Name: Forward Thinking Nonprofit: Unlock More Impact for Your Mission
Uploaded: 2026-02-05T16:16:09.852Z
Duration: 53 min 32 s
Description: Forward Thinking Nonprofit: Unlock More Impact for Your Mission

Transcript for "Forward Thinking Nonprofit: Unlock More Impact for Your Mission": Good afternoon, everyone. Hello, and welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's lovely to see you all here. Thank you very much. If you haven't joined us before on our Goldcast system, and our webinar platform, I'm just going to run through one or two very quick housekeeping tips. So the, audio, for your session today is going to be broadcast through your computer speaker system. If you have a headset already connected, then that should automatically default for you. We have a few little tabs on your, right hand side, including our chat. So do let us know who you are and where you're from. It'd be lovely to know who's joining us today. And we've also got a q and a tab. If you would like to share some thoughts or ask a few questions, you're very welcome to do so. We have a lot to get through today, so I can't promise for certain that we'll get to all of your questions, but we would love to hopefully get a few of them in if we have the time. Yes. Apologies. There is an Everton badge, Chris. I do. Yeah. We'll try not to, keep that too much as a part of today's session. If you have any technical issues, at the bottom, you'll see a little, cogwheel. You can click on that cogwheel to make some adjustments to your system. If you have, slow buffering issues or anything like that, we'll be very happy to kind of click on that, and you can launch a light mode, and tweak a few things. If you have any really serious problems, if you're not getting sound right or anything like that, a refresh of the browser tends to be the best way of doing it, and you can also open a closed caption via the button at the bottom as well. So that is our housekeeping ticked and done with. And with that in mind, I just wanted to welcome you all. Thank you very much for joining today's session. We are, of course, coming together at a time that's increasingly familiar across the nonprofit sector surrounded by constant change, ongoing uncertainty, and a rising expectation whilst economic pressures continue. But the story of this sector and the story at the heart of the forward thinking nonprofit isn't one of fragility. It's one of resilience, adaptation, and possibility. So today's webinar, we're gonna focus on a few of the details, thoughts, and stories shared in our recent ebook of the same name. If you haven't already read it, then you will be able to also find in the links a documents tab today, which will allow you to download your free copy. So hopefully, you'll come and join us to, to take a look at that if you haven't already read so. And whilst change is something that's not just on the horizon, it's very much here, and uncertainty can bring about some tangible challenges, it does also create space for us to rethink how we might lead or build trust and engage with our supporters of our organizations in utilizing data and technology without losing what matters the most, a human connection. Today, we're gonna think about all sorts of things, and I am joined by an excellent and outstanding panel of speakers and sector experts today. So let's meet them. I'm gonna ask you all to click on that lovely button in the background, you wouldn't mind, to click to go on stage. And let's meet our panel today, and I'm going to ask you, if you wouldn't mind, introducing yourselves. I'm going to start with who's immediately next to me on my screen at Charlotte. Hello, Charlotte. Good afternoon. I'm Charlotte. I'm the policy lead at the Charleston Institute of Fundraising. So I look at the kind of key trends and data at a kind of macro level for the sector and think about how it can help charities fundraise more effectively and independently. Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us, Charlotte. Let's keep going round the clock face. Let's go to Zoe next. Hi, Zoe. Hi. Hello. I'm Zoe Ammer. I run a digital and AI consultancy for charities working on supporting them with their strategies and road maps and also looking at how they can generate income as well as part of all of that. I'm also the co author of the Charity Digital Skills Report, co chair of the charity AI Task Force and chair the Charity Digital Code of Practice. Lovely to be here today. Thank you so much. And finally, in our panel of speakers, we're joined by Yoa. Hello, Yoa. Hi. Thanks for having me today. I'm John Mark Jones, head of content at. So I oversee all the reports, webinars, podcasts, events, and a lot of the stuff you'll see on our website and leading the content team currently on a conscious AI campaign promoting ethical AI use in the sector. And I work with Zoe on the code of practice as well. Fantastic. Fantastic. Lovely to see all of you here today, and thanks very much for joining us. Now, folks, I thought a good starting point for us to begin with would be to start a little bit in terms of talking about the current landscape that we see around us in the fundraising space. And and a question for all of you, Charlotte, I'm going to come to you first. What would you say are the key changes that you have observed in the sector? And where do you maybe see the greatest opportunities to thrive in your fundraising as we navigate through this new quite challenging environment. Yes. So I it's you've kind of touched on it very clearly there. I say that the economic and fiscal outlook currently is quite challenging and we're still I think people are still waiting to hear what the Bank of England's gonna be saying about interest rates, which I imagine a lot of charities on here are watching too. But I'd say that what we're seeing is that when we look at the kind of macroeconomic landscape, there are certainly some kind of softer shifts that indicate that charities are in a good position to kind of appropriately resource fundraisers to take some risks and try some new things that can ultimately grow giving. So for example, I mean, of the top line ones, now I'm gonna try and do a very quick fire pestle analysis to set the scene for the rest of the discussion. But politically, we're definitely seeing the government warming to both the challenges the sector is facing, but also taking more of a proactive approach in trying to support a culture of giving. So we've worked very closely with minister Stephanie Peacock engaging her more with giving days, and we expect to see more of that sort of work to come. And then once again, economically, we're seeing that there's an intergenerational transfer of wealth, which means that there is going to be this new cohort of younger wealthy donors both, I'd say, at the high value and middle value level who are very socially minded and who are very interested in giving in a way that was different to their predecessors. So that means that that's gonna unlock all sorts of new opportunities for innovation to create more fulfilling giving models and products that resonate with this new audience. And then within that, I'd say the other thing that we're looking at as well as well, of course, is the impact economy. So some of you may have seen this come up on your kind of news feeds already that the government has introduced a new office for the impact economy that's looking more strategically at how to engage philanthropists in impact driven initiatives, and that's something that we'll be exploring further. But we think it could be a real step change in unlocking additional philanthropic capital. And then lastly, technology. And I say that what, you know, whatever any charity is doing right now, you know, there is wherever you are on your technological journey, there is likely some tool out there that will help you achieve your goals better. I won't go into too much detail on that because I appreciate that Joann and Zoe are really the the leaders on this. But I'd say the main message that we'd wanna put to the sector right now is that that kind of wider shift in environment is setting itself up nicely to really invest in fundraising right now. And like I said, try something new and take some risks. Amazing. Thank you, Charlotte. Really insightful thinking. And I'm gonna echo Brian's sentiment in the chat that the pest and analysis within the first ten minutes of the webinar, we're we're off to very good starts. One thing that I forgot to mention and, prompted by my lovely colleague in the background, we have launched a little poll, in the panel on the right hand side. It'd be lovely to get your thoughts on what those key challenges that you're finding at the moment are. And whilst you're doing that, and we'll come back to those results in a moment, let's throw open the thoughts a little bit longer to Jo Anne. What would you say? Yeah. I'll come from a slightly different lens, so content marketing, really. And I think we all experience quite a lot of noise, and it's getting noisier, and it never seems to get quieter. And AI is, for me, the source of a lot of that noise. At Cherry Digital, we're really pro AI adoption, but we're always so cautious about adopting it in the right way, and fundraising is no different. So Arefs had an analysis of a a million web pages recently in 2025, and they found that three quarters of websites had some AI generated content. Europoll and other analysts said that by the 2026, 90% of online content, new online content is gonna be synthetically generated in some form. For me, that's not a particularly good thing. And I think if you look at the way you consume data or I consume data or people consume data, on search engines, largely, we still see human generated content coming first, and that's because, the framework of SEO still is like EEAT, experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. And so a lot of the best content still relies on that human element, and so it's definitely key to to ensure you're still doing that. And if you look at the reputable sites that a lot of us will read, like the Feet, the Guardian, the BBC, and so on and so forth, it's kind of my job to almost follow these their lead. They are still revising this human content. And and some of them are taking strict kind of guidelines against AI generated content as a whole in terms of information and edifying the set their their audience. So I think there is this element of we're getting a little bit tired of the slop that's coming out of there, the AI slop. And I think anyone who's been on LinkedIn recently will probably notice the the sort of changes because I certainly went on there recently. I was like, wow. It's it's a really different world. Just like the content, the written content is is feels like slop. And then the the visual content equally is increasingly I I don't wanna say sloppy, but I suppose that is is a way of putting it. So I think we have some data that suggests that also people you know, that the data suggests people are getting a bit fed up. A poll in 2025 said seven out of 10 consumers are uncomfortable, consuming, fully AI generated content, and only one in 10 is happy consuming that content. And here's the interesting part to me. It's 37% said they would happily consume AI content if it was high quality, But that's down from 44% the previous year, which was down from the previous year. That means over we're seeing a recession of people who are actually satisfied or happy to consume AI content even though the quality is supposedly going up or is going up. You know? I think what the advice to charities is make fundraising campaigns human centered, make them authentic, and promote connection. And I think that's where the future of fundraising is gonna lie. So one way to do that, and it's just a really quick way, is ensuring you send to your service users in your campaign. So we see people do it really well in coproduction, codesign of service delivery. So you speak to your service users because you wanna represent them fairly, and that's such a good thing to do. But we don't see it as much in fundraising campaigns where what you could do is create some willing, participants and just create a fee a beneficiary feedback mechanism. We're promoting these as much as possible. But you can do it on Microsoft forms, really simple questions to your to your service users, and have them sort of dictate where your campaigns could go. That's authentic, and it's gonna be really human centered, and it'll be the voice of your service users coming through in a world of AI slop where people are taking shortcuts. And I think that would be really impactful for the future. And the final point is I do think the future lies in moving away from these sort of acquisition power plays that we've seen in the past where people just want as many people as possible to engage with what they're saying and thinking more meaningfully about deeper connection. And and and that might mean through personalized user journeys, it might just mean speaking more fondly. But I do think that human centered, authentic kind of content is is where the future of fundraising campaigns will lie. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that's some of those statistics that you kind of mentioned that as we see AI generation and how how people are utilizing these tools for image generation or text generation as that continues to grow, the interest and the in in I'm trying to think of the word, but, yeah, let's get just go with interest for now, to actively engage with that and to read that and feel comfortable with it is falling year over year, Mhmm. and that urge for human connection is really growing, I think, in all of that. Really fascinating. Love statistics. Love percentages. Zoe, have you got any thoughts that you would add to this first question? Yeah. There's a few things that I wanted to follow on on from from the excellent points raised by Charlotte and Yowen. And the first thing that I think will be impacting so many charities on this call really significantly is how AI is changing how people find us, you know, whether it's people who use our services, people who's donating coming to our website. So the impact of disintermediation is something that we know is is really significant. I'm hearing a a figure of of 30% on average decreases in in website traffic to charities from quite a a few of them. That's certainly something that I have heard quite a lot. And all of that obviously has massive consequences as as Ioann pointed out in terms of acquisition, in terms of how we demonstrate to corporate partners, for example, that we have a certain amount of reach and influence. So for me, the impact of AI on charities is really quite existential from a fundraising perspective because so much of the business model in charity fundraising is really about visibility and having that certainty over what those digital journeys look like. So for me, that is very much the the big challenge that's facing us at a sector. Is it getting airtime around boardroom tables, around leisure tables? I'm not sure it fully is yet, and that is something that is going to be essential to moving forward with that. I think what's also really interesting hearing what Charlotte was saying about young people is that for me, that is also a bit of a challenge, but really an opportunity as well for the future. So what we saw in the 2025 charity digital skills report that was that growing a young supporter base was only a priority for 28% of charities. And even for youth charities, that actually wasn't as high a number as as we thought it would be. And these groups, they are the the donors of tomorrow. They're the high net worth individuals of tomorrow, and young people are gonna go through a huge amount of turbulence and change over the next five, ten years with everything going on with graduate jobs, AI impacting the workplace, everything like that. If your charity can start to build relationships with them now, then you're going to be in a much better place to start making fundraising after them, to building even deeper connections with them five, ten years in in the future. They're gonna be a lot warmer and a lot more receptive. So again, I think that is something that as charities, we really need to look at how we can we can deal with that. And all of this, I mean, whether it's how we reimagine the journeys to our website, how we make more of the relationships that we have with our warmer audiences, thinking about how we build connections with young donors and supporters. So much of it comes back to understanding those donor motivations. So have we actually spoken to our donors? Those who've just come aboard, those who've been with us for a while. Why are they giving to us? What motivated them to come to us? What's going to prompt them to keep giving to us? And how does that work with other charities that they support as well? And for me, that is the key to unlocking everything. If you understand why your donors are giving to you, whether they're new, whether they've been with you for a long time, you can make much better decisions about how you fundraise and how you deploy digital and AI. Thank you. Thank you, Zoe. And, yeah, absolutely. A lot of a lot of really interesting, quite thought provoking points shared from all three of you on how we can stay very personally connected, to our causes, to the mission, to the, to the motivation to support, is is really, really key, as you say, to kind of cut through some of the slots that you start to see. Really interesting. I thought this would be a great opportunity just to bring up our poll our poll results to get a sense of where you, as the audience live with us today have shared. And actually topping the, topping the list, we might wanna scroll down a little bit. Here we go. I can do that. That's excellent. Actually, topping the list is that kind of economic uncertainty very much does come out on top, the rising costs, the challenges we have, how to retain our staff and keep them, you know, retained in their skills and keep them up, the reduced reductions in funding, having a massive impact. And interestingly, few votes there in things like data and tech and governance. So really interesting to see a lot of those things playing out, particularly as we've talked about economic uncertainty in terms of how we can retain our fundraising structure and the good things that we all do within our fundraising roles, in a very, very difficult, very challenging time. And so resilience is key in in these moments, how to be an incredibly resilient fundraising operation. And so that financial resilience is obviously a very key challenge for you. So, again, following last year's charity commission set to risk assessments. Charlotte, I wondered if you might share a couple of thoughts on what steps could fundraisers and charity leaders potentially take to stay financially resilient in such economically uncertain times. Yes. I mean, I say anecdotally, what we've been hearing from some of our members is that fundraising has never really been more sensitive to the macroeconomic environment, and that's why financial resilience is so important. And whilst we're not happy to see that it is a big challenge in the sector, we're really pleased to see the regulator is recognizing it and that, you know, steps now being taken in the wider sector to support charities. But, I mean, once again, what we're seeing in terms of the key trends to be able to be a financially resilient organization is ultimately to have a diversified in to have diversified income streams so that you can kind of adjust as each one kind of goes up or down. But once again, how you diversify your income streams is going to be different depending on your organization, your mission, and your existing fundraising mix. It becomes once again very much a journey that each individual charity charity needs to go on. But from some of the research that we did in our overcoming barriers to innovation reports, that you can find on our website, we did kind of identify a few core things that every charity that's kind of doing diversification well has, and it really starts at the top with trustees. So there has really never been a better time for trustees to be upskilling themselves on fundraising. So that's both understanding their legal responsibilities and duties, but also understanding what's going on in the sector right now. What are the opportunities that are on the horizon, and what do they need to be doing to kind of future plan for things like new cohorts of donors for emerging technologies? And just a quick tip that I would give out to all of the audience members here, if you are looking at a way to maybe engage your trustees this quarter, the charity commission has just released their c c 20 guidance. So that's a great great kind of window opportunity for you to say, actually, the commission's just released this piece of information. You need to have a read of it, and perhaps we can have a chat about, you know, some of our fundraising goals for the year. And then coming down from that, the next is actually then support from the wider organization. So, you know, once you've got your trustees understanding and investing in fundraising, you know, that then trickles down to making sure that every other team, whether it's delivery, compliance, finance, also understands the value of fundraising to the organization and that it really isn't just about bringing in the money. It is about adding to the charity's mission. And then once you do that, we found the organizations that have been able to achieve this. All of sudden, all those little challenges that they have to get a new project off the ground just kind of ease just seem to kind of slowly lower a little bit. And that's just simply because those teams feel like they've got the headspace and time to support their fundraising colleagues. And then thirdly, and this very much echoes what Zoe said, which is your knowledge of your donors. The more that you know about your donors, the more you're going to know how to diversify and make better informed decisions. Because as I mentioned, what will work for one charity just simply won't work for another. And then adding and kind of following on to that, the next is really a holistic view of return on investment. So, you know, once again, if you are starting a new project or launching into a new channel or a product, you might be tempted to say, well, it really is just about, you know, how much money did we put in, how much money did we get out. But, actually, if you really start looking at it from more of a holistic view of did this help us fulfill our mission? Did this help us reach maybe a new audience that could be a bigger audience to us in the future? Then you might start to say, ah, actually, actually, you know what? It didn't quite, you know, make the monetary return on investment, but we do see some strategic value in continuing it or adapting it or shifting it so that we can kind of ultimately become build that resilience up. So I hope that helps. Very helpful. And I I absolutely, that holistic approach to the way in which you can broaden your connections and deepen the deepen that support in other ways, can certainly develop that return on investment in a wider element. Really, really interesting thoughts, and thank you so much, Charlotte, for sharing. I'm going to switch gears ever so slightly. We talked about fundraising landscape and, you know, what we're seeing in sector trends, which are obviously very pertinent. But part of what we wanted to talk about and part of, you know, what comes up in our ebook on forward thinking fundraisers and fundraising shots is about how we can underpin everything that we do in our fundraising strategies with, key technology that allows us to, to open up the doors more effectively. So at Blackboard, we're incredibly excited about the way in which organizations, large and small and everything between, are underpinning their fundraising and stewardship and engagement with the technology as that key enabler. And it's one of the most innovative digitally developing years, that we will see at Blackboard and a lot of our solutions. And we're seeing that across the charitable sector, and it's really, you know, a very, very exciting. We're on this precipice in this leading edge of a lot of technical technological developments. So I would really like to get some sense of your thoughts on how you see the sector's best way forwards here. So an open question to all of you, here. So what opportunities do you see in the sector for building this digital capacity, and how do you think you might see investment in your digital strategies and your digital solutions help your organizations and everybody here build that resilience that we've been talking about. Zoe, let's start with you. I'm happy to talk about tech. I also would quite like to talk about people as well and and capabilities because I think they're so absolutely fundamental to building your digital capacity and what would need to be true in order to achieve your digital strategies as you were just saying. And in fact, I was talking to a leader from a small charity yesterday, she was saying, if I've got no money, what do I invest in? Especially with all these changes coming out of stick and fast in AI. It's it's your people. It's it's learning. That's the thing that's going to to take you forward. So perhaps if we we start with that and then we can talk more about the tech side things. I'm sure Yaron and Chad will have lots to say on on that as well. I think one of the biggest challenges facing us now in terms of where we invest is we really need to start thinking about scaling up the workforce and how the workforce needs to look different. And actually, where I see a crisis coming down the track is one of the massive gaps that we saw in the digital skills report in Summer Just Gone, where we learned that 36% of charity professionals said that their CEO has poor AI skills, and 44% say the same of their board's AI skills as well. Now you can have the biggest technology budget in the world. You can have a cost of hundreds working in tech if you're lucky enough to be in that position. But if you don't have people around the top table who can make the right decisions about the investment cases, who don't really know what return on investment looks like, then I think you're gonna hit a ceiling very, very quickly. So that for me is is the key thing that we need to invest in in parallel with improving our technologies, making sure that our leaders have the right skills and also that we're really skilling up the the rest of the workforce as well. If I can just add a a final point about about tech. One of the big challenges that I'm seeing at the moment is that there are so many vendors, so many suppliers who bring in AI features and functionality into organizations, tech stocks, which they may not be might not be aware of. And John Fitzgerald over at SCVO calls this the AI glitter bomb, which I think is a brilliant way to put it. It's everywhere now. You can't get rid of it. How many times you've run your washing machine, AI is is everywhere. So the more you've got a handle on what your tech stack is, the integrations, the data flows, where there are new opportunities to use AI, what you want to keep, what you might want to switch off, then the better place you will be. Firstly, to make sure you're adopting AI more securely, getting more value from your tech stack, but also that when you get to the point where you're deploying agentic AI, you can do so from a position of confidence with your cyber security. So these are two things I'd recommend on that. Really get a handle on your tech stack and skill up your people, especially leaders. Yeah. Absolutely. That, again, you know, unsurprisingly, lot of what we will talk about is how people play a part in everything. Technology can't do these things on its own. It needs prompts. It needs in inputs to deliver these things. And so to be in tune and intuitive and to be learning and engaging and to teach and to adapt is absolutely key to how you can make these things advance. Jo Anne, you got any thoughts that you'd add to this this this question? Yeah. I'd start by echoing, Zoe's point on tech procurement. We did the, user research for the code of practice, and one of the things I didn't expect to see we work with a charity that, you know, sort of tells people how to procure tech. It's kind of our big thing. And so many people were confused about it because they're simply being sold things all the time, and and it's always the right answer. And the interesting thing that we kind of took away from it is that you can actually have the right tech for your charity that has all the functionality you need, and it's still wrong. In the it doesn't fit in with the ecosystems that you have and the data that you have. And so that even then, that seemingly right tech is actually wrong. So I think just always thinking about your long term user needs and and creating procurement road maps can be super helpful. And another thing is just asking similar charities what they've done. Everyone's always gonna be super helpful. You know? They're always gonna give you the advice that that they'll want. I find the sector overwhelmingly responsive and always willing to help, and yet we don't talk to each other enough, I think. The point on on AI, I will touch on it briefly. I think AI has become this kind of catch all term, like Zoe sort of alluded to, and I think that's where the skepticism comes from. But I think, as you might have noticed from my previous, answer, that AI content so the Charity Digital Skills report had, 76% of people using AI now. Right? And that's super great, and we're really welcoming that adoption. But for me, a lot of people are still using it in the wrong way. And the key way for me that they should be using it is is in automation. Just and it's not necessarily AI. It's tech more broadly. Everything around tech. There's so many, like, low hanging fruits that you could automate within an hour, you know, from now until an hour later, you have it automated that a lot of charities still aren't doing. So, like, meeting notes, for example, I I would never make meeting notes anymore unless it's super high risk. Or, like, an internal resource chatbots are super interesting. Data entry, you if you think how they can take a while to automate. If you think how many hours you spend on data entry, a few hours spent automating that task will will provide huge dividends. And it speaks to Charlotte's point on financial sustainability because that's where you're really gonna make those gains and make yourself more sustainable. Even fund grant funding, I don't necessarily recommend it for for actual applications because I think they can oversaturate. But just using it to aid that process and have a single source of truth for your charity could be really, really useful. And stuff like board reports or board meeting reports, they they they can be streamlined quite effectively with AI as long as it is, sort of the low risk stuff and data visualization as well, putting some as long as you're safely putting data in, you can get really good results out. So there's a lot of things you can automate, but just a bit of advice is that I read about a law firm recently who got all their staff to write down the the dullest jobs they do. And, like, everyone just wrote down the jobs they hate, and that was their that was the request. And everyone wrote down, and they compiled all the things. And, obviously, there's some things you can't automate, for example, talking to clients. But so many of the things they did, they were like, we can automate that. We can automate that. And I think it's a great starting point. Just think of the jobs you really hate, and then just work out how to automate them. And there will be something, some form of tech that will probably be quite cheap that you can do that tomorrow. So, yeah, I think that's that's the place I would start. And just to mention, in terms of fundraising, the joy of this is when I talked earlier about needing that human centered authentic fund fundraising campaigns, they do take time. And the key is to automate the dull stuff, the boring stuff, all the stuff you don't wanna do to free up time so you can have those really interesting human centered campaigns that that generate money. Absolutely. Yeah. Fantastic. And yeah, a good question. Suppose how cheap is cheap. It depends on where you're going and what your solutions have. We can talk a little bit to tech and, you know, what it might look like and whether or not you're in the right solution, whether you've got the suit most suitable solution, what is available within your existing subscriptions, or what else might be out there that bundles a lot of that solution working for you. Charlotte, obviously, there's been lots shared already by Zoe and Johan. Have you got any other thoughts that you would add on this one? Yes. I mean, I suppose in terms of opportunities, it's almost more summarizing what Johan said because I think what we're hearing from the sector is that AI does present an opportunity to to to to get rid of the bits that aren't fun for fundraisers. So, you know, where where we can see a real step step change is being able to kind of automate more administration processes and things so that fundraisers actually have the creative, you know, the ability to think more creatively about how to surprise and delight their donors. So once again, we'd say, you know, that's definitely something that we would like to see explored further. It's just more how we can actually ironically use technology to become more human to create more human centric, pause kind of personalized support journeys that really put donors at the heart of everything that you do. And then the other thing just to say as well that in terms of opportunity when it comes to digital capacity, and I think Zoe touched on this, that, know, a lot of charities are struggling at the moment with just, you know, we need to invest in technology and we have, you know, very little budget and resource to do so. And just to kind of highlight that we very much recognize that challenge as well, which why we put forward through the civil society group and ask into the most recent autumn budget, for there to be statute more statutory funding specifically for smaller charities to invest in their digital capacity. And that's an ask that we are going to be continuing to make, to this government and potentially the next one until essentially that we get it. So we we recognize that kind of within the kind of think strategically with what you've got piece, actually, is role that other players can be doing to help charities on their digital journey. Yeah. Thank you, Charlotte. I think that's the, you know, the the key in all of this is is how you can find your path forward. This technology technological kind of advancement, how we make our way forwards, and how, you know everyone has kind of mentioned how we can put the people, the fundraisers, the storytellers, the communicators, the empathizers, those people, you know, empower them with the information that they need to take the, admin work that is potentially laborious, time consuming, a little bit boring so that we can focus on the things that we care about the most, how we can focus on those wonderful stewardship moments and be the most effective fundraisers that we possibly can. So speaking to that, talking about AI tools, how we can remain truly human centric, particularly when we're talking about serving potentially vulnerable communities. Zoe, have you got any thoughts on how folks can, potentially, you know, take those things into consideration? Thanks, David. Yes. I think there's there's two really key things here that I would recommend. And I do think these are especially important to bear in mind this year because there are so many AI products coming to market now, as we said earlier, they're everywhere. And it's gonna be really tempting to deploy those in quite sensitive situations as a way to demonstrate, look, these tools can can make a difference, and this is where we're going to generate some value or make things more efficient. So there are two things I'd recommend. And and one thing is this everyday situation, so I'll speak to that in a moment. But one thing where there's there's there's more of an element of challenge. So the first thing is, I think what we need to do, I think where AI is a big opportunity for all organizations, is to go back and look at where does an organisation make the biggest difference? What is truly human centred about what we do regardless of digital? And it might be, for example, that you are a youth mental health charity, and one of the the best things that you can do is sit with a young person who's going through a really challenging time. So I think there's something about understanding what's really unique about the difference we make, what we hear from communities as well, and making sure that we protect that because it's really important. And as Yaron says, there will be certain things where it would be wrong. It would be unethical to automate them because they really go to the core of how we make a difference as organizations. So that's the the first thing, what is unique about what we do. And then the second thing for me is about understanding what is at stake. So I've been in the room with charities when they have talked about deploying, for example, agentic AI in very high stakes situations where, for example, someone might be in a life or death situation potentially, and I I I can't really say much more about these situations than that. But while it's very tempting to rush into solutionizing, I think, oh, we could do something here which will get a result and it will be a more effective intervention and we'll do this more quickly and cheaply and easily. What we need to do is take understand the unintended consequences if we get the technology wrong. So as part of your risk assessment, when you're thinking about deploying AI in those situations where someone from a marginalized community has a lot to lose, you really need to understand what could go wrong here. And is it even ethical to use AI in this situation? And I am someone who's very much an advocate for for AI. So it's it's it I still think that's really important. So to be truly human centered, go back to understanding what's unique and human centered about what you do regardless of tech. And then understand those user needs, co design with your the communities you support, and make sure that you really understand where the power dynamic could be skewed in their their disfavor if you get things wrong. Yeah. And I think it's it's a it's a pertinent point particularly because of inevitably the sector that we all work in, you know, vulnerable communities and, you know, sensitive situations. We always have to be prepared to adapt, to take those moments and think what is the most appropriate in those moments. But, you know, if we can allow ourselves to focus on those very close moments and how we can continue to be that human centric empathetic person to be most personally engaged and allow technology and AI to underpin all of the research work and the pieces that we keep going. Next question. Johan, what would you say is a great opportunity or ways in which organizations have considered to structure or approach their data strategy, to maximize the potential of AI? Yeah. So to start as ever, I think it's privacy and security. And this is almost a caveat because I think people should they should know this by now, but it's all it's almost far more it's worth emphasizing in the AI world because the dangers are are more apparent and more evident, and we're seeing them a lot. So allow for always follow GDPR as the the obvious place to start. Apply legitimate interest whenever appropriate. Apply the ICO has a three part test for data collection, which is super useful. Sometimes the resources are out there. You just need to go to them, and that's one. And just always ensure you're going fair and transparent with everything you do. It's all particularly necessary in a in an AI world. And the final, like, new gold golden rule is make sure you don't feed external AI models any sensitive data because, obviously, they can appear in outputs and you can be revealing things. But in terms of, utilizing data, I think the same rules again kind of apply, but but in in slightly different ways. So one is that you should really be plugging all information gaps. Now this matters for, charities fundraising because people are gonna try and find you in new ways. So, Zoe mentioned earlier the shift from sort of SEO to AEO or answer engine. I think people are deciding what answer engine optimization now rather than generative engine optimization, but whichever, AEO or GEO. But that shift is only small at the minute, but we are seeing it, and it's likely to continue. But what that means is people might be be making very specific prompts. Now if you don't have your charity set up to have all outward facing information that could answer that prompt, then people won't find you. So there's almost, like, these knowledge gaps that really need to be plugged, and it's far more important now because Google kinda lent itself to more broad, wide ranging, or exact keyword driven things. Whereas this can be quite specific questions, which you might be the answer to, but you're not you're not outwardly putting that information out there, if that makes sense. So you need data quantity in a weird way, just making sure you have all the right things answered. And then, of course, there's quality. Any incorrect or outdated data will lead to answer engines, LLMs basically producing incorrect or outdated information. That's reputational risk, but, also, it's just unethical, frankly, to for these people. It creates an ecosystem of misinformation. It is probably the biggest risk we currently face with LLMs is that they are pushing this misinformation. Still, if you use ChatGPT, the other day, it told me a brick Brixton Brixton McDonald's opened in 1937, which was twenty years before KFC was so KFC in Brixton was opened in 1937, twenty years before KFC was even created. Just one very fairly low risk example, but I was just asking that information. So get your, get all that in order and make sure your data and all the information you have is up to date and and and effective and correct. Then there's data cleansing, which, again, we should have been doing before, but it's even more important now. Unifying, sort of standardizing data to make sure you get rid of any duplicates, any unnecessary entries, and just trying to standardize as much as possible. And finally, and the big one, I think, is unification. So we we're seeing a holistic approach to data management now because you have CRMs. You have donor, donor providers, volunteer management systems, CMSs, social media analytics, website analytics. Then you have your policies, your procedures. All of this is data, and it's all collect collected in different parts of your charity, likely if your charity is like ours. And what we're trying to do is for the future, it's it'll be so vital to have that in one place. And there are places that are doing this quite well. So for example, Giant Digital, which some people will know. They basically have a an AI that that is used internally where it it basically unifies all your data from all these different sources, collects it altogether. And that means that if you have any questions about your own internal resources, for example, stuff on handbooks or policies, or if you wanna ask about your website analytics, all your data is talking to each other, and the result will be so much more sort of helpful and useful and valuable. So, you know, on onboarding, you would have a a new sort of, starter, could ask questions about your charity and get immediate answers based on their current up to date information. Or if you were dealing with volunteers, you can give them access to all your policies. And, you know, so it's it's all about kind of making sure that you're having this best set of data so you can go forward because it's only gonna become more important. And Charity Digital, for for one, isn't is in the process of doing this. We're not experts at at getting this right. It is kind of where we're thinking we need to go with data to make sure that, yes, it's all clean and, yes, it's all sort of, up to date and compliant and everything like that. But it's also about unifying all these different systems such as our CMS and CRM. Right now, we use a a system called Afino. Because we use one system for our CRM and CMS, it just so happens that's so useful, particularly in terms of, like, fundraising because these personalized journeys now become really interesting because we have the way I think Charlotte mentioned that earlier, but you we know the information about our donors because we're there on the CRM and stuff's on the CRM. But now we also know how they're working within our website, for example. That could be so beneficial towards creating user journeys, personalized journeys, and so on. So, yeah, I think holistic approaches to data retaining in one one unified place is is kind of where you wanna be in the future. But for now, the old rules still apply, I think. Yeah. It's a it's a wonderful place where we've kind of got a bit of a foot in both camps of thinking about, you know, where we are now, where we want to be going, and how you can be effectively working across both of those places. Inevitably, we're starting to run a little short of time, but I've got one kind of final question I want to pose to you all to share some thoughts. So each of you in turn, what actionable recommendations would you potentially give to help organizations to shift from just being AI aware to being AI ready, especially if they have limited resources? Charlotte, let's start with with you. So I'm gonna keep it very simple because I think what's interesting about AI is that it's one of the few emerging technologies that's really being embedded and normalized from a bottom up approach. And that means that there are just loads of accessible resources online and that people can just get for free. So really simply, Google and the Open University actually offer free courses on AI. And then, of course, we there is us, the Chartered Institute. So we have collection of AI resources specifically for fundraisers, which we you can find them on our website now, but we intend to build on them over the coming year. And then it's also added worth adding just pure learning is perhaps one of the most powerful ways to really start building AI into an organization. So that can start very simply by going, you know what? We're gonna do an AI amnesty within our staff. We get everybody to talk about what it is that they're using with AI. We can then set up an AI working group and then from there develop an AI policy. So actually using your staff and their knowledge of AI to embed it into your processes rather than kind of taking top down can really make sure that it's done so in a way that's practical practical for all for everybody. Amazing. Just realized that my mouse had stopped working, so I couldn't unmute myself. Always remember to charge your wireless mice. Yohan, have you got anything what would your actionable recommendations be? Yeah. I I'm I'll I'll do a really simple one as well, which is experiment, safely. I think experiment with I AI. Here's the best bit of advice I got really early on. It was just go and and play around with it. And even the code of practice, which means that we worked on, we did kinda suggest low risk, low risk experimentation is one of the easiest ways to kinda get AI ready because you actually realize it's it's quite a simple bit of tech in the end, quite usable, really user friendly, really, at least at at the low level on on LLMs. And what we what I did initially was I just created a report on, like, a really random thing. I can't actually remember what was. It didn't matter what it was, but, like, an example is just like a a premiership team or the history of strictly come dancing. The data doesn't have to be correct. All you need to do is see how it works and watch it generate a report and get it to summarize that report. Maybe try and get an image in that report. It doesn't matter what you produce, but but low risk because it's all completely false and will never go anywhere further than what you've done. But in just doing that, I found that suddenly AI wasn't this scary thing. And and from then on, the training and all the things Charlotte mentioned will will come natural for me. So, yeah, just go out there and and create a random report, and I think you'll be well on your way, I think. Absolutely. Yeah. Curiosity is key at this point. Get be curious. Zoe, any thoughts? Any suggestions? Yeah. So just building what Charlotte and Ioann have both said, which I completely agree with. I think the glue that brings all of this together is about learning because your question is really about how you make that shift from AI being a grassroots individual pursuit to a team sport and organizational one. And what I always say to charity leaders is it's really hard to make those decisions about how you scale up use of AI until you've got that data and insight on what's happening at the the the coal phase. So to Yaron's point, what are people testing? Where are they finding these technologies useful and not useful? What tools are they actually using? And where are they getting some some benefits from it as well, whether it's time saved, money saved, or or just having a bit more headspace to to be more innovative. So I think learning from what's going on the inside is important for making those decisions about your strategy. Also learning from the outside as well. So how are similar charities using AI? Can you find the ones that are a few steps ahead and benefit from their war stories so that you can then anticipate any risks and opportunities coming down the track and and plan those ends. And learning from the inside and outside, is is so important for deciding where you're gonna go next. Fantastic. Thank you very much. So let's hear from you on how you are utilizing AI or not in certain cases. Some of you not necessarily using it yet. But the real kind of bulge in the in the results is around those folks who are experimenting, being curious, finding that opportunity to experiment in AI use yourselves, be that through, you know, your suggestion of giving the strictly results and tell me what's happened over you know, who are the who are the winners over the last five years? Who knows? We're starting to use them in a few workflows, getting embedded, starting to play around. A few people who are choosing to avoid it and focusing on their personal personal processes. And it's unsurprising, you know, that there is a spread in all of this, but that curiosity, I think, is is really, really key in all of that. So I guess my question for all of you, because we are running a little short on time, we might not have much chance to to run to questions. But my question to all of you who have joined us today for the session is, well, how do you come away thinking? And if you're inspired by the conversation that we've had and whether it's time for you to consider if your fundraising solution can underpin your fundraising strategy for, far more effectively. We talked about fundraising processes, about human centric fundraising, about fundraising technology today. So if you, and your fundraising team are struggling or reviewing systems or curious about what's out there that potentially is taking a lot of these pieces in mind and how it can do these things, and you'd like to know more about Blackboard, then we do have conveniently, as I'm sure you can imagine we've prepared. We have a request a demo button. So if you'd like to know more, we'd love to hear from you. You can click on that button. Also, in the interest of encouraging you to come and join us on another session here at Blackboard, we do have a fantastic team presenting next week, to give you a tour of our flagship solution, Raises Edge NXT, and we can show you how you could align your fundraising plans with, all of that information and conversation that we've had today into your fundraising strategies. If you'd like to sign up for that, then in the documents tab over on the right hand side, the second link is towards signing up for our product tour next week. So that's the plugs done. Contractual obligation on my part completed. But all's really to say a huge thank you to all of you for joining us today. A little sorry that we haven't had a chance to get to questions. I really appreciate everybody's engagement in the chat and sharing your thoughts, involving yourself in the polls. Really, really exciting to see how you have found today's session. If you'd like to know more, to keep in touch, please do go through the request a demo, to stay close to us here, and we'd love to talk to you again in the future. And a very big thank you to our panel, to Charlotte, to Johan, and to Zoe. And thank you very much for all of your thoughts and, opinions and, insights today. And we hope that all of you will join us again for another broadcast very soon. Have a lovely rest of your day. Take care as well.