History of Tech for Better

We have been doing work with nonprofits for five years. Over that time, our approach to that work has been in a continuous process of development.

In 2015, we started doing pro bono work for nonprofits and noticed that there was a big expectations mismatch between developer and client that was getting in the way of doing good work. From this, we learned the importance of having clients who understood the application development process.

In 2016, as part of the CAST Digital Fellowship, we piloted a series of design and build sprints with our graduating cohort. Then, in the following year, having learnt from the uneven experience of the 2016 fellows, we put together a dedicated team of developers to work with the 2017 fellows. This produced much more consistent results. The core of this team went on to form the InFact Co-op.

In 2018, we took our learnings from with the Digital Fellowship and initiated the Tech for Better programme, now running alongside our software developer training as a training programme for Product Owners.

Over the first two years that Tech for Better has been running, we have learnt that building products is a less urgent need than building expertise within the nonprofit sector. The focus of the programme increasingly reflects that insight.

In 2019, we joined the support team for Tech vs Abuse and attempted to introduce a whole layer of intensive collaborative engagement too late in the process to be truly useful. From this engagement, we learnt the importance of setting expectations early.

In March 2020, we collaborated with New Philanthropy Capital on My Best Life, involving a series of fully-online collaborative design sprints with three youth charities.

Then in May 2020, we took our combined learnings from all previous engagements and successfully applied it to the Collaborative Digital Training programme with CAST, consolidating our experience of using digital application design as a way to foster collaborative working between charities.

In October 2020, we were selected to be a digital partner on the Discovery Learning Programme alongside nine other digital agencies. From this programme we learnt the value of collaboration amongst digital partners alongside charities. This tailored programme helped guide nine charities with disparate user groups and levels of digital experience through a programme of practical learning and doing.