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AI for charities - our Charity AI Toolbox makes free AI non profit tools available for everyone, as well as our charity AI insight briefings, guides and training. Our Charity AI Steppingstones Strategy will enable the rapid, but safe adoption of AI for charities and adapting our remaining systems to create a charity AI concierge service - a single gateway to everything in the sector that'll be not only far more powerful, but also even more accessible and easier to use.
What 2025 holds in store for the charity sector - a 30 min podcast of myself and 2 others talking about what the future of the charity sector looks like and how that will be fundamentally impacted by AI. It's also available on Spotify.
AI Ready is our new programme to support all charities to adopt AI effectively and safely. We have updated existing resources within the Charity Excellence eco system so that those using it will automatically be supported and we will continue to roll out new AI systems, guidelines and training through 2025.
Complete the system health checks (8 questionnaires, takes about 2 hours) and it will automatically enable you to assess your AI readiness and connect you to the resources and help you'll need.
We use our experience in building AI systems and feedback from our community to develop new procedures and ways of working that respond to emerging key issues. These range from how to design in safety systems for vulnerable people into AI bots, to steps to mitigate the risk of deepfakes.
Following the launch of ChatGPT in Nov 22, we launched our first AI service in Dec 22. Click the AI bunny icon in the bottom right of any screen and ask it short questions, including key words. These are free, available 24/7 and can handle unlimited numbers of tasks. Watch this 3 min demo video of how the website bunny helps people and how to chat to her.
Biomni provide their Tenjin AI machine learning software and GPT access at no cost. We haven't yet begun scaling usage, as we've been focussed on building and training the AI but the bunnies are already helping 4,500+ people a month. They can answer 20,000 non profit questions with a 90% success rate. If you'd like a bot for your charity, here's what you need to know.
Our AI Insight Briefings on how AI might impact the sector.
How to choose the right AI for your charity. What kind of AI works best for particular needs, the pros and cons of the most popular, plus what's free, discounts and grants.
The June 2024 results of out first benchmarking survey. How many are now using AI, what they use and how well prepared charities are in the 9 key areas. This includes AI data from a range of other organisations as well.
What the future will be like - Part 1 is the very short timeline of when things will happen and Part 2, best and worst case scenarios for whether our future will be golden or dystopian. Part 3 is the strategic factors we think will drive this for anyone who wants more detail.
A simple introduction to AI, including the new generative AI systems, such as ChatGPT. We also look at the problems, estimate the impact we think this will have on charities, including our assessment of the future.
AI can have a positive impact on the environment, from energy-efficient building design to monitoring deforestation and optimising renewable energy deployment. For example, the Microsoft "AI for Earth" programme provides access to Cloud and AI technologies to monitor, model, and manage Earth’s natural systems. However, AI uses very large amounts of both energy and water, and creates not insignificant amounts of e waste. Microsoft is also pursuing zero waste goals and has set 2030 sustainability targets, which include reducing carbon emissions, responsible waste management and water positivity.
The impact of AI on fundraising, looking at how fundraising jobs and the sector will change, providing ideas on how to exploit the innovation offered, and who the winners and losers might be. We also revisit the risk of the very large charities creating 'digital moats', by building on their already very dominant position to secure an ever greater share of the available income. And the opportunity to instead level that already unequal playing field, by making AI accessible to all charities.
The impact on jobs - which will go, what changes we might expect, new roles that will be created and what charities need to think about and do to make the most of this opportunity and to ensure their people are properly cared for in the process.
Our very popular AI training webinars, primarily to support small infrastructure bodies and groups of charities.
The courses are practical and do not require any IT expertise. Microsoft also offer a range of free courses. These are mainly Azure and cloud computing but include a range of AI courses too, including fundamentals.
AI tools and resources that work for every non-profit, from sector level decision making to tiny charities making changes to their policies to ensure AI works well for them.
AI is now far ahead of both the legal and ethical issues it has created. Fixing these will take years and we're likely to be in for a (possibly very) bumpy ride in the meantime. This Charity AI Governance and Ethics Framework provides a simple, practical and flexible framework that anyone can use to manage these challenges.
As part of our AI Ready programme, we've put an AI Risk Register online that identifies and provides information on a wide range of risks relating to AI. You can download an AI and Data Protection Risk Register toolkit and resources to assess and manage the risks for your own charity, from the risk register questions in the Governance and Risk questionnaires.
AI represents a real data protection risk. This toolkit is for charities whose staff and volunteers are (probably already) using AI systems like ChatGPT, and those using charity IT systems, such as CRMs that will have AI built in and also for those building or commissioning/funding AI systems.
Built for small charities, the ChatGPT Funding Finder toolkit works for any charity. A prompt you can run in a variety of ways to generate lists of potential funders.
In phase II of our AI strategy we will launch our next generation AI systems and also collaborate with other organisations to co-create best practice in key areas and safety guides, to enable all charities to adopt AI effectively, quickly and safely. We are building on our expertise since we launched our first AI system in 2022. Below are our drafts to date. We welcome any comments to improve these, which should be sent to ian@charityexcellence.co.uk.
What, when and why the sector must begin to work collaboratively to develop charity ‘industry standards’ of AI best practice and also regulation.
A draft practical set of AI design principles for those funding, designing or commissioning charity AI systems.
The advent of AI has raised new issues for charities regarding the safe an ethical use of imagery but imagery has been manipulated since the advent of photography. Imagery Ethics Best Practice looks at not only AI but also other aspects of imagery, with a checklist you can use to create your own imagery ethics policy.
A simple practical guide - Charity AI: Cyber Security for Charities. The cyber risk is already significant and it's going to get a lot worse, not only for your charity but also your beneficiaries and you. What you need to know and do in simple English.
Free simple to use fact checking toolkit for misinformation and AI deepfakes, including procedures, checklists and resources.
How to safeguard against deepfake video and imagery, including how to identify deepfakes and a whole series of steps you can take to mitigate the risk of your imagery being used as a deepfake.
This charity AI tool explains the key things any charity needs to think about and gives you questions to ask to find out if AI is a threat, or the opportunity it should be.
These are how we use our steppingstones approach with ChatGPT for charities. Start at Stage 1 or whatever one suits you, progress through and then you'll end up knowing more about it than us. Perfect!
If you're uncomfortable using any kind of tech and wary of AI, you don't even need to have a ChatGPT account of your own. Simply register, login and have a chat with the in-system AI bunny. He'll create a prompt for you then hop off to ChatGPT and run it for you. If you think it could be improved on, click the regenerate button and he'll hop back over to ChatGPT and do it all over again.
Ready to get started on your own? Our introduction to ChatGPT - what it is and does, what you need to know and how to use it, including how to register with OpenAI for your free account.
Want to begin getting a bit more out of it? Our 'oven ready' ChatGPT prompts for a variety of tasks that any charity can amend and use to very quickly and simply create content using AI. From press releases, events plans and fundraising through to finance, governance, HR and how to be happy. We have 60+, so far. Better still, if you don't know what techie stuff like a hierarchy of messages is we've built that in for you.
Bored with listening to us and feel ready to do it yourself? Our ChatGPT 'Pick-n-Mix' is a simple guide that anyone can use to write their own prompts from scratch. Then you'll know as much as we do and you won't need us any longer. Bye!
If you still haven't found what you want, try these.
There's a whole new vocabulary emerging. Everything from the AI machine learning and ChatGPT large language model we use, to stochastic parrots and paperclip maximisers. If you ever need to know what any of this stuff actually means, just ask an AI bunny.
If you wish to create an AI policy for your non profit, you can use our AI Ethics & Governance Framework to do so.
Not all charities will want or need AI specific policies but almost all will have to make changes to their existing policies. For example, their website privacy, data protection and social media policies and potentially others. The Charity Excellence example policies have been updated and now include sections on both AI and crypto fundraising. These can be downloaded from within the system.
Some non profits may wish to have more specific AI policies and our work is being used more widely than just our own sector, so we've sourced other AI ethics and policy guidance for non profit, public and private sector organisations below. You can find this in the Other Useful Resources section below.
Biomni provide is with AI software and pro bono support from their AI experts, without which we would not be able to deliver our growing suite of AI services. To exploit the potential of AI in your own charity, speak to them about having your own Charity Bot.
Plus, 60+downloadable funder lists, 8 online health checks and the huge resource base. Nearly half of our tens of thousands of members rate us 10/10.
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