We are a growing network of progressive member organisations committed to teaming up on tech to win. We want a world where progressive organisations and activists have the best tools possible, and the skills and support to use them.
The Progressive Tech Network is in its founding stages - and so we're focussed on learning about our shared needs, and the key interventions we can make through collaboration. When the network launches in late August, members will have access to a library of shared tools, resources and code; training and mentorship programs; and a networked community who work together on solutions to shared challenges.
Read more about who we are and how you can join here.
It’s hard enough to win progressive change. It’s harder when our tech doesn’t work for us, and when we’re trying to solve our common challenges in isolation.
This survey makes the challenges clear: organisations report that they’re constantly reinventing the wheel, operating in silos, using inadequate tools with insufficient skills, making do with minimal investment, that the tech space is exclusionary, that tech staff are often unsupported, and that we’re not doing the long-term movement-wide thinking on tech that we need.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Networks like the Progressive Coders Network (US), the Movement Cooperative (US) and the OPEN Tech Network (international) show us how much we have to gain from working and learning together on tech here in Australia.
But it will take organisations coming together as a network to build the relationships and trust needed for tech collaboration to take root.
This report is based off a comprehensive survey that was completed by more than 50 tech/digital staff from across the progressive sector in Australia.
(e.g. social media or project manager of digital project)
(e.g. developer, data scientist)
Yearly budget for tech & digital, not including staff salaries
Other: Union Ware, Member Solutions, Redicase, Looker, Raisers Edge, IMiS, Kudos, Campaign Monitor, Drip, Airtable
Other: Membership Solutions, Wix, Forestry CMS, Prismic CMS, Raisely
Other: Membership Solutions, Braze, Mailgun, Active Campaign, CiviMail, Drip, Marketo, Supporterbase, Raisely
Other: Survey Monkey, Engaging Networks, Community Run, New/Mode
Other: ThruText, SMS Broadcast, SMS Magic, Plivo, DirectSMS, 5CentSMS, New/Mode, Spoke, Burst SMS, Vidcorp, Strive
Other: Jira, Excel, RaisersEdge, Union Central, Pipedrive, Airtable
Other: Salesforce, RaisersEdge
We all know anecdotally that the progressive sector’s tech isn’t working as well as we want it to - but what exactly are the problems and how widespread are they?
Organisations reported both a short term and a long term gap. Our tech isn’t working for us, or the communities we work with, on a day-to-day basis. But we’re also not doing the long-term planning and building we need to set our movements up for success in the future.
In short, the progressive sector wants better tech, but a number of factors are getting in the way. Key themes included:
The smaller the organisation’s budget, the more frequently these problems were mentioned – particularly the lack of resources, capacity and skills to execute a good tech program, as well as dissatisfaction with their current tech stack, particularly their CRMs. This often caused a reliance on agencies that strained limited budgets, and were not suitable for the rapid response nature of advocacy.
Some larger organisations mentioned a lack of data analytics tools, major issues with integrating multiple tools and a theme of resistance to change tech from senior management. Even though their organisations often had sufficient budgets, large NGOs and unions still consistently named the challenge of struggling to hire tech staff and lacking the inhouse tech skills for many projects.
Survey respondents named a huge range of tech priorities over the coming months, but themes included:
The majority of short-term priorities focussed on improving existing tools. For most organisations, this meant changing from one off-the-shelf database to another, rather than building new custom tools in-house - likely because of the lack of in-house dev capacity across the sector.
The most frequent tech desire across the sector is building custom tech. Both large and small organisations mentioned this as an ambition, particularly for building a new custom CRM to suit their campaigning and organising needs. Other tools mentioned included chatbots, peer-to-peer SMS, realtime monitoring and analytics dashboards, as well as automation and AI. Unions in particular frequently mentioned custom tech to support members.
The second most common response to this question, particularly frequent with large organisations, was better integrating tech tools.
Other ‘wishes’ included:
Smaller organisations mentioned the lack of capacity and budget as the number one roadblock. Whereas while budget constraints were still mentioned by some big organisations, the number one roadblock was the lack of internal tech expertise.
Other roadblocks mentioned included:
Collectively, we have the tools and capacity to solve the problems that we face - and progressive organisations are ready to collaborate to make this happen.
Survey participants said they would consider sharing their current technology, and contributing to developing new open tools for like-minded organisations. People named a wide variety of tech and digital skills they wanted to learn - most of which were skills that other participants said they were able to share. The majority of organisations want to collaborate but just haven’t had the relationships or a space to do so.
It is interesting to compare people’s long-term and movement-wide infrastructure priorities, with their own organisation’s short-term priorities (Q2) and internal ‘wishes’ (Q3).
Long-term priorities that were also mentioned as short-term priorities and internal focusses included:
Long-term movement-wide priorities that were barely mentioned in earlier organisational priorities include:
These two long-term priorities – of accessibility and collaboration – are particularly important to highlight given there is a shared analysis of the need, but very few organisations currently have the capacity to prioritise them in their short-term plans.
The below responses to this question have been grouped and listed in order of frequency they were mentioned:
**A broad range of experience, knowledge and skills areas were mentioned including: coding, social media, organising tech and design.
The below responses to this question have been grouped and listed in order of frequency they were mentioned:
We are a growing network of progressive member organisations committed to teaming up on tech to win. We want a world where progressive organisations and activists have the best tools possible, and the skills and support to use them.
Our network of progressive campaigning organisations and the tech vendors & agencies who support us widens access to existing tech tools and skills, and drives longer term, movement-scale planning around the tech we need to fight for and win progressive change.
If your organisation hasn’t yet started a conversation about joining the network and you’d like to hear more, fill out this form to share what you’re keen to get out of it and what your organisation could offer. If you have any questions, please get in touch at [email protected]