In the efforts by nonprofits to make the world a better place, innovation takes many forms, but all of them have one common goal: enabling new ways to make a positive, lasting, impact – on more people than ever before. This is why digital innovation is essential to overcome - directly or indirectly - the complex challenges we face, from pandemics to climate change, and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals targets by 2030.
The direct benefits of digital innovation can be seen in its many applications in humanitarian and development programmes. Thanks to digital solutions, for instance, UNICEF was able to reach three billion people through risk communication and community engagement around COVID-19. The WFP estimates that 8.6 million people benefited from the initiatives supported by their Innovation Accelerator in 2021. And digital innovation has hardly begun to show its full transformational potential: with more than a third of the world’s population still offline - i.e., without access to many of the benefits of the online world – the reach and impact of digital solutions can only grow as organisations and governments work towards bridging the digital divide.
The indirect benefits of digital innovation, on the other hand, come from gains in internal efficiencies. Nonprofit organisations, like companies in other sectors, can leverage new technologies to enable a better use of resources, for example by automating routine work to free up time for more value-added activities.
According to Deloitte’s Innovation Study 2021, 80 per cent of CIOs and tech leaders say they are driving their companies’ innovation efforts. CIOs in the nonprofit sector are no exception.
Let’s have a look at some inspiring examples:
Digital innovation promises to boost the ability of nonprofits to make an impact in many different ways – but it comes with its challenges. For the promise to be fully delivered, CIOs need to be empowered by the entire organization leadership to drive change. They must embrace their role of digital innovation catalysts, mobilizing and bringing together different departments and geographies to guide them into the future now - knowing that every missed opportunity to unleash the power of digital is a missed opportunity to advance the world towards the SDGs.
Thank you to Biancamaria Tedesco for her valuable contribution to this article.