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Description
The project addresses the difficulties in implementing long-term solutions related to sustainability, professionalisation and the organisation''s own internal development. Together with unstable funding, a decline in trust in NGOs and the inability to effectively promote their activities and reach out the public, this is a long-term problem that many organizations in the Czech Republic are dealing with. At IQ Roma servis, this is particularly the development of work with modern technologies, digitalisation and work with supporters.
The main objective is to strengthen the financial, professional and staff capacity of IQ Roma servis in several key areas that will positively affect its sustainability, transparency and credibility.
Through the project, we will identify the current status and progress in the problem areas, which will be followed up by the revision and implementation of processes that will streamline and modernize workflows and have a positive impact on the work of the organization and the status of the nonprofit organizations.
The main activities of the project are the effective digitalisation of the work in the organisation, the improvement of staff competences in the field of data handling, tracking impact in organisational practice and the development of work with supporters.
The target group of the project is the organization''s staff, who will be involved in the project according to the plan for effective digitalization. The second target group is selected staff who work with the public or work with data. Both target groups will increase their competences in selected areas in the long term, which will lead to the strengthening of the organisation andf their staff.
Summary of project results
According to the CVVM survey of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (9/2020), only less than a third of respondents trusted NGOs. Better at effectively
promoting their activities and reaching out to the public are especially the larger and more professional NGOs and those that seek to diversify their funding. Moreover,
dependence on subsidies in many cases leads to organisations not having free resources that they could use for promotion or further development.
The problem of the non-profit sector in the Czech Republic is the difficulty of implementing long-term solutions related to sustainability, professionalisation and internal
development. The main causes include unstable funding of NGOs or declining trust society. The coronavirus pandemic has also become a significant challenge, introducing an
element of increased demands on digitalisation.
IQ Roma servis is also currently struggling with the problems described above. From the audit of the reliability assessment of the organization (AVPO, 2021) revealed that the
organization''s weaknesses include the areas of digitization and cybersecurity combined with working with and presenting data. One of the challenges defined in the strategic
planning of the organisation proved to be also the lack of engagement with the public and presentation of the impact of the work. The measures to counter the spread of
COVID-19 have brought significant pressure on the work in the online environment and in IQRS over the past 2 years. It has highlighted gaps in the capacity of the organisation
and the staff themselves to use digital technologies. And this was found even for the types of positions and staff for whom a basic level of digital competence was previously
sufficient since their other skills and knowledge were being developed as a priority.
Through the presentation of the organisation''s activities, we perceive a positive impact on public and supporter confidence in the organisation. Strengthening the capacity of
the organisation through strengthening human resources in the area of public relations has led to the introduction and use of fundraising techniques, which has had a positive
impact on strengthening the financial stability of the organisation. We consider the biggest contribution of the project to be the significant shift in the area of digitalisation, where
intensive work has been done to have more effective digital workspace in the organisation. A total of 76 out of 78 employees successfully passed the basic digital competency
test, which is 97% of the workforce. We did not count departing colleagues in the statistics. 2 workers who failed the test were the cleaning worker, and the most senior worker
of the organisation who found working with digital tools more challenging than the rest of the organisation. However, the area of digital is more challenging than we anticipated
and therefore we perceive a strong need to continue to focus on this area after the end of the project. There has also been an increase in competencies in data visualisation and
presentation of impacts and activities of the organisation, but also in the broader area of data handling. Last but not least, the project has also had a positive impact on the cyber
security of the organisation, through the identification of cyber risks and subsequent work to address them (for example by migrating data from the Trello platform to MS Office
365''s Planner tool).
The main beneficiaries of the project were employees of the organization. The project had the positive impact on the beneficiaries mainly in two areas. First of
all, selected employees received training in the area of data handling which led to more effective handling of data collection as well as evaluation. Second of all,
a very important outcome of the project was an improvement of orientation in the digital environment of the organization through the completion of a series of
training sessions and exams on basic digital competencies.
The project also had a positive impact on the second target group, namely the supporters of the organization, who were more informed about the activities of
the organization thanks to the project.