YMCA Digital Services Research

YMCA commissioned M·E·L Research to explore the interest, desire and opportunities facing YMCA’s digitalisation agenda, focusing particularly on what young people and wider YMCA service users want from digital services. Whilst the digital revolution has spread across many sectors over the years, the voluntary sector in general, including YMCA specifically, has traditionally focussed on face-to-face service offerings and have either not experienced or been able to ‘ride-out’ the commercial drivers of greater digitalisation.

The outbreak of the COVID pandemic, and subsequent national and local lockdowns undoubtedly increased the use and dependency on digital technology and spaces, and this had a direct impact on voluntary sector organisations too. Local YMCAs needed to move their services into the digital space literally overnight. With no national ICT infrastructure, the ninety-or-so independent local associations all had to embark on a steep learning curve.
Some local YMCAs trialled their own apps and digital platforms to reach out to beneficiaries and keep them informed and connected. Others (especially the smallest YMCAs) took the decision to close services and wait for the pandemic to pass. Perhaps the majority introduced stopgap measures to keep services going in a digital form wherever possible, but without a solid digital platform or strategy.

All three of these responses inevitably raised the question: what should a post-lockdown YMCA look and feel like in relation to digital platforms?

The aims of this research were to explore:
• What digital services are run by local YMCAs and what services could be delivered as digital services?
• What digital services are service users accessing and what services do they want to access?
• What are the barriers, challenges, opportunities and solutions to accessing digital services?

Approach

To answer the above, we combined a three- stage quantitative and qualitative approach:

1. Online organisational survey of YMCAs (n=34 YMCAs responded)
2. Focus groups with YMCA service users (including a group interview with a family)
   Three remote focus groups and a group interview were conducted in March 2022.
   • Young people accessing youth services
   • Young people accessing housing services
   • YMCA Youth Ambassadors
   • A family that was accessing various community services – including local disability services
3. Online survey of YMCA service users
   This was distributed via YMCAs organisationally, with physical posters available – including at the YMCA national conference in April – and the potential for sharing via social media.

Outcome

By carrying out both quantitative and qualitative research, we were able to ascertain the views, hopes and concerns from both YMCA staff and service users across various locations in England and Wales. We were able to illustrate that:

• There is some appetite across various local YMCA’s to embrace and develop more digital offerings for both staff and service users.
• Service users report a high usage of YMCA social media platforms and these are considered essential in keeping informed of activities, keeping people connected (especially youth services) and information on how to access services
• Whilst there is some excitement about the potential of using digital platforms amongst service users, there was great concern and trepidation that this would replace face-face services. Service users want a mixed approach whereby face-to-face work and sessions remains a priority. It is important to note for service users, digitalisation is an addition but not a replacement of face-to-face approaches
• There are key barriers regarding access to the internet, data, phones and laptops for particular service users especially people accessing housing services
• YMCA staff are extremely busy. There have been lots of strategic changes over the last few months which have also impacted on workload and pressures. This means time currently available for the adoption of any new digitalisation approaches needs to be carefully prioritised vs other existing commitments.

Our findings and report helped YMCA consider their options when reviewing and potentially rolling out digital approaches and services for staff and service users.