Founder Interview with Rob Geeson – Data-Driven Success

The potential benefits of digital transformation for charities are enormous. By leveraging digital tools and platforms, charities can optimise their operations, enhance donor engagement, and demonstrate their impact more effectively. SoGood Partners was founded to address this gap, offering donated time and technology to help charities embrace digital change. We asked Rob Geeson, Founder and Technology Director, for some of his insights.

As the Technology Director at SoGood, how do you see the impact of digital transformation on the charity sector?

The charity sector has not had front-row seats to the digital transformation show that has been running for over twenty years. If a charity were to attend the show at all, they would tend to be sitting in the cheap seats. The transformational technologies adopted by the private and, to a lesser extent, the public sector have been a product of their commercial value. Sadly, the charity sector is often unable to pay the handsome prices that new technology often demands. The net effect is that they have been left behind. 

This situation isn’t entirely ubiquitous—around 4% of all UK charities have £1m or more in funding each year and can afford new technology. Indeed, the 61 ‘Super-Major’ charities whose annual income exceeds £100m will have departments and systems to rival any commercial organisation. These will be the big names everyone knows, but they account for an infinitesimally small 0.04% of all UK charities. Read Paul’s article on Level up charity funding here for more on this subject.

According to NCVO, 47% of charities (77,295 in all) must survive on less than £10k per year (just over 1% of total available charity sector funding). A further 54,431 charities (33% of the total) exist on £10k—£100k per year. This leaves nothing to tempt technology providers, developers, or consultancies that specialise in delivering digital transformation. 

The potential impact of digital transformation in the charity sector is, therefore, enormous. 

This is one of the core reasons why we founded SoGood Partners. We want to plug this hole. This is why we are talking about helping to level up the charity sector. We’re genuinely committed to helping as many charities as possible take advantage of the power of technology to ensure they remain viable and those in need get help.

What are the primary challenges and opportunities you have faced at SoGood when developing charity sector technologies?

The normal challenge we face is financial. As stated above, many of the charities we talk to have little or no money for technology. This, however, does not hold us back. As a non-profit organisation, SoGood is not looking to be paid for the work we do. Our time and technology are donated to all but the largest charities. 

The next challenge is the appetite for change – or ambition to evolve. Charities have to want to look at better ways of working. They must recognise that funding is going to be increasingly challenging and that more has to be done with less if they are to survive. This is why we only work with charities who want to embrace the opportunity to transform. 

On the technical side, the most common issue we encounter is the lack of quantitative data in the charity sector. It is impossible to manage an organisation without data. Much of our effort in the first year of operation has been identifying what data to measure, collect and analyse. We created three central themes around Visibility, Awareness, and Collaboration. 

How has SoGood used digital tools and platforms to solve client problems and meet their strategic goals?

My career has been based on implementing data management and analytical solutions, which is the core of what I bring to SoGood. Data analytics and digital insights are becoming increasingly crucial in the charity sector, transforming how organisations operate, make decisions, and measure their impact. 

Our work with charity partners to date has focused around the above three themes. Perhaps the most technically intensive work I have done is creating the Charity Mapper – part of Visibility. The premise for this solution is to literally map the UK charity landscape. Unbelievably, nothing like this exists already.

We identified the data sources we imported, manipulated, and combined. For instance, the Charity Commission for England and Wales makes the list of all registered charities available, but with very little categorisation. Unlike Companies House SIC (Standard Industrial Classification) codes that denote what a business does, the Charity Commission data is flat. We built algorithms that scanned description fields and even crawled the internet to be able to apply categorisation to the base data. This was then further enhanced through the cleaning of addresses, the addition of postcodes, local authority boundaries, etc. Scotland and Northern Ireland data is being added to complete the UK picture. We’re also running a data project that aims to identify (and plot) the location of every charity touchpoint in the UK. Consider charity shops and other physical presences that belong to a charity – there could be hundreds for each. We estimate that will generate over a million locations across the UK.

Data-driven decisions which optimise operations and engage donors with demonstrable impact and greater transparency. By developing a data-driven strategy and culture, investing in the right technology, ensuring data quality, and leveraging advanced analytics techniques, non-profit leaders can harness the power of data to drive significant positive change and achieve their mission more effectively.

Drawing from your experience, what best practices would you recommend charities use to navigate the digital transformation journey?

My experience has taught me to keep things simple. We work with our charity partners to identify specific ‘use cases’ – meaning particular operational scenarios where technology could improve things. We then tackle each use case individually, ensuring we deliver a solution that works. This co-creation approach also helps increase our partners’ likelihood of adopting our solutions. Our approach also allows for the informal transfer of digital skills.

In your role at SoGood, how do you see the importance of data and analytics evolving in the charity sector, and how can organisations harness these tools to drive impact?

This question goes to the heart of what we’re doing at SoGood. It is impossible to measure and optimise without data, to plan and forecast without data, and to demonstrate impact without data. Charities are under huge pressure to do all these things, and we’re here to help. 

Given historical under-investment, there is a lot of work to be done. We’re starting small, making meaningful grass-roots changes that deliver results. Our solutions to date sit side-by-side, and we expect this to continue. For instance, the Charity Mapper can help identify relevant charities that could collaborate using the Community Platform.  

Could you share examples of digital strategies that have been successfully implemented in the charity sector?

The best success stories of digital transformation in the charity sector exist in fund-raising. Perhaps unsurprisingly, commercial businesses identified an opportunity to create targeted solutions and services for the sector directly related to where money can be found. They also appeal to the over-riding charity fund-raising imperative – an essential activity to ensure the survival of any charity. Solutions such as JustGiving are no doubt effective at unlocking inbound donations from the wider population. They also charge a service fee – 5% in the case of JustGiving.

SoGood is intentionally looking to bring the power of digital transformation to other areas of charity operations. These activities are further away from the money and typically unattractive to the commercial sector. 

What advice would you give to charities looking to balance new digital technologies with the need to maintain personal, human-centred connections with their stakeholders, donors and volunteers?

Technology is only a tool to help people. It is not a replacement for people, especially in the charity sector. Data-driven decision-making will eliminate waste and increase efficiency, but this is all in the service of delivering more to service users. Technology can be used to measure and communicate the impact of charitable relief, but it cannot replace the emotional connection to a charity’s purpose and mission. Of all the sectors, I am confident that the charity sector is the least likely to forget the importance of human connections.