Humanising digital services in the charity sector

Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Research

How a refugee charity partnership reshaped research and digital inclusion

A project to improve digitalisation in the charity sector led to a rethinking of the entire research process which has wider lessons for academia.

Just as the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, a team of AMBS researchers were by chance working with a Salford refugee charity on how to improve digitalisation and online service delivery.

As the charity faced the huge challenge of moving its support services such as English classes and employability online overnight, the AMBS project went from a purely research focus into how it could offer practical help and solutions for the charity.

As Dr Ilma Nur Chowdhury, Senior Lecturer in Marketing at AMBS, recalls: “Many of the refugees that the charity supported lacked the digital devices, skills, or even the confidence to engage online, so the charity suddenly faced huge challenges in providing its range of services.

“Instead of standing back and simply continuing with the project as it was, we decided to go on the front foot and actively help find solutions, working alongside staff and service users, sharing ideas and testing solutions. We sat in on Zoom classes, ran workshops with refugees, and watched, questioned, and listened deeply.”

Loss of in-person support

Dr Chowdhury says the biggest issue for refugees was not dealing with the technology itself, but the loss of warmth, support and connection that came with in-person services. “Refugees wanted more than just online learning; they sought a sense of belonging. So, the key question was how to humanise these digital services.”

Working with staff and service users, the research team began co-designing simple but effective solutions. As she adds: “Many struggled to submit homework online, and we suggested using WhatsApp, something they already used daily. That tweak increased engagement overnight. In another example, volunteers were worried they could not read body language on video calls, so we suggested using emojis for digital expression.”

Dr Chowdhury says this kind of collaborative solution-building was only possible because the research team embedded itself in the everyday work of the charity. “We moved from finding ‘participants’ to study to a realisation that the people involved in the project were collaborators and co-creators. They brought solutions, insights and innovations that we could never have uncovered alone."

Toolkit

One of the project's original aims was to develop a toolkit to help with digitalisation and online service delivery in the charity and voluntary sector.

The toolkit was called the BReSSI (Business Research as Service for Social Impact) framework, which provides insight into the solutions and actions needed to overcome the challenges of moving services online in the charity and voluntary sector.

BReSSI treats the research journey as an opportunity to create immediate social impact and is based on four principles:

Collaborative Problem Formulation: Start by working with those affected to define the real problem, not what you think it is.
Strength-Based Theorising: Build on what works, don’t just fix what is broken.
Inclusive Research Design: Involve stakeholders at every stage from designing interview questions to testing solutions. This ensures relevance, and enables immediate implementation
Iterative, Real-Time Problem-Solving: Do not wait until the end of a study to make a difference. Use the research process itself to pilot and refine solutions in real time.

The research process

Another key outcome of the project was that it made the team also think about the whole process of their research and how they had ‘co-produced’ knowledge, as it is referred to in academia, by working directly with the charity.

As Judy Zolkiewski, Professor of Marketing at AMBS, explains: “We realised that by focusing as much on the process of research as on its outcomes, we could change the very way universities, research funders, policymakers, and organisations think about research and how they can work together to quickly and successfully meet what can be divergent objectives.”

She adds that the project did, in some respects, mirror the model of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between a university and an external organisation. KTPs are designed as knowledge transfer programmes that support business innovation and each KTP programme recruits a graduate, known as an associate, who is aided by academic support to develop a specified plan.

Next steps

The team now wants to see if the BReSSI framework has value in the private sector and what wider lessons there are for universities too.

Professor Zolkiewski adds: “We definitely feel this work has wider implications and potential impact. For instance, BReSSI demonstrates that research processes can enhance immediate social value while generating academic insights. But if you are a researcher wondering how to make your work matter, we suggest also changing your mindset from simply finding enough respondents for a study to one where research is co-designed with the subjects you are investigating.

“When we rethink research as something we do with society, not just about it, the impact is not only measurable but can be transformative.”