Thanks for visiting CAST’s AI Questions and Answers page. This is a new section of our website, set up to answer the AI-related questions that we regularly receive (see more about this in our AI Q&A blog, from July 2025).
Please take a look through the questions and answers below - and if you’d like to submit a question, please email our Head of Communications, Sonya Hayden.
Question: What do you see as CAST’s role in the sector when it comes to AI?
Answer: For the past decade we’ve sat at the intersection of charities, funders and digital experts. That position means we’re well placed to work with each of those groups but also to help them connect well with each other. We believe that to ensure community and civic voice is at the heart of the AI revolution requires a collective response between these three communities and our mission is to bring that about: supporting critical engagement with AI; building confidence and understanding of AI; strengthening relationships and growing the collective voice.
Q: How are you working with other organisations within the space on AI? How can you make sure that efforts are joined up and connected, rather than being duplicated across silos?
A: By our very nature, we’re connected in to multiple organisations and networks: we convene both the Digital Leads Network AI peer group and the AI for Grantmakers group - meeting regularly to share the challenges and opportunities presented by AI, and make connections across and between these groups, in order to best support the sector.
And we strive to grow and expand these connections and networks continually: this year alone, we’ve set up a new partnership with IVAR, designed to help strengthen lines of communication and connection across and between charities and grantmakers - with the ultimate aim of empowering more confident, robust and well-informed responses to AI across the board.
And, alongside Zoe Amar, we’ve co-founded the Charity AI Task Force, with the aim of championing the responsible, inclusive and collaborative use of AI across the social sector, for maximum impact and collective benefit.
We know we are not the only organisation providing support to social impact organisations around AI. We actively support and signpost organisations to the brilliant resources and networks - we’ve been grateful to benefit from this support ourselves, for example CAST has attended DataKind UK’s peer group exploring responsible and ethical chatbots - being part of these groups helps us learn from others and develop our own expertise too.
Q: You say you are responding to the sector’s AI needs - but how are you sensing those needs?
A: Naturally, we glean insights and information on an almost daily basis via our conversations with charities, funders and other sector leaders - but we also rely on information from specific research streams - not least our AI survey, for which we have just published the latest results.
The survey is now in its second year; response rates rose by 62% this year, and the results give a clear picture of the sector’s needs, concerns and priorities, helping us to design support interventions as needed. Of course, we also refer to other key sector research - such as Neighbourly’s survey of small charities, and the recently published Charity Digital Skills Report - to ensure that we have a full, accurate and representative picture across all organisation types.
We also design opportunities for people to come together in person to discuss AI developments and find ways to support the sector: examples of these types of events include our funder session in February 2025, and the AI war room in November 2024, which led to the development of the Charity AI Task Force.
In addition, we attend and present at a wide range of events each year, for both charities and funders: as well as giving us the opportunity to share advice on AI-related topics and demonstrations of tools and techniques, this also means we have the opportunity to network and discuss current and emerging needs and priorities.
We host an AI peer group for charity digital leads through our Digital Leads Network. The group has 130+ members and meets every six weeks to share ‘show & tells’ of AI use cases, to explore opportunities, as well as challenges and needs. We actively involve our AI group to feed back and input on any AI developments - for example, a dozen group members user-tested Knowbot, an AI chatbot for charities. Eight group members also actively took part in our recruitment process earlier this year, when we were hiring for two new AI roles at CAST.
Q: How are you influencing funder and other stakeholder support, discussion and alignment on this front? How are you advocating for the sector?
A: We’re committed to bringing funders and other influential figures across the sector together to provide connected and aligned support. Following an AI war room event in November of last year, we worked with Zoe Amar to set up the Charity AI Task Force, designed to champion the responsible, inclusive and collaborative use of AI across the social sector. Launched in February, the collective has already grown to comprise more than 50 members from influential organisations - and in May, the group issued a response to the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, calling for urgent engagement with the VCSE sector.
We have also been working to increase the reach and influence of our AI for Grantmakers group, set up in December 2023. Over the past 18 months, the group has grown to comprise more than 300 people from 220 Trusts and Foundations across the UK. We have met online regularly to discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by AI — and earlier this year, many of the group’s members joined an event convened by CAST and The National Lottery Community Fund, designed to explore ways in which funders could align efforts to support the sector with AI.
In addition, since November of last year, CAST’s Director Dan Sutch has been acting as the National Lottery’s AI innovator in residence, supporting the organisation’s exploration into AI — and ensuring charity and community voice is at the heart of it.
Q: What support are you directly developing at CAST? Do you have any evidence of impact?
A: We’ve been rolling out a wide range of support offerings, designed in response to what we’re hearing from the sector via conversations, surveys and our own research. You can read more about these in our recent AI support blog, and you can learn more about our general impact via our website - but we’ll share some recent highlights here:
AI self-serve course: Our ‘Getting started with AI’ email course delivers lessons and activities straight to people’s inbox over seven weeks. It starts with the basics of AI, gradually building knowledge, skills and confidence. Since the course launched in January 2025, almost 2,000 people have signed up - and feedback has been very positive: 96% of participants who responded to the post-programme survey described the content as engaging and relevant, and when asked how likely they were to continue applying learnings from the course, respondents returned an average score of 9 out of 10. Specific from the survey comments included:
- “Practical exercises really helped me get to grips with what and how to use AI in my work, and understand what it is.”
- “The examples of the ways other charities had used AI were very useful and thought-provoking.”
- {the most valuable takeaway from the course was} “focusing in on specific uses of AI that match my aims rather than talking about AI generically.”
In response to feedback on the ‘Getting started with AI’ email course, where people expressed a need for more advanced follow-on content after they completed it, we’ve now developed a ‘Supporting your organisation with AI’ email course. Over eight weeks, the email course shares tips and activities for digital leads to start AI conversations and get their teams and stakeholders involved as they explore AI within their organisations. The new course was launched on 1st July 2025 so we don’t have any impact stats yet, but we’ll be sharing them as they come in.
NCS Youth Sector Innovation Incubator: One of the teams on the CAST and NCS Youth Sector Innovation Incubator project explored ways young people could engage with AI in a safe, creative yet critical way. They ended up developing Real Chat AI, which highlights some of the challenges around bias or ethics when using AI to generate text or images.
Chris Brown, outgoing Director of Service Delivery at NCS, shared his thoughts on the project as a whole:
“This project surpassed our expectations. We were conscious that the challenges we set for the incubators to focus on were far from simple, but the prototypes that have come out not only add immediate value for the sector, in some cases they are truly ground-breaking; and all offer great scope for further development which is really exciting. But it's not just the outputs that has made it a success, it was the journey to get there.
“It's so important to design products and solutions with young people, not for them. The way that CAST created the incubators, and the highly-engaged organisations involved, meant young people were involved throughout the process. I'm convinced the approach taken through this process is a key reason for the powerful outputs that were created. I really hope that CAST's way of working can become the blueprint for future developments in the sector.”
AI resource hub: We host a ‘living library’ of AI resources on our website: updated regularly, this contains a range of AI-related workshops, courses, peer groups, templates, toolkits, blogs and more - not just from CAST, but from other trusted sources. Since launching in June of last year, the library has attracted over 5,000 unique visitors - and more than 7,000 total page views.
AI mini series in partnership with Deloitte: This summer, CAST delivered a mini series to support organisations with AI; this included 10 live learning sessions from workshops on themes including Getting Started with AI, AI Trends for Funders, and the Impact of AI on Mission - as well as Q&A clinics and online AI resources. With support from Deloitte we adapted and improved on last summer’s Explore Adapt Renew AI mini series, incorporating our latest guidance and resources, as well as brand new tools that help organisations plan an AI experiment with confidence, choose between different AI tools, and consider how AI impacts their service delivery, culture, service users and mission.
Through this work, we supported 2,236 unique participants from at least 829 organisations. Feedback suggests that participants found this support helpful, scoring sessions on average at 4.57 / 5 for usefulness (≈ 92 % rating 4–5), and the overall Net Promoter Score was +69. We know that it takes time to develop skills and confidence with AI and that a mix of peer learning, expert advice and space to ‘give things a go’ is key. We were pleased to see that throughout this AI mini series, average confidence with AI jumped +0.83 points on a 4‑point scale (41 % lift) and understanding of how AI advances mission rose +0.90 points on a 5‑point scale. Here’s what participants had to say about it:
“Honestly the best workshop I’ve attended on AI - practical without the hype.”
“I feel ten times more confident experimenting with AI after this session.”
“The resources shared will save our small charity hours every week.”
“The Q&A clinic answered questions I didn’t even know to ask – incredibly helpful.”
“I’ve already drafted our next board paper with ChatGPT thanks to what I learned.”
You can find the slides, recordings and supporting resources in our AI Resource Hub.
Sector and community owned tools: We’re working to build the capacity of the sector around AI. One element of this is to create tools that enable charity practitioners to build their experience and confidence safely. A further element is to build tools that work specifically for charities and our communities. To do this, we’re building community and sector owned AI tools alongside our partners, The Developer Society. We’ll share more on this in the coming weeks.
Q: How are you communicating your AI work and support offerings?
A: For a start, via blogs such as this one! We also regularly share content about CAST’s AI work on Medium (which we then publicise across our Bluesky and LinkedIn channels - as well as via our regular newsletter) - including articles on our original AI survey results; the support we devised in response to those results; our latest AI survey results; February’s AI funder event; our AI experimentation canvas; key learnings from our Charity Digital AI Summit panel session; selected resources from our AI workshops - and lots more! We also share updates and new resources across the relevant pages of our website, such as the AI hub.
And as well as sharing what we’re doing as an organisation, we have a culture of sharing what we’re learning, such as via our Programme and Partnerships Lead David Scurr’s AI experimentation blogs. We also share our latest news and findings with the sector via events - such as April’s AI survey results session. And we reach out to media and sector support organisations via press releases to highlight key news (such as the launch of the Charity AI Task Force, and the response sent to government), so as to maximise reach, awareness and impact.
Q: Would you say that CAST is ‘pushing’ for the use of AI in the charity sector?
A: No: our starting point remains: How can the sector best support their communities and in particular respond to their changing needs, behaviours and expectations and the changing context in which we’re operating? We believe that to best support our communities, the charity sector needs to have a louder collective voice and a genuine degree of influence to represent communities. We believe that an important way to develop the critical understanding of AI is to experiment with it - and to use it where there’s value.
Q: How is CAST’s AI work funded?
A: CAST’s AI work is funded through grants received for specific projects, service income for AI-related services, and other funding and donations received from time to time. For the past two years we’ve invested from our reserves to ensure we can support the sector - including activities such as setting up the Digital Leads Network and the AI for Grantmakers peer group and internal learning and development. Realistically, funding is always a constraint upon our support for the sector - if you would like to make a donation, or to discuss potential funding, please email our Director, Dan Sutch: [email protected]. You can read more about how CAST is funded here.
Q: Can you give any examples of the ways in which you are using AI within your work at CAST?
A: Yes, absolutely - here’s an overview of some of the ways that we are using AI at CAST:
- Synthesising themes from GrantAdvisor UK reviews: We used ChatGPT to spot themes from anonymous reviews shared by grantseekers on the GrantAdvisor UK platform. The aim of this experiment was to see if AI could help us quickly generate insight from an anonymous data set. We tested this approach by AI analysis as part of a mini insight report with a couple of funders registered on the service, to see if the themes reflected what they had taken away from their anonymous reviews or sparked new ideas. One thing we learned was to take the time to test out different prompts in order to improve the quality of the analysis - providing a clear character and good context helped generate better insight, for example asking ChatGPT to ‘act like a researcher.’
- SideKick: in development. Like lots of organisations we’ve been experimenting with custom ChatGPTs. One of these, SideKick, aims to support charities as a coach - drawing from trusted resources to provide friendly support to burning questions on all things digital, like how to plan a user research project, how to choose a digital partner, as well as advice and support for organisations exploring AI.
- AI Skyla: As the need for AI support has increased, we’ve also experimented with a custom GPT trained on CAST and partner resources, specifically focusing on the topic of AI. The aim of this experiment is to help the CAST team respond to queries, prep for sessions and signpost, and also to support nonprofits with practical questions about using AI. Like all our custom ChatGPTs, we hope to provide clear, friendly, jargon-free advice while surfacing relevant guidance and case studies.
- BoardBoost: Another custom ChatGPT we’ve been exploring is BoardBoost, which focuses on the needs of senior leaders, acting as a digital advisor to charity boards and trustees.
- Community Kim: Continuing with the theme of custom ChatGPTs, we created ‘Community Kim’, a Charity Network-building and peer support tool. We wanted to test the use of a custom GPT to support network-building and peer-to-peer support in tech for good space. Kim provides strategic advice, facilitation tips, creative ideas, and practical tools, tailored to the challenges and realities of the nonprofit and tech for good sectors.
One thing we’ve learned through all of these experiments is that it is important to test, learn and iterate. We created a simple spreadsheet internally to help track feedback on the usefulness of responses asking the team to score on a scale of 1 - 10, so we can make improvements before testing externally. We’ve created a Library of AI experiments to help share how the sector is experimenting - you can browse the library to find more examples of how CAST and our network are experimenting with AI.
Q: Even at CAST, people must be at different stages - and of different mindsets - when it comes to AI. How do you ensure that every member of the CAST team is exploring AI together, and people aren’t getting left behind?
A: We started off back in the summer of 2023 by creating an open and collaborative space to share our small AI experiments, and for sharing questions and concerns. creating an open and collaborative space for sharing questions, concerns and experiments. We document experiments using our AI experiment canvas.
We now run an AI Brunch & Learn session every month, which any team member can step in to facilitate and talk about specific AI topics. When there isn’t a set agenda, we share examples of what we’ve each been experimenting on with AI to inspire and build confidence in the team. We also raise and discuss concerns and challenges in this space: for example, at the very beginning of our AI exploration, we spent multiple sessions discussing the ethical and environmental issues of using AI within CAST and as a sector more generally, gathering stats and interesting links to share as a team so our use of AI could be as measured and considered as possible.
By discussing challenges as well as practical examples and demos of tools, we’ve aimed to strike a good balance of inspiration and thoughtful use of AI - creating a safe space for team members to bring important topics that may otherwise stop us from taking part in the learning.
In addition, we’ve experimented with creating a custom GPT trained on CAST and partner resources, specifically focusing on the topic of AI. This is designed to help the CAST team access relevant info and support on all things AI, drawing responses from our bank of AI resources. The aim is to respond more quickly to questions, and prepare sessions efficiently and consistently.
Thanks to everyone that has submitted a question; we hope this has been a useful look at where we are and what we’re doing at the moment. Naturally, the pace of change with regard to AI is rapid, so our work is necessarily evolving and emergent - but we’ll continue to share regular updates across our Medium, Bluesky and LinkedIn channels, as well as in our newsletter - and if you have any further questions, please do get in touch via [email protected].