Guide to low-cost digital

What does good digital look like on a tight budget?

Keeping up with digital and technology can feel like a bit of a money pit. It can be hard to know whether your resources and investments are going to be impactful, or just white elephants. But by making canny investments, and focusing on what really matters, you can use digital to significantly grow your capability without breaking the bank.

In this guide, we cover seven key areas:

• Subscriptions and licencing
• Hardware and devices
• Cloud vs using your own hardware
• Software
• Skills, training and support
• Testing and learning
• Digital funding

Taking actions across all these areas will deliver small savings that add up to bigger savings overall.

Subscriptions and licencing

Do a ‘subscription spring clean’ – check through all the services you are using, and shut down any which are no longer active or necessary.

This has an added security benefit – it will help you make sure that you remove data and files from systems that you are no longer actively using and managing.

Don’t pay for duplicated features and services

Check if paid-for services can be covered with existing systems. For example:

• Paid-for storage in Dropbox could be moved into Google Workspace or Microsoft OneDrive
• Online meetings could happen on Microsoft Teams or Google Meet, rather than on a separate Zoom plan
• Both Microsoft and Google have excellent online form tools that could replace a third-party service

Check whether all your staff need premium app subscriptions

For example, Microsoft has an Office 365 licence tier which is free for charities. Users on the basic tier don’t have access to desktop applications but they can access Outlook, Word and Teams online and on mobile apps. If you have a big team, including volunteers and board members, this could allow you to enable your whole team to work effectively but save a significant amount of money. You can find out more about discounted and donated Microsoft Office 365 on their website

Google Workspace has a simpler pricing structure, where eligible organisations can claim as many free licences as they need.

Hardware

Digital devices and hardware can be costly, and unfortunately they don’t last forever. But there are ways to save money on IT hardware.

As with services and software, avoid paying for stuff you don’t need. For example, since the pandemic, most organisations are printing much less than they were before. So you may be able to retire or cancel photocopier contracts. Or you may find that you can replace physical office phones with a virtual switchboard which sends calls to Microsoft Teams.

With staff working partly from home and partly in the office, some organisations have ended up doubling the amount of devices they need to buy and support. Retiring PCs and switching to laptops and desktop docks can make things simpler – allowing you to support a single device per staff member, while ensuring that they have a comfortable working experience in the office.

It’s always good practice to keep an asset register of digital devices. This helps you to keep track of security updates and retire any devices that are about to become obsolete. Working in this way helps you update devices on a rolling basis, rather than getting caught out and needing to purchase a lot of equipment in one financial year.

When it comes to purchasing devices, there are two main options that can help you save money.

Using purchasing frameworks to get deals on new hardware

If you’re looking to purchase new devices, voluntary sector organisations in Scotland can benefit from public sector purchasing frameworks. These have been set up to allow public sector organisations to procure a large number of quality devices at low cost. Scottish Government have extended the scheme to include third sector organisations. Your organisation is eligible if you are an SCVO member, or a charity registered with OSCR.

These schemes allow you to purchase the latest technology (including laptops, desktops and mobile phones with data contracts) at very significant savings.

Refurbished devices

For organisations on very tight budgets, refurbished devices can be a good option. Organisations like Edinburgh Remakery and Plugged In in North West Glasgow refurbish and repair laptops and PCs that have had a few years’ use in larger organisations.

These devices are very affordable and you’ll get a good insight into the specification and condition of the device before you buy. When buying a refurbished device, consider which operating system it can run, as this will impact its lifespan. For example, Windows 10 will reach end-of-life in 2025. So you should be looking at devices with Windows 11 installed, or at least the ability to update to Windows 11. Buying refurbished also helps reduce the climate and waste impacts of digital, by ensuring that devices have a longer lifespan. This page lists device repair and refurbishment organisations throughout Scotland.

Use cloud services instead of running your own hardware

You can run file servers and networks on your hardware in your own building – this is called having an ‘On premise server’. This means that you own or lease the server hardware, and you probably own the software outright. For example, you might run a specialist database or financial package on a dedicated server.

The advantage of this approach is that you know what your costs are up-front as you purchase your software and hardware, or commit to a lease. Arguably, running a server on your own site might help avoid disruption if you have poor internet connectivity. And if you have a lot of large files (for example a photo or video archive), running your own server may be a more energy efficient way to store and access your media.

However, the problem with this approach is that you will probably end up having to reinvest all over again within a five-year period, as hardware comes to the end of its life. And even if your on-premise server kept working during an internet outage, you would probably find that your ability to work was limited in other ways – for example you’d be unable to email out invoices. So you don’t gain much resilience by running software on your own machine. And typical charity offices are more vulnerable to situations such as flooding, fire, theft and power cuts than the secure data centres that are used to power cloud-based solutions.

Most organisations these days don’t run their own servers, but use cloud services instead. These can be full-featured platforms such as Microsoft Office 365 or Google Workspace, a dedicated cloud-based app like Xero or Salesforce, or cloud-based storage such as Amazon Web Services or Box.com.

Running a service or storing files in the cloud will mean you are paying a vendor a regular fee to provide you with a service. You are relying on their network and hardware, but cloud providers have resilient and secure platforms which will be more secure and resilient than something based in your own office. The other advantage of a cloud-based service is that it is easier to connect new devices or users to it, and any updates or security patches are applied automatically.

Software

First and foremost, look for donated or discounted software wherever you can find it. This can enable you to make significant savings. Many organisations are missing out because they aren’t aware of all the capabilities they have at their fingertips.

Modern productivity software such as Google Workspace or Microsoft Office 365 have a lot of features built in, so you may find you don’t need specialist software for some tasks. For example, presentation software like Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint can enable you to make basic digital graphics easily.

As with digital platforms and services, review what you’re actively using, and drop software packages you are no longer using. Look for software packages that offer interoperability and data portability, which means that you can move your data and files to another system if you need to. For example, you should be able to export data in .CSV or Excel formats to move it to another database system.

Skills, training and support

Digital tools and platforms are constantly evolving, adding more and more capabilities over time. This is a good thing, but it can mean people struggle to keep their skills and knowledge up to date.

Leading platforms like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are absolutely packed with features. For example, you can now embed interactive polls into Microsoft Powerpoint slides, or trigger workflows based on responses to Google Forms. So spending a bit of time seeking out free training resources from Google or Microsoft can pay dividends. TikTok has even started to take off as a training platform, with millions of people learning Excel tips via TikTok videos.

If you're leading a team, giving them some time and space to learn new skills is important. Quite often, people end up trying to learn about a new feature when they're stuck or trying to make something work under time pressure. Carving out a bit of non-pressured learning time can be much more productive. You could use these small, regular slots of time either to share skills on a peer-to-peer basis, or find and watch some topical videos. Taking a little and often approach helps normalise the practice of growing your skills right through your career.

You can also access free digital support from a range of sources. At SCVO we offer free dedicated digital support, and you can find a range of digital topics in our upcoming workshops. You can also use the Digital Candle service to get help with specific challenges, or join networks like Digital Charities, if you're in a specific digital role looking for advice. You can also access free digital training on a wide range of topics via The Curve from Third Sector Lab.

Test small, learn early, save money

With digital services and products, it can be hard to guess in advance whether a new approach will work in practice. And once a project gets going, you can get locked into narrow technical questions, ignoring the bigger questions and assumptions about whether your chosen approach will work. If it turns out that your core assumptions about whether a product or approach will work turn out to be wrong, you risk wasting a lot of money.

A really effective way to tackle this challenge is to start with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This is a basic but functional prototype that will enable you to test your ideas and learn from user feedback. A typical MVP should not require any new systems or technical development, and should only take a couple of days to put together.

For example:

Digital funding

Unfortunately, very few funders offer dedicated support for digital infrastructure. However, one approach is to ensure that investment for your digital capability is built into funding bids for projects. For example,

• In a funding bid that includes costs for a staff post, make sure you also include all digital costs (eg laptop, software subscriptions, connectivity) as these are needed for the postholder to do their work effectively.
• In a funding bid that includes work around community engagement, include a proportion of your website and communications costs as these activities are critical for the project and probably not funded through other means.

Digital can mean investing to save money in the long run

To wrap up on a positive note, there are lots of situations where spending some money on digital and technology in the short term can add up to overall savings in the long term. For example:

• An online tool or service might cost £20 per month, but could easily pay for itself by saving 6 days of staff time per year.
• Using a cloud service to automate a process (perhaps signing up for events or booking appointments) might cost a monthly fee, but could save hours of staff time while giving a better user experience
• Equipping staff with decent laptops would require investment, but it could enable them to work flexibly from a range of locations, freeing up more time for interaction with clients.