon Alliance as they offer digital support for their member organisations. We have exchanged expertise, developed practices and shared materials. The content needs are similar despite of different target groups.
The Järjestödigi survey (TIEKE ry, Viestintä-Piritta Oy ja Vitec Avoine Oy), carried out in 2022, examined the role of organisations as both providers and recipients of digital support. It was found that 28% of organisations receive support from external experts (paid services and support from other organisations), while 7% of organisations needing digital support do not receive any. We need to ensure that organisations have access to digital support and learn new things (read more in the SOSTE blog post, the link opens in a new window).
During the two years of the project, our understanding of the everyday life of multicultural organisations in the digital world and their role in the field of digital support has deepened, and our activities have become more stable. We guide organisations, produce materials as tools and strengthen digital skills through training.
The role of multicultural organisations as digital supporters
Digital tools are part of NGOs working and operating culture, regardless of their size and type of activity. However, multicultural organisations often operate with limited resources or entirely voluntarily. Small organisations, in particular, often have only a few active actors responsible for their activities. Although their resources are limited, they often also act as a digital supporter for their communities, which include migrants and those who are vulnerable for various reasons.
According to our 2021 Monidigi-mapping , 21% of organisations offer regular digital support and guidance to their members. Almost one-third provide hidden digital support. Hidden digital support refers to unplanned digital support that is not part of the actual evaluation and monitoring of the organisation's activities. Hidden digital support creates an additional stressful workload, especially for small organisations.
These organisations must be recognised as important actors of digital supporters because they reach people who are not necessarily reached by public authorities and services. Organisations provide them with accessible support in their mother tongue.
Organisations need more support and continuous learning to carry out their core activities and support their communities. The continuous and sustainable development of organisations' activities is important to maintain community support and promote social inclusion.
Digital skills, needs and challenges of organisational actors
A wide range of training courses on different topics are offered to strengthen organisational actors' digital skills. These training are organised, for example, by learning centres and umbrella organisations.
Our survey shows that organisations are willing and motivated to try out new opportunities in the digital environment, but participation has many challenges.
A common challenge is that most trainings are held in Finnish and occur when organisational actors are at work during the day.
The language skills of multicultural organisations vary. Although many speak Finnish, the threshold for participation in expert training courses is high. Not everyone speaks English, so there is also a need for training in Finnish in the multicultural field.
Resources are the most significant barrier to participation. For small organisations, resources are usually only sufficient to deal with essential operational and administrative matters. Human resources are not sufficient to keep up with digitalisation. Updating operating culture and skills requires money and work time. Therefore, there is an urgent need for free external support.
We have responded to this need with tailored, personalised, and multilingual digital support. Feedback on our digital support reflects the importance of making digital support accessible and free of charge for organisations.
Client's feedback: 'I work in a small association with no one in charge of IT, so the help is really needed and appreciated. We have limited resources, so the guidance for free is great and important!"
How have we developed the forms of digital support over the past two years?
At the beginning of the project, the word "digital support" did not reach the multicultural field of organisations very well. For many, it was a new term, often interpreted as traditional IT support. Activating and introducing digital support took time.
In the initial mapping of the project, we reached out to organisations by phone to explain what we could help with. We strengthened our communication through social media channels, in which we described our client's problems, including planning and updating websites, storing documents and promoting events online. Through these examples, we tried to get organisations to consider their digital needs.
We have reached to different types of activities that strengthen the digital inclusion and digital literacy of organisational actors. People can reach us with a low threshold, for example, through WhatsApp messages or an online booking system, at a time that suits them. We have also increased the amount of on-site digital support at our offices. We make a visit for digital support, also to outside the capital region.
It has been a pleasure to understand better the digital operating cultures, attitudes and practices of individual organisations and to help them address the everyday challenges of the digital world.
Of course, the digital support we offer has its limits. Sometimes we have to guide clients to service providers. Finding the right client service can be difficult if IT services only use chatbots. Verbalising problems can be challenging when knowledge of the digital environment is limited. Digital support can therefore include directing clients to the service provider's customer service. Acting as a support person in communicating between the organisation and the service is typical.
Although the topics in our digital support are varied, we often end up looking at organisations' essential digital matters such as email accounts and document storage.
Digital readiness assessment tool
As we have gained deeps insights from our digital support, we started to think about introducing a separate digital readiness assessment tool.
The evaluation tool helps both organisations and us as digital support providers in guidance situations. It helps organisations assess the current state of digitalisation and digital skills in their organisation and identify areas for development.
The tool helps us identify obstacles to the smooth implementation of digital support. Check out the organisation's digital readiness assessment tool by clicking the button below.
The reach of our target group has increased as our activities have become more concrete, and our communication has become more robust, which indicates the project’s needs and success.
The themes emerging from digitalisation influence the content of the training courses. We also organise training in English, to better reach our target audience. We create presentations in both English and Finnish. We also aim to use as clear language as possible, or at least to open up concepts of more challenging vocabularies.
We also create materials for organisations. Although many materials are available in English, they need to be tailored to the specific needs of organisations. Plain language and a simple structure are key elements of our materials.
We encourage organisations to use the tools that support their digital activities to make them efficient, sustainable and long-lasting. The digital tools selected should be used in a way that is appropriate for each organisation. Using the right tools takes practice, but they will strengthen the organisations in the long run.
The future of digital support and the digital courage
As providers of digital support, we have been pleased to see the courage of organisations to experiment and learn new skills when the support is available. This courage and skills increase when there is room to express issues and other concerns about using new tools. We usually talk about digital courage, which was the theme of the Digital Skills Report published by the Finnish Digital Agency in December 2022. The theme has also been reflected in the client feedback on digital support.
In our experience, it is seeing new opportunities that help encourage organisational actors. Some return to the support with concrete examples of what they want to learn next. These situations, where people are able to articulate their needs using the new vocabulary they have learned, are an absolute joy for us as digital supporters.
The feedback we have received:
"The DigiUp project has supported our association in organising digital learning for our members. It has been highly necessary, and it has been used a lot in anything related to e-services."
”"The service has been very relevant for our needs, has been timely and friendly. Never knew as non-profits, there were lots of digital opportunities available."
"It was very practical and good information, we got more than we expected, and now it is easy to ask for more!"
Digital support for organisations must be continuously developed to meet changing needs and keep them in change with digital transformation. Developments and activities in the field of digital support must reach organisations more widely. Digital support actors need to ensure that communication, collaboration, and exchange of expertise strengthen organisations.