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The Charity AI Governance and Ethics Framework is a simple, practical template for your charity to create an AI policy to manage the legal, compliance and ethical challenges of charity AI use.
AI governance and ethics is a very complex and fast evolving area, but very soon, all of us in the charity sector will either be using AI or our work will be impacted by systems that use it and the huge uncertainties and risks are now widely accepted.
To support the charity sector in responding to this, we used our own AI ethics policy and procedures, informed by the work of others, to create this Charity AI Governance & Ethics Framework. This is a living document - any comments/suggestions would be very welcome. Send these to me at ian@charityexcellence.co.uk.
If you have any questions about AI or our charity AI services, click the AI bunny icon in the bottom right of your screen and ask it short questions, including key words.
In the charity sector, trust has always been critical. We need people to trust us to feel able to use our services and we need the public and donors to trust us to be willing to provide the funding needed for our services. However, AI will bring new and substantial challenges. We will publish new work in Mar 25 to update our Governance and Ethics guidance to support charities in meeting this growing threat.
This is the charity AI risk assessment we created for our own charity, which informed our work in creating this AI Framework. And we also have another toolkit to check if your charity is at particular risk, plus what you can do about it if you are.
This framework is a simple, practical and flexible template for anyone using AI in the charity sector. Simply add, amend or delete to meet your needs.
This AI framework can be used by charities and non profits to:
For those designing, commissioning or funding AI, it can be attached to RFPs, contracts and grants agreements, or relevant extracts included within these.
This AI governance and ethics framework has been developed to ensure that the use of AI within our charity is ethical and legal, by meeting high standards of fairness, accountability, transparency, privacy, and non-discrimination in developing, running, and overseeing any AI systems we commission, create, develop, manage or use.
This policy applies to all trustees, other volunteers, employees, contractors, and third-party representatives working on our behalf. Its requirements should be reflected in other policies and procedures, agreements and contracts, as necessary.
We define Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the ability of machines or software to perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence. AI systems can process data, learn from it, and make decisions or predictions based on that data. AI is a broad field that encompasses many different types of systems and approaches to machine intelligence, including rule-base AI, machine learning, neural networks, natural language processing and robotics.
We will create any necessary guidelines:
We will ensure that:
Our AI risk analysis has included:
The risks have been clearly identified and quantified, and the avoidance/mitigation action put in place will ensure that the level of risk remains within acceptable limits.
You can use our Charity AI Risk Toolkit to better understand AI risks and create your own AI Risk Register, if you wish to. There is also a supporting toolkit of AI Design principles for those building or commissioning AI systems.
We think we are likely to see AI development focussed on fundraising, simply because it is the area of greatest need and people are more likely to be willing to pay, so companies will focus on this.
We have carried out a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) for AI and made any necessary changes to our policies and procedures. As part of that, insofar as reasonably possible, we will:
We are aware of the ICO guidance on AI and data protection and have reflected any additional requirements in our policies and procedures. For more on this, you can use our Charity AI Data Protection Toolkit.
Here is our assessment of the impact of AI on charity sector jobs and what charities need to think about and do in integrating AI into roles and procedures. The Institute for the Future of Work has created a Good Work Algorithmic Impact Assessment that may be of interest, including 10 dimensions of 'good work'.
We will ensure that:
We have included AI scraping of our website data in our risk assessment. Where we do not wish our site pages to be scraped, we have taken steps to minimise the risk of this, whilst recognising that such action may not be respected by AI companies. This might include:
Meta Tags. The use of meta tags, such as those above, has been floated by various companies and agencies but is not an industry standard and there's no guarantee that all, of even any, bots will comply.
T&Cs. Our lay person's understanding of web scraping is that it might be considered illegal if the necessary amount of creative input was not used to create whatever the data scraped was used for, which might amount to copyright infringement. We also understand that it is possible to restrict the re-use of scraped data through your T&Cs. That is, if a company accesses your website and consents to your T&Cs, which contain a restriction on the re-use of the data, if they then do so they may be in breach of contract.
We design and build our own AI systems with pro bono support from expert AI companies. We have used our learning to create a separate resource that should be read in conjunction with this one. It provides a simple set of AI design principles for those designing or commissioning AI systems.
A registered charity ourselves, the CEF works for any non profit, not just charities.
Plus, 100+downloadable funder lists, 40+ policies, 8 online health checks and the huge resource base.
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The Charity AI Ethics & Governance Framework was informed by the work of others, including:
This charity AI Governance and Ethics Framework is for general interest only and does not constitute professional legal or financial advice. I'm neither a lawyer, nor an accountant, so not able to provide this, and I cannot write guidance that covers every charity or eventuality. I have included links to relevant regulatory guidance, which you must check to ensure that whatever you create reflects correctly your charity’s needs and your obligations. In using this resource, you accept that I have no responsibility whatsoever from any harm, loss or other detriment that may arise from your use of my work. If you need professional advice, you must seek this from someone else. To do so, register, then login and use the Help Finder directory to find pro bono support. Everything is free.
Ethics Note: AI was used in the initial draft of this framework. All of our work is subject to human oversight and checking before being published. . This work was last updated Feb 25.
