How can small charities get real value from AI?
In this guest blog, Ed Tytherleigh of Nonprofit Impact looks at why so many charities seem stuck at the “drafting documents” stage of AI, and how a short, practical workshop programme can help them move on.
Walk into almost any charity office right now and you’ll find someone using AI. A team leader tidying up an email. A fundraiser summarising a long report. A manager asking ChatGPT or Copilot for a first draft of a policy.
That’s a good start. But in most organisations, it’s also where things stop.
Use tends to be individual, informal and sometimes a little hidden. Some staff are enthusiastic, others are nervous, and very few have been shown how to use the tools well. Meanwhile, boards are starting to ask perfectly reasonable questions. Is our data safe? Who decided we could use this? And what are we actually getting out of it?
We think that’s both a missed opportunity and a risk.
Access to the tools isn’t the same as using them well
The appeal of AI is obvious: anything that frees up time for the people we exist to serve is worth a serious look. But buying a licence is not a strategy. Staff need the confidence to use AI effectively, an honest understanding of its risks and limitations (it gets things wrong, sometimes very confidently), and practical guidance on how it applies to their work. Organisations need sensible governance, so that AI is used responsibly, securely and in line with their values and data protection duties.
As a recent article on this blog argued, AI is a great starting point but no substitute for human judgement. We agree. The goal is to help people use AI well, so they spend less time on the repetitive tasks and more on the work that genuinely needs them.
Where to start
If you’re a charity leader wondering where your organisation stands, a few questions are a good place to begin:
Do you know how your staff are already using AI?
Do you have a clear, simple policy on what information can and can’t be shared with AI tools?
Can you name one or two repetitive tasks that eat up a disproportionate amount of staff time?
Who in your organisation is curious enough to lead the way?
If the honest answer to some of these is “not sure”, you’re far from alone. The good news is that a short, focused investment can move an organisation from scattered experimentation to confident, safe and purposeful use.
A practical, hands-on programme
With my colleague Tim Dunton, founder of FluentAI, we’ve developed a programme of three interactive workshops for a small group of “AI-curious” staff: people already using AI for the basics who want to go further. Rather than starting from first principles, we move quickly on to how AI can solve real business problems, automate repetitive tasks and support better decision-making. The workshops cover:
Building strong foundations: how modern AI actually works, what it can and can’t do, common misconceptions, and responsible use, governance and confidentiality and making the most of tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft 365.
Solving real problems: participants bring genuine challenges and we work on them together.
Building agents and embedding AI: each participant builds a working prototype of a simple AI assistant, and we discuss an organisational roadmap for wider adoption.
Why small groups and real work matter
In our experience, learning sticks when people are working on their own problems rather than generic examples. A small group can be honest about their successes and failures and become a core of confident champions who can support colleagues long after the workshops.
It also keeps things grounded. We’re not trying to turn charity staff into technologists. We want to help them spot where AI can genuinely save time or improve quality, and just as importantly, where it can’t.
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Want to find out more? Contact Ed at ed@nonprofitimpact.co.uk to discuss how AI could work for your organisation.
About the author
Ed Tytherleigh is a Director and Lead Associate at Nonprofit Impact. He has worked in housing and homelessness for over thirty years, has been chief executive of three housing and homelessness organisations, and was most recently Operations Director at Centrepoint. He is the author of Leading for Social Impact and works with Tim Dunton of FluentAI to deliver practical AI solutions for nonprofit organisations.
