Technology is your Ferrari. Mini Morris drivers won't cut it

It's late January. By now it’s clear whether last year’s transformation or change project worked, sort of worked or quietly died. Whatever the outcome, you're facing the same question: what do I need to do differently this year to make my change happen?

The analysis of over 50 interviews with non-profit leaders I did with my colleagues at the Charity Change Collective, combined with my experiences supporting clients in implementing change, point to a clear pattern: the organisations making progress aren't the ones with the biggest budgets or the flashiest tech. 

The problem isn't the technology

So often, people believe technology is the answer to their problem: "Our project management is rubbish, but we're introducing Asana so it's all going to be fine."

Unfortunately, it’s rarely that straightforward. If your project management is rubbish because people don't take accountability or nobody knows who's responsible for what, new tech won't solve anything. Your problematic project management practices will still exist with your new tool.

In most cases, changing technology isn’t enough. It could even move you further away from your goals because the change will undermine the way people are used to working.  If someone isn’t confident using Asana or doesn’t have the interest or support to assimilate it into their day to day, the result will be more chaos, not less. When planning to change anything, we need to factor in all three elements: people, process and technology. That’s why change is not just a project with a beginning and an end - it’s transformational. It requires a change in skills, mindsets and behaviours for good, not just until the end of the project.

There’s plenty of technological investment happening in the non-profit sector right now. From CRM projects to data platforms and AI tools, organisations know they need to invest. The good news is there’s also a growing awareness that to make that technology effective, we need to develop skills and ways of working –people and process – too.

The World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs report lists the most important skills (besides technological literacy and an understanding of AI and big data) as creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, agility, curiosity and lifelong learning. These are the skills your organisation needs to recruit and develop so you can adjust to the constantly changing world. 

Testing builds the skills we need

So how do we foster agility, curiosity and flexibility? One of the examples that kept coming up in those interviews with change leaders is the idea of starting small. 

Devise a mini project with the aim of changing something on a micro scale. It won’t impact many people or processes immediately, but it will help everyone see how change works and what’s possible for individuals, teams and the organisation. 

Basically, you’re testing a hypothesis or piloting a solution. Even failure is positive because it produces useful data that helps you understand what worked and what didn’t.

Testing isn't an innate talent, something you either have, or you don’t. It's a muscle. And like a muscle, you need to train it. By doing so you will hone in on those World Economic Forum skills: creative thinking (What could we try?), resilience (This didn't work, what next?), and flexibility (Let's adjust based on what we learned or what the data’s telling us?).

The example we at the Charity Change Collective often use is Prostate Cancer UK. They began with a small multi-skilled team on one fundraising project. It worked so well the whole organisation wanted to adopt the approach. Or the example of Save the Children UK, who took Agile full-scale too fast and had to redo it, showing you can always course correct. You just have to try something and keep trying and adjusting it until it becomes the norm.

Change how you work together

Years ago, a client said to me: "We're very good at coordinating but not collaborating." That distinction matters. Coordinating is keeping each other informed. Collaborating is working together; co-designing, making decisions together, holding each other accountable.

Real collaboration changes everything. Start small with experiments in how you plan together, make decisions or hold each other accountable. Small changes. No massive budgets required. 

During her interview at the Charity Change Collective event last year, Gemma Sherrington of Refuge UK offered this advice for those trying to kick start change in their organisations:

"You can bring in expertise to have someone walking alongside you, of course you can. But you can also change how you run a meeting tomorrow. It doesn't cost you anything. Just try something different."

When your new technology does come online, you'll be in a much better position to use it well because you've already built the culture and skills to work differently.

What this means for 2026

We often think that standing still is a neutral act. But not changing is also a decision. It's taking a bet that you can survive in a continuously changing world by doing nothing. Given everything happening in the world – the growing need for charitable aid, shrinking budgets – I don't think that's a bet worth taking.

Here's what I think we, as a sector, should commit to in order to achieve transformation in 2026:

Stop

• Trying to do too many things at once, like having five strategic pillars when you only have capacity to implement two.

• Making decisions on gut feeling only. Pause and ask questions of the data first.

• Doing nothing. Instead, start small. Develop a small test with people who are enthusiastic. Learn and adapt as you go. 

Start

• Running small tests. It's a skill which builds over time alongside your creative thinking, resilience and data literacy: all the attributes we need to thrive.

• Investing in 21st century skills across all roles. Look at those World Economic Forum skills and think how you can interview for them. (The Charity Change Collective toolkit on skills and capabilities has a wealth of resources for this) 

• Collaborating, not just coordinating. Use co-design to plan and make decisions. 

Continue

• Investing in technology and AI. This is essential for survival.

• Treating technology, people and process as a necessary triumvirate. Technology is your Ferrari, you need the skills and mindset to make the most of this investment (Mini Morris drivers just won’t do). 

So, pick one thing you’d like to change. Design one small test. Try it this quarter. See what happens. Let the learning inform what you do next. 

The organisations that will thrive in 2026 aren't the ones with the biggest transformation budgets. They're the ones who start small, learn fast and keep going.