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One of the speakers at the Global Digital Leaders is Gregor Nilsson. He is CDO at the Swiss national offices of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Mr Nilsson is responsible for managing the digital transformation at WWF Switzerland. In his role, he is exploring ways of cultivating a digital mind-set at his organisation as well as shape structures and a corporate culture fitting the digital age.

In your opinion, how are non-profit organisations doing compared to other industries as far as digital transformation is concerned? What can be done more or better?

As in other industries, there are big differences regarding the state of digital maturity. While some organisations still question the need of digitisation, others have already gone quite far and I would say that in terms of digital communication and e- commerce they can compete with the leaders of other industries. There are good examples for the use of marketing automation, omni-channel management and big data.

Obviously, the need for digital transformation also depends on the business model an organisation is running: those who depend on a large amount of smaller donations have a stronger interest in the use of digital communication tools to reach the masses than those who are mainly funded by a small number of major donors, where most of the communication still happens face to face. 

What I think is true for more or less all non-profits is that we need to explore digital opportunities outside the field of digital marketing.

"Trends like IoT and AI will shape our society in the next decade and we need to understand how to benefit from them for the causes we are fighting for."

Which digital goals would you like to achieve at WWF Switzerland in 2017?

In the past, I have, together with our digital team, been acting as a leader and expert in all digital matters. But today we need digital leaders across the organisation to support the various teams in creating strategies and solutions that fit the digital age. Therefore my biggest personal goal for 2017 is to implement a framework that motivates and enables all teams to identify with and benefit from the opportunities digitisation is offering. This also means a shift in my role towards focusing more on the organisational culture and development. Gregor will talk more on the topic at the Global Digital Leaders Summit 2017. We invite you to check out the full programme of this year's event now!

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