You don’t need AI transformation: you need to transform your organisation for AI
The AI era is coming. Scrap that: it’s here now, and it’s already changing the nature of work. One study last year found that, across a variety of creative and strategy tasks, participants with access to AI tools finished 12% more tasks than those not using AI, and completed them 25% faster. Even more strikingly, the quality of the AI users’ work was a full 40% higher. Bear in mind this is just with current AI technology, which most experts predict will continue to improve rapidly in 2024 and beyond.
Access to AI improved work quality by 40%
It’s evidence like this that makes it clear the charity sector must prepare for AI. This preparation won’t happen overnight, and charities will need to invest both time and money in it. But the signs indicate AI will transform work and society so profoundly that we can't simply afford to lag behind. If we do, we will become less productive, less relevant, and less able to take up space than the corporations and right wing politicians who do capitalise on AI. Our power to shape the world for the better will diminish, just when it's needed most. AI has potential for both good and harm; a strong charity sector is crucial if we’re going to tip the balance towards the former.
The lessons from digital transformation
There are parallels here with digital transformation. Despite years of hard work, charities lag well behind the corporate sector on digital. There’s plenty of evidence for this; only 7% of charities rate themselves as “advanced” on digital, and research has found that charities trail corporations on almost all digital marketing skills, to give just two data points. But it’s also something most people working in our sector seem to just know. We feel it in the obstacles and challenges of our day to day work. We see it in our struggles to raise money online or cut through with our campaigns on social media.
No one factor explains why the charity sector has found digital transformation so difficult. A number of complex forces are at work, from our cultures through to how we’re funded. But we can take lessons from it to inform our approach to AI, and it makes sense to start with one in particular: the way we understand what “digital” actually is.
Why charities have struggled with digital
Most charities approached digital as something to be added to their organisation. It was seen first as a technological challenge (get a CRM; set up donation pages; move to Office 365) and then as a skills and tactical challenge (hire a digital team; work out the best way to ask for money over email; launch a Google ads programme).
The crucial thing we’ve struggled to appreciate is that digital isn’t just a set of tools and tactics to take advantage of. It’s a fundamental, still-changing shift in the very context our organisations operate within. Adapting to this new context means changing not just our technology and tactics, but our strategies, cultures, structures and ways of working too.
Consider these examples. A game changing power of digital channels is the ability to test things out, get real time performance data, and rapidly iterate towards the best performing ideas. Taking advantage of that means a) changing ways of working to favour speed and decentralised decision making and b) giving staff the psychological safety to experiment and fail - i.e. culture change.
Or think about what it takes to cut through online with our fundraising and campaigns. Social media demands narratives that drive active engagement - punchier, more timely, more values-led. Mobilising supporters for online advocacy means giving them something genuinely valuable to do. Many organisations aren’t able to provide either of these without changing their core strategy, both for how they deliver their mission and how they talk about it.
Finally, let’s look at the way digital has impacted our own organisational dynamics. There’s a growing mismatch between the bureaucracy and outdated tech many staff face at work and the empowering, user-friendly, decentralised digital world they’re accustomed to outside it. This reduces productivity and contributes to burnout. Fixing this means changing a) culture and tech strategy so that we prioritise user-friendly tech and b) ways of working, to empower staff to work quickly and without friction.
These are just three of the many digital-driven changes we’re contending with. Simply put, digital touches every part of our organisations - and so must any effective response to it. As Forward Action’s new CEO, Berry Cochrane, recently put it: “we don’t need digital transformation - we need to transform our organisations for the digital age.”
The same holds true for AI.
AI as the new electricity
Dr Andrew Ng, a global AI expert, draws the analogy between AI and electricity: “Just as electricity transformed almost everything 100 years ago, today I have a hard time thinking of an industry that I don’t think AI will transform in the next several years.” In the same way that no one would have conceived of television, MRI scanners or Google Maps when electricity was first invented, AI too will unlock possibilities we can’t even imagine today.
This isn’t an abstract future scenario. In the last few weeks alone, Samsung announced its first AI-powered smartphone, OpenAI launched a marketplace for custom chatbots, and Google showcased a dramatic leap forward in AI video generation. AI applications are evolving now, and they’re evolving fast.
The traits nonprofits need for the AI era
So, we can expect AI to drive rapid, constant change over the coming years. If nonprofits are going to keep up and thrive in the AI world, we believe three organisational traits will be crucial: speed, innovation, and resilience. We can’t build these traits solely by choosing the right AI technology or upskilling our staff, important as those are. They can only come out of our cultures, strategies, and ways of working.
In that case, what should you do to effectively prepare your organisation for AI? If, like most organisations, you’re just starting out on this journey, we’d suggest starting with these four fundamentals:
1. Build shared understanding. Everyone in your organisation - from board to leadership to frontline staff - needs to be aware of what AI is, its potential applications, and how it is likely to impact everything your organisation does over the next few years. This understanding will not only help your team make the right decisions around AI but also build the collective urgency that is the first requirement of any successful programme of change.
2. Get AI guardrails in place. Your first priority here should be ethics and data protection frameworks. This will make sure your staff can use AI tools confidently with lower risk of causing unintended harm.
3. Give your staff access to AI tools. AI is developing quickly; don’t wait until you’ve got a full strategy in place to start embedding it. Once you’ve built your safeguards, encourage your staff to start experimenting with AI. Ensure everyone has access to a premium subscription for an AI chatbot. If you’re using Office 365, get CoPilot, Microsoft’s integrated AI assistant. Give everyone basic training on AI prompt design.
4. Set your organisation’s AI strategy. Start to answer the big questions: what do we want to achieve with AI? What use cases should we pilot first? How do we access AI tech expertise? What new initiatives do our AI time-savings allow? And so on. You should also use this strategy to evaluate where you stand on speed, innovation and resilience, and plan the cultural and operational changes you’ll need to create an organisation that will thrive in the AI era.
We can’t fall asleep at the wheel
Let’s go back to that study I mentioned at the beginning - the one that reported that AI increased work quality by 40%. There is, unsurprisingly, a caveat. The same study found that, on more complex tasks, staff who relied on the AI’s response without question - “fell asleep at the wheel”, in the words of one of the study’s authors - actually performed far worse than those completing the tasks without AI help. Only AI users who developed more sophisticated strategies for collaborating with the AI performed well on the complex tasks.
The analogy for nonprofits is clear. We can’t afford to fall asleep at the wheel, because AI comes with both opportunities and risks. If we want to capitalise on the former and avoid the latter, we need to proactively prepare our organisations for AI, starting now.
If you’d like to pick our brains on what the next step looks like for you, get in touch - we’d love to talk. We’re also currently offering discounts on AI-preparedness audits and AI introduction workshops for leadership teams. Drop us an email if you’d be interested in exploring either: hello@modernchange.uk.
