 Good afternoon, good evening, and good morning, welcome. My name is Vojtek Rustetski, I'm a Senior Director of Solution Services at TechSoup and I'm joined from Warsaw, Poland. Whoever you represent, one of the more than 400 foundations for more than 100 corporations we collaborate with, or you're here on behalf of one of the 63 TechSoup Global Network partners situated all around the world or your brand-new TechSoup Global Network, hi, we are eager to connect with you. TechSoup is a nonprofit social enterprise that connects nonprofits with mission-critical resources worldwide. It's a funding member of the TechSoup Global Network. We are glad you're here. In the first of our new series, Civil Society Insights brought to you by the TechSoup Global Network. We are expecting attendance from all around the world today, including impact leaders, funders, and change makers from civil society organizations of all sizes. Please introduce yourself in the chat and indicate where you're joining us from today. Today's event is a deep dive into local data and analysis for greater impact. Fantastic set of leaders I admire from GERD Resource Center in Ukraine, Hauster Stiftens in Germany and Todesny Via from Czech Republic will share what they've asked and learned from three unique studies focused on the organizations they serve. Listening closely to our communities and exploring and surveying their particular needs local NGO space is critical in TechSoup Global Network. Together, we can learn from the data and make decisions to guide resources that can lead more people to do significantly more good. The TechSoup Global Network connects the largest civil society network in the world with a vital philanthropic supply chain. Let me share some data with you. Over more than 15 years, it has facilitated more than 50 billion US dollars in resources for the civil society sector. Thanks to the Global Network, 178,000 organizations in 236 countries and territories were connected with over two billion US dollars in software and financial resources last year. With a local presence of some of the most effective technology for good nonprofits in 63 countries and operating in 39 languages, our network gathers a vast amount of local insights about the people and organizations from all around the world. And we gather information like what can help those organizations to succeed and how to solve some of the help, like how to, sorry, how to, we gather all the information and we try to analyze those information and together we can help them solve some of the worst, most challenging problems. We are happy to have a chance to share with you some of the insights we've gathered and we can try to work and improve together. Today's event is sponsored by Cloud Signature Consortium. The Cloud Signature Consortium is a global group of industry, government and economic organizations committed to driving standardizations of highly secure and compliant digital signatures in the cloud. Just to note that all lines are muted, but you will be able to ask questions at any time by typing them in the Q&A panel of a webinar. You can also ask questions and share comments in the audience chat. And you will receive emails with these presentations, recording and links so you can go back and watch anything you might have missed. And now I have the great pleasure of introducing our moderator, Jana Salivan. Jana is founder and CEO of Conscious Consulting, the first sustainability agency in Brussels where she advises institutions, businesses and civil society. She's also professor of climate diplomacy at the European Institute in Nice and a Polish author on sustainability engagement. Thank you, Jana and over to you. Thank you, Wojtek. Thank you. I'm delighted to be here today. I've got a deep personal commitment to seeing NGOs in Europe, her voice and agency. And digital capital is key, capacity is key to that. Before we meet our speakers, we have just an hour today, so a very short session. I want to start by reflecting on digital transformation together with you. So why is digital capacity particularly important to civil society? What do we as society risk if access to technology is not fairly shared across all of society? Why is it vital to enable civil society access to technology and cloud-enabled operations? We really want to hear from you, so do put your questions in the Q&A as we proceed, we'll get to the questions later, we'll get to answer them. So today we have three TechSoup global network partners with us. They surveyed thousands of local organizations in the Czech Republic, in Germany and in the Ukraine to understand their digital maturity and their needs. And I see the responses in the reports and they clearly show that civil society organizations, they need access to technology and they need essential digital resources, digital infrastructure and digital operations to continue to build essential capabilities to make the world a better place, helping their local communities one person at a time. Whether it's providing food or shelter, protecting human rights, driving social justice or defending the world's forests or oceans, digital transformation maximizes organizations' power to do more good. I have now the great pleasure to introduce our speakers to you, our three dynamic speakers. First I want to introduce Marcus Becker. He is Director of IT for Nonprofits and Grants for Nonprofits at the Haustis Diffdens, which is a social enterprise and certified B Corporation serving NGOs in Germany, Austria, Lichtenstein and Switzerland. In 2020, Haustis Diffdens supported 80,000 NGOs, enabling them to save 40 million euros on technology. Well, HGS has been a partner in the TechSoup Global Network since 2008, facilitating technology donations worth more than 500 million euros and Marcus is joining us today from Munich, Germany. Hello, Marcus. Next I want to introduce you to Radka Bistriska. She is Executive Director of the Czech Nonprofit Organization via VIA Association, which helps Czech nonprofits with digitalization and technology and provides them with the tools and knowledge needed to successfully function in the digital world. VIA offers a range of capacity building workshops and a portal connecting corporations and volunteers with Czech NGOs. And hello, Radka. She's joining us today from Prague in the Czech Republic. Welcome. And last but not least, Bogdan Maslish is Executive Director of Gut Resource Center, if I pronounce that correctly, Ukraine's premier accelerator of societal transformation, important role there. It reaches more than 50,000 registered users through its online portal and reaches the largest constituency civil society organizations in the country. So since 2016, Gert has been a partner in the TechSoup Global Network, enabling Ukrainian civil society organizations to benefit enormously from donated and discounted software, promoting digital transformation of Ukrainian society. Gert promotes open governance, digital literacy and access to grants and funding for civil society organizations. Welcome, Bogdan. He's joining us today from Kyiv in Ukraine. So we have a wide range of speakers for you today. So each of the teams of our speakers survey thousands or hundreds of civil society organizations independently. But there are some overlaps in the findings that are central to our discussion today. So I'm going to ask the first question so we can get to the answers, because that's why you're here. So first, all of you, please share briefly why and how you conducted your research and please share an interesting finding. I'm going to turn to Bogdan, over to you. Thank you, Joanna. I'm a little bit nervous because we're going to talk about very important issue of digital transformation for civil society. So please forgive my, I don't know, temptation. So speaking about what we do in Ukraine, we actually conduct bi-annual study of digital needs of Ukrainian non-profits. You may see that different donors, including Charles Todd Mott Foundation, SIDA, the Swedish government, and US Embassy in Ukraine, they supported these studies in different years. Last study in 2020, we collected 1,000 responses from Ukrainian non-profits. And it's a pretty good number. And in order to stimulate Ukrainian non-profits to participate in the study, we even announced a drawing for different prizes among respondents. For example, we offered them free software licenses, even power banks, and due to support of US Embassy in Ukraine, we offered our services helping Ukrainian non-profits to deploy different cloud solutions. You may see from the picture that our study actually proved assumptions that lack of funding and lack of knowledge are key barriers that do not allow Ukrainian NGOs to use available ICTs in full capacity. The study results, why it's important for us, because these results, they are guiding us in planning our activities on how to help Ukrainian non-profits to overcome these key barriers. We constantly disseminate information on available funding to cover expenses of digital transformation. We also offer different educational programs, both online and in face-to-face formats. And I also would like to mention that we had a great event presenting these results to Ukrainian audience. And besides non-profits and donors, we were happy that Ukrainian IT companies participated in this presentation and also representative of Ministry of Digital Transformation. So the report was particularly very important because it provided a mirror to Ukrainian non-profits and especially in the area of cybersecurity. But probably we can talk about it later. Thank you very much Bogdan. I'm gonna ask the same question actually to Radka now. So please share why and how you conducted your research and share an interesting finding. Thank you Bogdan, I wish to you Radka. Thank you. So we conducted our research at the beginning of this year with cooperation with the Local Open Society Foundation. We gathered more than 300 responses. It was a very long survey. So we are very happy that we have this many valid responses. And the study or the survey was covering broad range of topics from office software and hardware, infrastructure, cybersecurity, electronic signatures to obstacles and priorities that organization face when it comes to IT development. We did the study because we are first, we are not aware of any similar study of this scale conducted in Czech Republic previously. And so far we were working on many assumptions that we have had about the NGO sector when it comes to their IT needs, which came from our own work with the NGOs of course, but we said it's time to have like really hard data to confirm our assumptions. And a lot of those assumptions were confirmed. Some findings were surprising for us, especially for me, the most surprising was that there is a big lack of hardware offers for non-profits or there is a very high need in a non-profit sector for new hardware or rather that they have old hardware which does not support the work that they have. And I kind of thought that this problem was solved already and apparently it's not. So that was one of the big ones. Or for example, the state of security, IT security in non-profits in Czech Republic is maybe a bit worse than I expected. So, yeah. And also I want to mention that the survey show that there are actually six types of organizations when it comes to using their IT and when it comes to their needs and priorities. And this was very interesting to me to see that there can be statements made about the whole sector, but there are very important nuances when we look into more detailed data. So that's something that we want to work with much more as an organization in the future. Thank you very much. So we'll get to those nuances a bit later. So we've heard from wide range. I mean, there's a common theme there, cybersecurity already it seems, but also some surprising findings in terms of lack of hardware. Okay, Marcus, over to you. What did you find in your survey? Thank you, Joanna. And I just want to take a moment and appreciate the opportunity of being on this panel today. So thank you to the Texas Global Network, our sponsors, and obviously excited Radka Bogdan to have a conversation with you today. So you also, I think, asked about why go on this endeavor and at some point also quite painful, I must admit endeavor of conducting research on a larger scale. Our why is pretty simple. I think we as a B Corp, we want to start a conversation and we want to start an honest and open conversation with all relevant actors around civil society on what is the status quo of digitization in Germany. We felt strongly that there's not enough evidence around to have a serious and solid conversation on this. And that's why we felt strongly and compelled to start on that journey. And as with all big journeys, et cetera, it's better to not go alone. So we also went ahead and partnered with what we believe, strong institutions that can complete our skillset as a social enterprise. So we're incredibly fortunate, A, to partner with the University of Mannheim as one of Germany's leading research universities as a scientific elite, and B, with the Federal Ministry of the Interior. They were kind enough to sponsor this research with a generous research grant. Just to share maybe two numbers on scope and research to also compare that with the Czech and Ukrainian research that you heard about already, we had about 5,000 non-profit respondents. The average time to complete is very similar to Rutger yours, about 35 minutes and all of this accumulated in 1.3 million data points that we're able to collect on this topic. So I'm happy to dive into all of this at detail, but just to the audience, all of this data is more or less publicly available at our homepage. And we'll share the link afterwards also with an English-speaking executive summary. And I'll leave it at that for now. Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much, Marcus. So another question then, let's get a bit deeper now. So what about the kind of perspective of the non-profit? So based on your findings, all of you, what is the typical, if there is such a thing, non-profit look like in your country in terms of resources or digital resources, budget, staffing, digital capacity and so forth. I'll turn first to Rutger. Yeah, thank you. So as I kind of started to say in the previous segment, it's really hard to say how the typical non-profit looks like, because there are many, many types of non-profits, but when it comes to IT behavior, the study showed us or from the study, we derived six basic clusters that show similar behavior within the group in the cluster. And the access in which we divided the clusters were first the type of organization. And that is, we call them civic, volunteer and professional, but to simplify it, let's say the professional organizations are those who are employee-based, volunteer organizations are those who are volunteer-based, but they do have some kind of a center who you can imagine organization like Scout. So they have a few employees who support a large network of volunteers. And the civic organizations are those who I would describe as activist-based. So you would have your local group fighting against corruption in the municipality or something like that. They do it completely in their free time. It's not their main work. So this defines the way they conduct business, if I may use these words, but it showed that we need to do a more nuanced diversification and based on budget slightly and mainly on the number of actual employees. And then when we look into these clusters, we can see big differences between them, like big professional organizations. I'm saying that means 50 plus employees, for example, tend to use Microsoft-based tools or Microsoft tools. The smaller organizations tend to use Google tools and that there's like really significant data for supporting this. Or for example, the big professional organizations stayed as the biggest obstacle that the employees don't want to learn how to use new technology. So not the money, but the employees. The smaller organization, it's the money, it's the lack of funding. So based on that, we can see really interesting differences and one of the things that we did that we made a profile of those six clusters describing all these nuances. That's really fascinating. Wow, how does that compare with Germany, Marcus? Yeah, I think we'll most likely, obviously we didn't ask the same nonprofits, but we would most likely find similar clusters. And I just wanna maybe illustrate that with two data points. In our research, we found that only around 17%, often nonprofits actually have a dedicated resource to IT. And so we're not even talking about is that resource willing to learn? Do we have enough time, et cetera? It's just, is it there? Do we have a focal point, a go-to person who takes care of that topic? And if you look at that number of nonprofits to say, who raised their hand and say, oh yeah, I do have someone staffed that is 70% of those have one person. So that is marginal, I think is fair to say. And this is just obviously one shallow data point that allows us to get a sense of how things are. So what we try to do in our research overall is identify certain set of variables and build a model out of that. And that model was aimed at measuring something that we call digital maturity. So how fit, how trained is a nonprofit overall in digital topics? And we find supporting evidence that overall this digital maturity, this fitness, this digital actually has a positive impact on KPIs that we presume are relevant for organizations such as how are you able to retain employees? How are you able to retain supporters? How effective are you in campaigning and keeping your messaging across to your target audiences? So I think the bottom line there is that, that resourcing in IT, et cetera, directly affects how effective you can be as an organization. Wow, so it seems like we have to move from like marginal to mainstream to maturity if we wanna still enable NGOs to have a really strong impact over time. I mean, the digital world is changing so fast and they obviously need to keep up. Bogdan, how does that look in Ukraine for you? In Ukraine, we have over 100,000 registered on governmental organizations now. And the structure of the sector is pretty similar to what Ratka described. So it's almost the same. And the majority of sector is based on volunteer work. And probably it can be surprising for the world that almost half of Ukrainian non-governmental organizations have annual budget that is less than 4,000 US dollars. Maybe this fact explains why 41% of the world NGOs do not have any IT professional who may help them with understanding and satisfying their digital needs. And on this graph, you may see that only 12% of Ukrainian NGOs, they actually confirmed that ICT information communication technologies they actually use fully meet their needs. And almost one third, you may see almost one third of Ukrainian NGOs, they do not pay any attention to match their needs and available ICT. So there's a lack, there's a need, that's for sure. And what about the COVID-19 pandemic then? How has that impacted NGOs in your communities? Marcus, what about Germany? How has it gone down in Germany? How have NGOs been impacted by the pandemic? Has this made things worse? Yeah, I think in this case actually, I will say that this sounds odd to begin with, but I hope that you and the audience can follow along. We got tremendously lucky with that pandemic in a sense that we actually conducted our research in October of 2019. So just before the pandemic started to hit. And then we actually were able to collect a second wave mid-pandemic as of this mid this year. So we actually have two solid data points of the same nonprofits that we could look at and try to derive some understanding of what is happening there. And since you specifically asked about, sort of say some of the consequences that we can see is actually that, I think on an overall level, the message that the respondents are sending to us that yes, they were negatively affected, but mild inconsequence. That means that most of them actually believe that they can build back positive in a sense and that they actually will come out of this more resilient, which was, I must admit, quite a surprise to us. And actually to also just illustrate this with three concrete things that we heard as positive outcomes was number one, a positive understanding and sort of say recognition of the work that civil society organizations contribute to our society and improve feeling of community around constituents, but employees, et cetera. But also the space for learning and creativity. And I think we all know this from lockdowns and whatever you're personally in for the pandemic, there is space and you can try to utilize that in the best. And we see that in nonprofits in Germany for sure. Thank you. Radhika, do you have any thoughts on this? Yeah, so we did not ask specifically about how the organizations changed during the COVID or how the IT changed, but from what we can see in the results of the survey and what we hear in our daily work with NGOs, we speak with them on the phone, exchanging emails with them. Not surprisingly, the pandemic brought a super high adoption of cloud, like in a speed that we didn't see before. So we had many, many requests for the cloud services that are provided in cooperation with Taxu. We have had many questions about how to conduct online webinars, how to do online meetings, how to do home office effectively. And based on this demand, we had a few webinars on those topics and wrote some articles. So there are definitely kind of structural changes in the NGOs because they had to learn how to use cloud, et cetera. For example, in our study, we saw or 75% of respondents said that they are using cloud-based storage, which is very surprisingly high number. Though I would be careful because that does not necessarily mean that they are using it effectively and fully. It basically just means that someone in the organization is using it. But still, it's a super high number. And when I compare it to the data available in the Czech statistical office for the whole commercial sector, it's like seven times higher than the one Czech statistical office says is a standard in Czech Republic. So that's definitely an interesting change. That's fascinating. These data points that you're coming out with are really fascinating. And the data shows like really strong demand for digital capacity, that's for sure. But it seems there's also quite significant gaps in being able to meet that demand. And it's interesting to know how your local surveys generate findings that resonate globally. I was looking at TechSoup survey, which was funded by Okta. That was reflected 11,700 nonprofits across 135 countries and 41 languages. That was a mammoth piece of research and communications and collaboration tools like we all needed during the COVID-19 during the lockdown. They're the most desired digital solutions. So just to data point, a quarter of them have a defined strategy only for achieving digital readiness, where while only half of respondents have the resources to implement their strategy. So there's a great need. I can see some questions coming into the chat. Thank you for those. We're going to get to those in a minute. I'm just going to ask a couple more questions and then we're going to get to audience questions. So do put your questions in the Q&A. Do vote for the questions you find most important. But just a quick other question to you to I'll ask Marcus first. So what are some of the unique gaps you've identified through your research? So is it people skills or the infrastructure? I mean, you kind of touched on it a little bit, but what is it really that's most needed? Where are the real gaps in your research? Marcus first. Yeah, I think the answer on an aggregated level so on civil society as a whole needs to be both. I think this shouldn't become as a surprise. High-tech infrastructure without knowledge is probably pretty underutilized. And the other way around. So I think obviously on an individual organizational level, you would have to balance that out. But we see strong evidence in our data that that is a continuous challenge, that balancing act of know-how and resourcing and combining that and making sure that that grid is transitioned into your work is what is the most and crucial challenge to nonprofits. So right now our sort of say panel reports back that I think 15% of nonprofits see themselves both as resourced enough and knowledgeable enough to really rise to that challenge. Interesting. Yeah, so that's so what about Bogdan? I didn't ask you the previous question. I don't know if COVID has had a similar impact, but what is your feeling about the unique gaps that you've identified in your country in Ukraine? What does it look like there? What was it? Was it people or infrastructure or what's most needed in your perspective according to the data Bogdan? Thank you, Joanna. I agree with Marcos, it's both. But what was surprising for us that actually from 2018, the number of NGO representatives that have been trained in using, in digital security and using of different information communication technologies, this number remains the same. So it's less, it's about 20% of NGO representatives. And this graph is for me, it's pretty self-explanatory. So it's, I believe it's a huge gap that we have to somehow address for Ukrainian civil society. And also the issue of digital security, this issue appears again and again in our discussion. And unfortunately what we see that a lot of NGO leaders, they underestimating risks and threats that they can face if they do not pay enough attention to the issue of digital security. This graph demonstrates that only like, it's really very little number of organization, Ukrainian organization that practice so-called security audit. The vast majority, they either don't care about it or never heard about security audit as an option to understand the needs and plan capacity building in this area. Wow, that's a real worry indeed. Radka, what's your view? What are the biggest gaps? What have you identified? Yeah, I totally agree with both Markus and Vokdandat. The gaps are both on the infrastructural and the knowledge side. For example, our service showed that for the person of organization side, the lack of funding as the biggest career for IT development or development at all, which is not surprising, that's an evergreen NGO sector. But what was more surprising, and I hinted on that previously, that this was true for five of the six clusters that we had. But with the big employee-based organizations, suddenly there was the employee hesitation for adapting new technology was the number one. So I think that once you hit that stage that you have kind of enough money to cover your basis, you realize that the problem lays in the knowledge and that you need skilled employees to be actually effective when adopting new technology. So that definitely supports both what Markus and Vokdandat said. And I would also very much agree on the security issues. We specifically asked about things like, did your organization face some cyber attack? And did you have some data leaks in your organization? And for example, 29%, that means one of the three organizations that we ask or have experienced some kind of cyber attack. Some of those were attacks like phishing and stuff like that, but very often they said that they encountered website breaches or data breaches, like more sophisticated kind of or DDOs attacks or some kind of that. So third of our organizations are facing cyber attacks, which is a huge, huge number. And at the same time, only 35% of organizations have written cybersecurity rules and do educated employees on cybersecurity. So like the easiest or not easiest, but the cheapest way would be to support NGO sector to do this because the prevention, when it comes to cybersecurity prevention is the cheapest we can do. And it's very effective actually. So there is a huge gap definitely in that. Wow, and we're talking about real people and real issues and real data there. So obviously that's a real significant issue. I just wanted to come back to Marcus about, you know, we talked about funding, we talk about people, we talk about skills, but did you not have a data point? I looked at your research that there are other areas in terms of kind of organizational skills that take more than resources to fill. Marcus, did you have something to say about that? Yeah. And I think, Radka, you highlighted it as an evergreen, right? So I'm sure the audience, everybody that connects with civil society has, at some point in their professional or volunteer life, heard the evergreen of resource constrained organizations. What we find in our data is that, and what also I must admit to a certain extent, I believe is the largest challenge and worries me does, is that I think we believe to a certain extent organizations need to overcome what we call a very one-dimensional understanding of digitization. So that is most of the times I try to transfer a manual process, a pen and paper-based process via tools into something that is digital. And I want to be absolutely clear, this is an important prerequisite and that needs to be done. But the magic happens beyond that and that is really understanding what digital or what digital civil society organization can do at its core to really change the operational model, to really change how they serve their constituents, how they interact with their target audiences, how they derive their campaigning. All of this really has the potential to basically reinvent and hold organization. And we know that is by no means easy, especially if your resource constrained. Wow. So it's not just efficiency, but it's also like impact to be generated. Wow. Okay. So before we get to audience questions, thank you, Marcus. That's really an interesting insight. So we kind of digital transformation means kind of organizational transformation in a way in terms of impact transformation. So there's so much potential that's really interesting. But given what all of you have said that there's really a lack, oh, there's some real gaps here in all of the countries that really worries me, working as I do with many different campaigns, different NGOs, it's a capacity to deliver and protect that we really all rely on with NGOs in Europe. So they're facing increasing challenges. We all are. So democracy rule of law, rule of law, even media independence these days. And so the fact that NGOs may lack the digital capacity to defend basic rights, it worries me that we're supposed to be, they're supposed to be, we're all supposed to be stepping up to achieve the UN global goals in 2030. We're all acting for climate, tackling social inequity. And the fact that some NGOs may not have the digital capacity to communicate and collaborate is a real worry. Before I get to the audience questions, I just wanted to ask you all actually, so based on your own experience as well as the data, what are the main challenges for nonprofits in improving their digital capacity capabilities? I mean, can we be optimistic? And what's really needed? But Dan, I'm going to turn to you to answer this one first. I'm not sure that I'm going to be very optimistic, but I'll try my best. You know, we saw that actually the main challenge is the fact that NGO leaders, they are underestimating the importance of digital transformation. You know, we, as individuals, we all live in digital era, and we somehow take it as something that is already here. But it doesn't mean that our organizations are ready for all challenges. And it doesn't mean that we can effectively serve our clients, our beneficiaries in this digital era. And what we learned that NGO leaders in Ukraine, not all of them, of course, but the majority, they do not prioritize enough building digital competencies of their staff and volunteers. Also, we didn't see enough investment in the development of digital infrastructure of non-governmental organizations. These are main challenges we're seeing. Okay. Thank you. And Marcus, did you watch out something there? I think we need to be optimistic. This is the only pathway forward. And I think we rightfully should be optimistic if I think we, what we call is a mind the gap, right? So I think we are on the cusp of potential divide forming between more digital advanced nonprofits and their peers. That divide, our data shows comes with the risk of an uneven distribution of resources that is scared to begin with. However, if we close that, and if we make an effort to really take all of the nonprofits in civil society that we have, of the constituents that we serve, I think we can be optimistic and should be optimistic that the potential can also, that comes with the attestation can also be utilized for civil society as a whole. Yeah, that's a really good point. Radhika, did you want to have a final comment on that? And I'm going to throw the floor open to the questions. We've got several in the Q&A, Radhika. Did you want to have a comment on that? Yeah, maybe following up on the optimistic note is, well, we are Texas, we are here to help support nonprofits to actually do come to the future with us and use the technologies and the new technologies to their advantage, because that's the important thing. We don't want them to use the technologies just because, but we want them to use it to be more effective and to actually save their resources. And we all know very well that the resources that you have are very scarce. So anything that can help them save time and help them focus more on their actual mission and not to do infrastructural challenges of day-to-day operations, that's great. And I believe that for many organizations, a cloud can be really the first step into that, and that we should and need to support adoption of cloud in nonprofits for many reasons that we already said. First of all, cloud helps a bit with the hardware problem, because having cloud-based storage means that I don't have to have a physical server in my office that saves me money and saves me people who have to take care about that. Also, the cloud that is provided by the big companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and such is always 100 times more secure than any solution that the NGO would probably create by itself. So especially for small NGOs who cannot or do not have enough resources to take care of those issues and they have to prioritize something else, you know, moving to cloud can mean that they are suddenly just, their data is more secure just by doing that. Of course, it means that the employees have to have to work with the data in a certain way and they have to educate it in the threads, but still. And of course, moving to cloud or digitalizing your processes is the first step to automation and automation saves time for everyone. So, yeah, I see a lot of, I see a future where it can help NGOs very much. Yeah, and it's frankly great. I'm coming into this with a relative novice. I'm totally non digital, but I've worked with NGOs in this area for 20 years and it's amazing that they have your resource available to them. So that's really great. I'm just going to get to the audience questions now. So I'm going to ask the second one first just for fun, which is, where are we now, which is from, oh, that's the first question. Sorry. From ever, consult, if I pronounce that, will the data, oh, sorry, should there be a role for funders? I'm going to ask this to any of you who wants to answer, should there be a role for funders grant makers to propose, but also to fund along the digital gaps in the civil society organizations? So the question is, is there a role for funders like grant makers, foundations and others to propose as well as funding the digital gaps in CSOs and as well as to support learning on security and so forth? Should that be one of the actions as well towards the funding community? Who wants to go for that answer? Marcus, I'm looking at you, but whoever. I could try to start and Radka and Vodka maybe chime in. I would say a twofold one. In our work with House of Stiflens, we talk to founders, we talk to foundations who want to interact with civil society organizations and really make a difference and do that with the best of intentions. So if funders are in the audience directly to you, think of this as a twofolded opportunity. Number one is, we understand that funding work that directly correlates with impact is meaningful and is what is at the heart of most of funders and we appreciate that and I think that should also stay like this. I will say that I think there is an opportunity to just consider infrastructure cost opportunities, everything that goes next to the impact work that nonprofits do and consider that when you do fund organizations and the second one is a very, I think after today's conversation, almost an obvious opportunity is to think outside the box and maybe think about funding IT training directly, staffing all of the resource constraints, try to close the gaps that we talked about today. I think those would be good starting points. Okay, great. Does anybody else want to comment on that? I would like to follow up on that. Of course, that there is a role for funders in all this and if you are interested, come here. We are always looking for new partners to help us support nonprofits and we all benefit from a strong and efficient civil sector and nonprofit organizations because they do provide very essential services that no one else is providing. And very often times, if you are a big employer, they very often times provide services that your own employees need. So it's in everyone's benefit to support them and I know that supporting infrastructural needs does not sound very sexy, you are not saving lives of hungry children in Africa, you are not supporting climate change. But in a way, you actually are and even in a bigger scale, it's kind of hidden behind it. But organization that has the infrastructure that it needs to actually do their work efficiently is the organization you want to have. So I would maybe propose to companies and funders to be more willing to support and to give money and services that help with infrastructural needs because that's lacking. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly clear that without infrastructure, without the skills, without the capacity. I mean, I just imagine all of the work, I mean, I'm doing with the UN or the European Commission, it's all of these organizations investing so much in digital that if the NGOs, if civil society doesn't have that kind of equity, it's going to be really tough. I'm just going to jump to another question now from Paula Monti. You pointed out that the surveys covered also digital signatures adoption. I'm going to turn to you, Radhika, did you mention this? Can you provide us with specific findings on the use of electronic signatures in the interviewed organizations? I mean, is this technology already in use in these NGOs? Radhika, I'm going to come to you again for that question. Yeah, so we specifically asked about that in our survey and actually kind of surprisingly, it turns out that 40% of organizations do use some tools for electronic signatures. Though it mainly is because a lot of organizations got used to signing grant applications with the signature, with an certified electronic signature, which is provided by state because it helps them to hold the grant application process electronically and it's actually sometimes demanded by government institutions. So that's one of the reasons. So when we asked about the specific tools, then the certified electronic signature was like the number one tool, even though it's not a tool by itself. But also, we saw many organizations using solutions like the cosine and others. So yes, the NGO sector knows that it exists and they are using it. And I believe that the adoption can be bigger. We ourselves are using tools for electronic signatures and help us to create deals. So we are promoting it to NGOs very happily. That's great. And if I could, can I just build on that for 30 seconds? Because I think this also helps maybe illustrate something that I tried to explain earlier in more abstract terms and that is how do we think about being a digitized organization? And I think this is a good example of something that has historically been done with pen and paper, applying for grants, signing that, sending it by mail, etc. gets digitized. Amazing. But think about and what we want to encourage with organizations is think about how that larger topic, which I would consider is identity management. How do you legit know that the person that you are trying to serve work with is who they claim to be? How can you deliver a service faster via digital tool with the aid of identity management? How can you, if you are non-profits serving a certain subgroup within a community, knowing that their identity is cleared, have a better service to them? And I think this is the conversation that we need to start within the communities of, yes, transferring legacy processes, but also moving beyond that. And I think this is a great example for that. Excellent. Thank you, Marcus. I'm going to turn to another question now. And Bogdan, I'm going to ask you fast. Don't relax yet. We want to pick your brain. So we have another question. Will the data, what will the data use be used for from the research that you've undertaken? Will it be used for drafting recommendations or maybe concrete actions to improve the state of play in the information, communication and technology sector, ICT, if I've got that right. And if actions, who do you think should take the leading role in implementing those actions? So the question's all about, what are you going to do now with the research data? Is it going to be used for recommendations, concrete actions? And how can you, what do you need, how do you expect to move forward in making, in filling those gaps, essentially, on the research? Bogdan? Thank you, John. I think all three of us just already mentioned that we use results to plan our own activities. We also promote results to maybe influence is a hard work, but try to somehow influence priorities of funders, donor organizations. And again, there's TechSoup Global Network. I think it's a great vehicle. It's a great instrument to promote all these results in order to try to have global influence. Very interesting. And so Marcus or Radhika, did you have something else to say? So that should be jumped to the next question. Okay. Well, actually, I got a question now. And I want to ask, I want to get back to the cloud, actually. And I wrote down a question that is, what are you, what are you actually doing to help organizations move to the cloud? Marcus, Marcus first. I think this again starts with both infrastructure resources and then know how we are fortunate enough as a TechSoup Network, I think, to work together with some of the most leading cloud brands. And for us, it's a tremendous opportunity to be able to offer those services, but also advocate nonprofits and how they can best utilize it. So in essence, that's it, right? Making sure that the correct solution is at play and that the organizations know how they act on that equity that they have been given. And do you have, I was looking at your survey that only 21% predominantly use cloud offerings right now. So there's a lot of potential there. Bogdan, cloud solutions in Ukraine, how's that going? I didn't answer a question on COVID, but actually COVID is probably the main factor that pushed Ukraine and nonprofits to clouds. So it's, it's, we made a great progress during the last two years, but still a lot of things to do in the future. Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, I know Radka has talked already about the cloud as well. I just wanted to ask you, because we're coming into the final minutes. So what advice do you have then in a short sentence for change makers and the funders, the participants, the people listening today, what advice do you have for funders who want to do more good in society? Bogdan? I try to be optimistic. Just keep doing what you're doing and listen to our recommendations and conclusions we draw from our studies. Great. Radka, what would you say? So generally, don't be afraid to support infrastructural development of NGOs. It is sexy, it can be sexy. And for those of you who are from companies, don't be afraid to, to support NGOs with what you actually do. So if you are a technological company, you can provide your services to NGOs for free or with discount. And I would also encourage you to include your employees to in this process and have them, have them do expert volunteering work with NGOs. Because one of the things that we said, and I think that goes for all of our countries and NGOs in general, is the lack of skills and companies that support their employees to actually help NGOs or cooperate with NGOs, because the learning curve is on both sides with those corporations. That's beneficial and that can sometimes help even more than a few hundred euros given to that NGO. Give them consultation hours that can have a much bigger impact. Thank you. Thank you, Radka. And Marcus, the final call. What would you expect? What could you hope for? Yeah, I would again come back to that saying or phrase of whatever you do moving forward, please do mind the gap. If we are not sure or if we're not careful about how we spend, how we engage with civil society organizations, there is a threat for a digital divide in that sphere. But however, if we manage to overcome that, which I'm very optimistic again about, then I think we are on track as a community together to really utilize on the potential that is out there and create a more robust and resilient civil society. Thank you so much. And thank you to all. We're coming into the final minute now. Thank you. What a great discussion. I feel like we could stay and hear many more data points and many and kind of your brainstorm on this, but we've learned several things. My takeaways are one, is a massive demand for digital capacity among NGOs. Two, there's a huge potential of what and also risk for inaction. There's a huge potential for what digitally empowered NGOs can achieve. Well, and the extreme vulnerabilities facing them if they're not digitally enabled. So what I've learned is that the NGOs need additional resources to be able to budget for digital infrastructure and cloud technology to increase their ability to communicate, collaborate and to operate. And we need to work together. That's for sure. Two of our partners here today have partners, funder partners to enable their research. So working together collaboration is key in today's world. Thank you to our speakers. Thank you for your data insights. Thank you, TechSoup Global Partners Network, partners for listening and participating in this shared mission to support NGOs to work better together to strengthen the outcomes of our work together. And a final thought, the digital transition goes hand in hand with the green and socially just transition in Europe that's underway. So investing in NGO capacity all levels to deliver effective voice and agency really depends on you on all of us and on digital investment and skills infrastructure know how and basics like cloud technology. If civil society organizations that are not community safety nets aren't empowered to collaborate digitally, then we'll all lose our society and democracy included. Thank you all very much and we'll stay in touch. TechSoup Global Network will stay in touch with you. Bye. Thank you so much. Bye.