Mary-Jane Roberts, CEO of Doctors in Distress, explores the urgent challenges AI presents for small charity leaders, arguing that CEOs must develop the skills to make informed, ethical decisions about its use and potential benefits.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

‘What is a listicle?’ I typed in to google. I felt another coffee being needed. It was one of those days where everything modern seemed to be speeding up and relentless.

I am currently facing the largest challenge I have ever faced in a charity role. Yes, of course we all have the whirring permanent worries in our brain ‘Where is that funding coming from?’ or ‘What is the operations stress of the day?’. Never before, however, have we been personally facing the total landscape change that AI presents. It feels like one of those earthquake zones that you coloured in with a red colouring pencil in geography at school. The type where tectonic plates are moving apart, and new land is being formed. But the challenge for small and medium sized CEOs is that it is us individually building that new terra-not-so-firma.

I don’t know how much each person is adopting AI right now. A quick search doesn’t seem to show any survey or dataset in charities that captures SME level charities’ usage. Stop a second there. I have slipped in to a description that feels like a misnomer: ‘SME’. Even ‘small and medium sized’ overplays the level of people that most charities in the UK have working for them. At a conference I had a discussion with the superb outgoing ACEVO Chair and she reminded me of the high proportion of its members with income less than £50,000 a year. In these organisations, AI adoption and the AI revolution fall at the feet of dominantly one person: the CEO.

It has long been the case that the CEO of a micro-charity (annual income under £50,000) is a jack-of-all-trades. One minute cleaning a shelf so it’s hygienic for food parcels, the next completing a quarter-end budget report. The variety can suit you. Historically it’s allowed us to have a bit of choice about which type of task we’ll tackle to suit our mindset, day of the week, or situation. For that, we have been grateful.

However, AI is different. This is an additional category of work. For everyone this is a new skill set because it is new technology. A skill set that we should not be waiting to pop up on a training day, or wedging in to a personal development plan for some point in the future. It’s urgent, and there are pros and cons of its use we need to ethically and practically weigh.

“But why?” I hear you ask. You will partly know the answer, which is that AI can provide information at high speed. At best, this is equivalent to having the most experienced, non judgemental and permanently available colleague you can imagine sitting with you at the desk. A helpful, straightforward and a bit cheery robot that suggests adjacent or tangential improvements to your task, complimentary tasks or ways of thinking for you. This can improve rigour, speed and quality of your work.

It may be useful here to go to a real life example, a comparison. Let’s say that two charities have a local Council rent. Both need to work out how SORP affects their accounting.

One charity is taking the traditional route. Establishing the new SORP effects are longwinded, at the timescale and knowledge limitations of their advisors. The advantages of this include professional insurance cover for the advice they get, an ease of taking some Trustees and others along with them. It may be the work of others such as their Treasurer or legal lead Trustee, and frees the CEO up to do other things. The CEO’s analysis may be that the tax or cost change is not likely to be a material amount. Or the charity’s principles are such that the environmental effects of using the AI are not acceptable.

The second charity CEO has an AI subscription, policy and practice in place including safeguards. In the morning the CEO uploads the last annual return and asks what SORP changes are relevant. AI checks the building lease and how it is accounted for. The CEO covers the relevant typologies of AI question; gets key information about social value leases; how to negotiate these; a checklist for Trustees in regards to this situation; draft calculations that underpin a new lease value; and an automatic integration to their budget. Relevant Council workflows and policies are rekkied. Contact information found for that part of the Council. Within a number of hours the charity has a full options appraisal and papers ready for Trustee discussion.

Either route may be justifiable. What is certain is that without the CEO understanding the power of AI and how it can be used, a true cost benefit analysis or risk calculation can’t be done. The CEO should be a critical part of these ethical and practical questions.

Arguably it is for ‘online presence’ where AI use appears existential for charities. I think many of us had been chugging along in a naïve sense that if you put up authentic content that was sufficient. Holding on to our real life relevance and purpose is not enough. Those adopting AI run automated SEO monitoring workflow with updates to website content, powering them to the top of searches; in to people’s minds; and driving fundraising. If that sounds like gobbledygook, I get it. I am someone who frequently finds myself googling things like ‘what is aura-farming’ and ‘what is a listicle?’.

But small charity CEOs cannot have the indulgence of business as usual. We can’t think it is something that young people understand, or is too much hassle. As individuals, CEOs need to skill up and understand. That is not necessarily so we can adopt AI, but so we can work out for our own work what is sensible, safe and relevant for us to use and what isn’t. Make informed decisions on if and how it is used for your charity.

This can’t be a battle of the letters, CEO vs AI. We need to bring our full, deeply human, minds to bear on where, how and if we deploy AI to best help our beneficiaries.

---