Tech For Good – sharing our knowledge!

“Tech for Good” is the term usually used to describe organisations, technologies, projects and people that are having a positive impact on society. We hope we play a small part by helping make the world a more accessible place through our disabled access review website www.EuansGuide.com. 

We're a small but mighty charity only able to do what we do using tech, and we're always keen to learn from others who can help us super charge our work! 

To that end, we’ve been a fan of Catalyst’s Shared Digital Guides since we first heard about them. These guides are “How To’s” written by over 40 organisations sharing their knowledge of how they use digital tools to run their services and operations.

We’re pleased to have taken part, focusing on Airtable which we use for a lot of things include our team’s giant to do list, our content calendar, managing press mentions and tracking funding applications, the latter we used to create our guide Managing Grant Applications and Reporting using Airtable.  

The main reason we use Airtable is that it’s accessible to all members of our team regardless of what device or assistive tech we’re using. We’re a hybrid workplace so it also enables us to work simultaneously and, very importantly, it is affordable to us which is helped by their non-profit discount.  

If you’re a charity doing something useful with a digital tool check out Catalyst’s Shared Digital Guides and they can turn your work into a Guide that helps others facing similar challenges.  

A couple more things that maybe useful to fellow charities… 

Back in 2016 we published a blog 12 Tech Tools We Love – A Guide for Charities which featured some good tools offering discounts to charities. (Information correct at time of writing.)  

If you haven’t already, check out Charity Digital (formerly known as the Charity Technology Trust) to find out about access to free and discounted software for charities through their Charity Digital Exchange Programme including Microsoft, Adobe amongst many others. They also provide loads more services, many of them free, including podcasts, webinars, videos, events and more.  

And when it comes to digital accessibility we recommend checking out Abilitynet. They do many, many things including run TechShare Pro the annual accessibility and inclusive design conference and the Tech4Good Awards celebrating the amazing people and organisations using tech to make the world a better place. (Full transparency – we’ve been nominated more than once!). Whatever your understanding of digital accessibility they have useful information including affordable online training and have many free resources too.  

Born in Scotland but now working with charities all over the UK, the Scottish Tech Army match charities with passionate volunteers from the UK’s tech community to find solutions to some of your tech problems. You don’t need to worry about how it will be done - you just have to be able to describe the problem you are facing and the Scottish Tech Army will take responsibility for assessing the technical feasibility and the level of effort to deliver it. If they think we can help, they will match you with volunteers to work with you on the solution. 

Lastly – if you’re based in Scotland and some or all of your work could be described as a ‘start up’ then make sure you’ve checked out Techscaler, a Scottish Government programme delivered by CodeBase. It is a programme for creating, developing and scaling tech startups, they connect you with the experts, teach you world-class playbooks, and host spaces for fellow founders and startup folk to work and hang out. We’ve been lucky to have been based in CodeBase since 2018 and we’re now enjoying being part of the wider Techscaler community.  

Tags: tech for good, tech, tech tools, euans guide, 2023