Digital Maturity: How Will We Know When We Get There?
Description
Almost 30 years into the web, organizations have radically transformed to incorporate a new digital reality. We’ve plunged into new channels (first websites and email, then social, mobile, text, ads, voice, and the beat goes on). We’ve hired digital staff and built departments (once just webmasters, now digital campaigners, content strategists, analysts, and other specialists).
But what does reaching digital maturity actually look like? And how will you know when you get there?
Using 2-3 forward-thinking nonprofits as examples, we’ll map the stages of digital maturity in nonprofits. We’ll help you assess where your organization is developmentally and identify what this means in practical terms: the evolution of your staffing and structures, practices, tools and tactics. And we’ll talk about what happens in the digital-first future, when we might no longer need “digital teams” because digital touches every role in the organization.
Session Type
60 minute sessionLearning Outcomes
- describe how the social sector is maturing with digital & what the digital-first future looks like
- gauge their own organization’s digital developmental trajectory and map what comes next
- use that vision to begin reframing their digital department’s mission and relationship to other departments to grow their organization’s impact.
Target Audience
Leaders, digital directors, marketers, communicators & online engagement folks who are wondering what digital maturity looks likeTags
Speakers
Misty McLaughlin
Principal & Founder
Cause Craft Consulting
Equal parts nonprofit coach, organizational strategist, and digital expert, I midwife organizations through critical times of change.
I have helped NGOs and nonprofits of all shapes and sizes to structure critical initiatives, from creating complex communications properties to crafting team structures and workflows to plotting digital-first tech ecosystems for engaging supporters and advancing a cause. My expertise spans assessing opportunities for an organization to grow, creating strategic and tactical roadmaps to get there, and supporting the process of implementing the necessary change.
As faculty with the Nonprofit Technology Network’s Professional Certificate program, I teach courses to help organizations build their in-house digital marketing, fundraising, and advocacy capacity. I also hold a part-time appointment as VP of Consulting with Jackson River, a technology company that focuses on supporting progressive organizations in shifting to digital-first ways of thinking and working. Prior to Jackson River, I spent 8 years founding and leading a user experience consulting group at Convio, helping hundreds of orgs to better understand their audiences and meet their supporters’ needs. My deep love of the social sector began 15+ years ago, working on the inside of early nonprofit digital teams as a content manager and digital strategist.
I have a Master’s degree in User Experience and Information Science and have chaired a tiny nonprofit board on a shoestring budget. By night, I’m a writer, advocate for flexible work and family policies, and mother of two young sons raising them in Maastricht, The Netherlands.
My personal mission is to help organizations effectively project their cause into the world.
Shannon Miller
Senior Digital Marketing Manager
Médecins Sans Frontières USA
Shannon Miller is Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) USA, figurehead of the collective responsible for the organization’s digital engagement, including paid media, email, SMS, peer-to-peer, streaming, and doctorswithoutborders.org. She also represents fundraising on MSF’s Global Digital Steering Committee and, as the Sponsor of MSF’s Digital Fundraising Working Group, works to expand the digital fundraising capacity of fellow MSF offices around the world.
Shannon stumbled into “new media” while volunteering for a political campaign and has worked throughout the nonprofit digital space ever since. More recently, she was Senior Manager for Digital Fundraising and Marketing at Power to Decide, the campaign to end unplanned pregnancy, in addition to previous roles at SOS Children’s Villages USA, Chapman, Cubine, and Hussey, and Salsa Labs.
Shannon has a BA in Anthropology and History from the University of Rochester and a MA in International Relations and Diplomacy from Seton Hall University because she originally planned on entering the Foreign Service. She’s a proud Chicagoan with very strong opinions about pizza but refuses to root for the Cubs on principle.
Molly Brooksbank
Senior Advisor, Digital Strategies
Sierra Club
From fundraising to organizing, marketing to campaigning, executive management to IT, I’ve helped teams of all sizes adapt to rapidly shifting social and technical challenges for over two decades.
My work is driven by a passion for inspiring people to push their own boundaries and reach new levels of success. As a changemaker I thrive on challenging myself and my peers to aim higher, so that together we can overcome the most urgent challenges of our times — climate change, fixing our democracy, and social justice.
At the Sierra Club–the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization–I have supported mass mobilizations, led digital transition, built a marketing team, and managed through every kind of change. In addition I offer individual mentoring, coaching, and strategic consulting to nonprofit managers and executives, with a focus on leadership, change efforts, management practices, and organizational strategy.
Prior to Sierra Club I was a consultant and marketer at Convio, where I supported over 75 organizations with digital strategy; among them Boys and Girls’ Clubs of America, JDRF, ASPCA, and many top PBS/NPR stations.
When I’m relaxing you will find me at home in the Texas hill country inventing a new recipe, camping, kayaking, or just taking a healthy break from our 24/7 digital world with my family.