The health of teams working on digital strategy, platforms, and tools at non-profits has long been an indicator of their adoption of or resistance to wider trends around innovation and impact.

In the fall of 2017 we asked 80 advocacy-oriented nonprofits about the state of their digital teams and programs today. This is our third report on digital teams, this time co-authored with Austen Levihn-Coon, so we’ve been able to track trends over time.

Key takeaways from the 2018 Digital Teams Report include:

• When digital leads, we win. Having digital leaders on senior management teams and shaping new campaigns and initiatives is now proven to lead to more successful digital programs
• Is engagement just a word? The vast majority of respondents don’t measure engagement and lack dedicated staff + budget to lead it, showing engagement is still more of a concept than a deeply valued reality
• Distributed digital skills leads to better programs. We found teams with the highest performance digital programs are overwhelmingly using the hybrid team structure model
• We still struggle with structure. Three-quarters of teams have been re-structured in the past 3 years, yet only 10% find their structure to be highly effective. That’s a lot of painful change leading to uncertain results

Covering topics ranging from where digital teams now live, today’s key roles, shifts in team structures, sources of cross-departmental tension, and how we develop digital leaders, we offer an insight for each data point, and include four recommendations for helping our organizations become more effective by building better digital teams.

The path to greater impact is clear, we just need to take it.

The report is available for free by filling in this form.