How to create a big network from small organisations

Project Background

The North Yorkshire Digital Inclusion Programme (NYDIP) was set up in 2024. It's a partnership between North Yorkshire Council, York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority and Community First Yorkshire. It’s bringing together a network of existing organisations, supporting them to train Digital Champions who can help people learn digital skills. The programme offers a mixture of capital and development funding accessed from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. We talked to Michael Fletcher from Community First Yorkshire, who coordinates the network, about how things are going....

What kinds of organisations?

Under the main umbrella of NYDIP, there are 40 separate projects, each with their own Project Manager running their own Digital Champions.

The organisations involved are hugely varied: church groups, village halls, housing associations, schemes based in GP surgeries, mobile libraries and refurbished buses. And charities that support carers or provide transport for older people; run community hubs and shops, support people with dementia, help kids use specialist educational apps, or provide digital help for those in palliative care….

It takes digital skills into the heart of so many different communities and builds on the idea that people learn best from “trusted faces in local places”, and want help with specific skills connected to their lives.

One of the striking things about the Network – and the way the issue impacts us all – is that most of these organisations were not established with combatting digital exclusion as their principle goal. Instead, they're organisations that have seen how digital use runs through so many aspects of their service users lives. And to help them, they need to provide help with digital.

It’s vital that training and project management is super flexible to fit all these organisations, who as well as having different priorities might have 45 Digital Champions or just a couple - and who are scattered across a big geographical area.

One thing to appreciate with the 40 organisations - 39 are offering digital as part of something else they’re already doing - to people who are already coming in and using their services. There’s only two that are doing bespoke digital sessions and nothing else.

Michael Fletcher

DI Project Manager, Community First Yorkshire

Training - getting the balance right

As well as not being digital specialist organisations, most of the Digital Champions are volunteers. They all need to have good level of knowledge and confidence - but it's important that they're not overwhelmed by unrealistic training requirements. As Michael says, “You can’t get a volunteer to do 30 hours of training. And by the time they do, the project will be that far down the line, it’s nearly too late.”

NYDIP have put together a tailored package of both mandatory and optional training, delivered online and face to face. It's always difficult organising “real world” events, particularly in a county as big as North Yorkshire, but the balance between virtual and real, mandatory and optional seems to be working well.

home page of the digital champions network

Core Training

At its heart of the training is our very own Digital Champions Network. Champions have to complete nine mandatory courses (which are the six "Digital Essentials" and three others). They also have to fill in a privacy form via the platform. They can access all the other courses on the Network but these then things have to be done.

Themed Training

This is offered by 3 partners: Mind, AbilityNet and North Yorks Adult Learning & Skills Service. Training covers topics ranging from safe online behaviours and adapting tech to overcome disability-related barriers to spotting and supporting mental health issues (something that’s coming up more and more with Digital Champions across the country).

The balance for Project Managers

With such a range of organisations, the balance here is about providing the right support without being too prescriptive. Managers need the freedom to monitor their individual projects but Michael also needs oversight and understanding of what they’re achieving across the board and of the project as a whole.

The Digital Champions Network membership is set up so that there’s a single umbrella project. Michael can see everything, but each project has its own, branded page, and individual PMs can see their Digital Champions details and progress but no-one else’s. This is particularly important when working with volunteers who tend to use their personal email addresses – and it's vital that this kind of information is only accessed by the people who need to see it. You can find out more about how this works in this short film about how we tier projects.

Michael also runs regular monthly drop-ins for PMs - to share information, ideas and challenges. This contributes to the programme's goal to create something sustainable…

Speed vs. sustainability

Like many projects, funding is time limited. The network needs to be up and running and the money spent within a certain window. They're worked really hard to get some projects up and running quickly, and giving others more time to start later.

But it’s also important to create something sustainable that has the capacity to make a difference beyond the funding, if it ends. Or to continue to grow, if more funding comes through. This is a balancing act for lots of our clients.

The NYDIP is dealing with these challenges by investing in Champion training – so the skills stay in the community even if the funding stops. And by bringing organisations together to create a network, so if the overarching programme stops, at least people have connections and mutual support from each other.

Progress so far?

It’s exceeding expectations! They wanted 20 hubs, they’ve got 40. They wanted to have around 50 Digital Champions, they've got 300.

Hitting the numbers this way means Michael can now really drill down into what’s working and look at impact and lessons from their network in qualiatative way. We're really looking forward to seeing what they find out.