TelcoTogether Foundation Cynefin Project

Project Proposal

The proposed project aims to create a meaningful view of the key issues and challenges faced by the not-for-profit sector within Australia, in order to help inform future programs developed by the TelcoTogether Foundation.

Much of the relevant research to date regarding not-for-profit challenges have either focussed specifically on adoption and use of communications technology, or too broadly on general issues, such as access to funding.

The Foundation is seeking to develop practical programs involving the capabilities or technology of the telecommunications industry that can make a significant impact to the not-for-profit sector, and their ability to deliver services and help in the community. The existing research has been limited in terms of helping to inform these decisions.

Whilst the issues we are seeking to identify may be able to be solved by ICT and affiliated skills, they are unlikely to be easily identified as ICT-related by participating charities.

As such, we are seeking to run a Cynefin/SenseMaker qualitative research project using micro-narratives across 200 charities over a period of 3 months to help identify key pain-points related to service delivery and operational efficiency.

Project Objectives:

· Consult a wide range of charities and charity peak bodies to gather data on key pain-points in the delivery of their services

· Identify the common issues that are experienced most widely across surveyed charities

· Use the project findings to feed into a series of workshops to explore the possible solutions to these issues

This Meet-up be about:

We hope to kick-off this project(and it just occurred to me that we need a name for it) at the Meet-up by:

• Presenting a bit more detail about the Foundation/Project in person

• Presenting an outline of how this project might be run and workshop this together with the group

• Calling for volunteers from the Meetup Group to be involved on the project

• Coming to an understanding of the time-commitment required of volunteers and how this might be managed

We plan to run this project as a working group and report back up to the MeetUp forum.

We are also planning to engage with Cognitive Edge for consulting to review and advise on our work.

If you have been interested in getting involved in the not-for-profit sector, helping charities or just getting experience on a real Cynefin/SenseMaker project then this may be a great opportunity for you.

More About TelcoTogether:

Launched in July 2012, Telco Together is a registered charity creating a unified platform for enabling the telecommunications industry to make a significant social contribution within Australia. A key area of work is creating strategic community projects that build on telecommunications technology, reach and capabilities to support the community, with a specific focus on enabling the not-for-profit sector.

Members of the Foundation include Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, NBN Co, M2, iiNet, Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, and 15 other telecommunications service providers and equipment vendors. The Foundation is governed by an Advisory Board that has Executive Officer level representation from top members, and considers the strategic direction of Foundation projects.For more information, please visit our website www.telcotogether.org (http://www.telcotogether.org/) or follow us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/TelcoTogetherFoundation) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/TelcoTogether) and for more details about TelcoTogethers active projects read below.

Other current strategic projects include:

Apps4Change
A program helping charities better understand the use of mobile apps in a charitable context, with a website showcasing existing charity apps, as well as a Learning Centre containing resources for charities.

Mobile Giving
A program aiming to facilitate the use of mobile technology to increase charitable donations within Australia, either through SMS or other billing mechanisms.

OnBill Donations
A program that facilitates small customer donations through monthly invoices. A pilot program is in development and will be launched in 2014.