Charities should have a people-first approach when implementing AI technology, finance leaders have been told.
Speaking at the Charity Finance Group conference in central London yesterday, Jared Goodrich, director of innovation at the advisory, tax and audit firm Moore Kingston Smith, said charities should be using AI as an “information-gatherer” and not as a decision-making tool.
Goodrich said: “I think a people-first approach here is absolutely important. Focus on quality first and foremost, and then you can look at potentially increasing revenue and donations.
“Productivity and everything else will always come.”
Goodrich cited data from the Charities Aid Foundation’s What the Public Think of Charities Using AI research, which surveyed a sample of more than 1,000 people.
The research found 27 per cent of the sample was concerned about workforce reductions.
It found 23 per cent of the sample were worried about data breaches, while 15 per cent were concerned about the technology making biased decisions.
“It’s important to have your AI policies in place and really list out what you can and can’t do,” Goodrich said.
“If you do not have any sort of sanctioned software that you can use, staff are just going to find their own, because it is really saving a lot of time and it’s making their job more enjoyable.
“So if you take that away from them, they will seek something themselves.”
Having to send data to several different AI models or providers can also cause issues, Goodrich said.
“There’s security-focused options if you absolutely can’t do any of this, there are open source models,” he said.
“What you can do is download the entire AI model and host it on your own servers, so it’s not being sent anywhere.
“The trade-off is usually the quality of the model, because it’ll be much smaller, but that is absolutely an option.”
Goodrich said charities should consider the suppliers they engage with because of “AI-washing” happening in the space.
“There’s a lot of AI-washing going on, which is providers mislabelling their own software and saying it’s AI when it’s not.
“Now it’s easier than ever to create a really nice-looking tool that doesn’t actually work in the background.
“You can do it in a few prompts and come up with nice software that you might want to sell to someone.”
Goodrich reiterated advice from the National Lottery Community Fund and said charities need to maintain the “personal touch” that comes with handling grant applications.
“The National Lottery Community Fund says being too generic in content might disadvantage your application,” he said.
“AI is going to be generic because it’s not going have all the information that you have.
“Maybe it’s a great place to start if you want to fill in all of that relevant information that’s specific to your organisation.
“But do not just send this off, because if everyone’s doing it, they’re going to get maybe 500 very similar applications, so this is absolutely crucial.”