By Nissa Ramsay, Think Social Tech
The 2025 Charity Digital Skills Report survey is live and you can complete the survey here until 9am on Monday 28th April.
With responses coming in daily, we hope we will reach 635 charities again this year. Our full report will launch in July.
In the meantime, we’re thrilled to share some early insights from our first 350 responses.
We were heartened to see the significant steps forward many charities are making, despite the increasing pressures of the cost of living and rising demand for services. This year, social media has been a big focus for charities, with many leaving X (Twitter) and changing their strategy.
We also now have evidence about the scale of adoption and use of AI tools across the charity sector. We are impressed by the uptake of AI among small charities, despite facing ongoing challenges with capacity and low digital skills. Yet again, we can see more larger charities making progress with AI adoption. However, concerns about quality, safety and responsible use of AI tools are significant barriers to moving forwards.
Comparing large and small charities: We talk about large and small charities a lot in this post and in our reports because we routinely find every year that there is a strong relationship between size and digital capacity (read our 2024 report here to find out more). We use the following definitions:
- Large: respondents specifying an annual turnover of £1 million or more
- Small: respondents specifying an annual turnover of up to £1 million.
They combine a range of income brackets because we can see a significant difference in digital skills, capacity and other responses between these two groups.
The cost of living is a significant challenge, but many charities are making progress with digital
Continuing the trend from 2024, the cost of living is the biggest barrier to organisational development. The top barriers charities face in making progress with digital remain squeezed organisational finances (67%), a lack of headspace and capacity (62%) and finding funds to invest in infrastructure, systems and tools (63%). These affect large and small charities equally.
Yet in spite of this, 62% of charities say they have made good or significant progress with digital this year, while 34% have stayed the same (only 2% feel they have gone backwards). Large charities are doing better here, with 73% saying they have made good or significant progress, compared to 57% of small charities.
Large charities have focused on a wide range of areas, making progress with:
- IT, systems or infrastructure upgrades (52%)
- Data protection and cybersecurity (52%)
- Social media engagement (49%)
- Our strategy for digital, data or AI (47%)
- Data collection, analysis or use (47%)
- AI tools, use cases, opportunities and risks (46%).
Small charities have mostly focused on making progress in terms of:
- Social media engagement (65%)
- Use of digital in operations and administrative tasks (39%)
- Improving staff and volunteer digital skills (38%).
Again this year, nearly a third of small charities (31%) are at the earliest ‘curious’ stage with digital, compared to 9% of large charities. This has a significant impact on capacity to move forwards with digital, as the following small charity explains:
“We are a very small charity with little income / funds currently. We would love to find ways of working more effectively using digital and data and AI, but currently our resources are very stretched.”
Charities are adapting to changes in the social media landscape
Charities have felt compelled to respond to the changing social media landscape this year, with 58% saying their biggest area of digital progress is their social media engagement. In addition:
- 50% of charities say they have stopped using X (Twitter)
- 27% have developed their social media strategy.
For guidance on social media trends, see this article from Charity Digital. CharityComms also offer a range of resources to develop your social media strategy.
More charities are using AI tools, extensively and strategically
This year, we asked different questions about the day to day use of AI in charities, as well as how charities are using AI strategically and actively across their organisation. In both cases, charities’ use of AI tools has grown significantly this year.
Using AI tools in day to day work
- Three quarters of charities (76%) are now using AI tools in their day to day work (this includes those who are strategically using AI, as well as those piloting and exploring AI tools, both formally and informally). This compares to 61% of charities in 2024.
- Nearly half (48%) are using AI tools to write documents and reports (e.g. sense checking documents, drafting content, ideas for structure). This is a significant increase on the 28% using AI tools for this purpose in 2024.
- Nearly half (46%) are also using AI tools for administrative tasks (e.g. summarising meeting notes, drafting emails), which has also increased from 32% in 2024.
Organisational use of AI
- Overall, 25% of charities are now using AI strategically. This is a significant increase from 11% in 2024.
- 44% of charities strongly agree or agree that they are now responding to the opportunities and challenges surrounding AI, despite only 22% of charities feeling prepared to respond to AI opportunities and challenges in 2024.
- Charities are also taking active steps to adopt AI responsibly and strategically. So far this year, 50% of charities responding are developing an AI policy, a significant increase on the 16% in 2024 who were doing this. For large charities, this figure rises to 66%.
- At an organisational level, charities using AI tools are primarily doing so for:
- Administration and project management (46%)
- Communications and fundraising (37%)
- Grant fundraising (36%).
- Small charities are primarily using AI tools for grant fundraising (46%, compared to 22% of large charities).
Large charities are further ahead with AI, but they have more concerns about AI tools as a result
59% of large charities agree that they are responding to the opportunities and challenges surrounding AI, compared to 37% of small charities. Furthermore, 46% of large charities describe their progress this year in terms of AI tools, use cases, opportunities and risks, compared to 23% of small charities.
Both large and small charities have increased their use of AI tools.
In order to move forwards with AI, 81% of large charities say they are experimenting with and testing AI tools in their everyday work, an increase from 54% in 2024.
It is also heartening to see that the proportion of small charities testing AI tools in everyday work has nearly doubled from 27% in 2024 to 49% this year.
Small charities primarily face barriers to adopting AI tools in the first place, with limited digital skills and technical expertise (48%) and lack of training (44%) as the biggest barriers cited.
“At a time when the workload is overwhelming and the funding landscape dire, it’s hard to find time or headspace to invest in digital strategy and learning (not my area of expertise) even though I can see the long term benefits, urgent need to keep up with developments and efficiency savings if I only had time to invest in it. I find it overwhelming and quite scary to be honest.”
In contrast, large charities, where AI use is more common, are struggling to move forward with using AI strategically and in their services. They say their biggest barriers to moving forwards with AI are:
- Data privacy, GDPR and security concerns (51%)
- Issues with factual accuracy in AI-generated answers (50%)
- The potential for bias and discrimination (49%).
Despite widespread everyday use of AI tools, large and small charities remain cautious about embedding their use of AI in their services and strategy. So far, only 8% of charities are using AI tools in their service delivery. Furthermore, 58% say that they are worried about the implications of using AI (e.g. for service quality and data privacy). This rises to 75% of large charities.
For those who are actively exploring or using AI tools across their organisation, we asked what would help ensure successful sector adoption of AI. The top response (71%) is that more guidance on what responsible AI looks like is needed. Following on from this, 65% believe more support or training for leaders and trustees would enable sector adoption of AI.
Whose voices are represented here?
Few surveys achieve the same reach or representation as the Charity Digital Skills Report. We are committed to being transparent about whose voices are included in this survey and where there are gaps. We are confident that despite presenting interim findings, these are based on a diverse set of responses from across the charity sector.
In brief, our 350 responses so far represent the following types of organisations:
- 241 small charities with an income under £1m
- 126 large charities with an income over £1m
- 107 lived experience-led organisations
- 67 social enterprises or community businesses
- 55 infrastructure organisations
- 93 global majority-led organisations
- 276 organisations in England, 36 organisations in Wales, 38 organisations in Scotland and 31 organisations in Northern Ireland.
We’d love to hear from more organisations based in the Midlands and the North or England, as well as Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. This will help us spot any differences in digital skills and funding or support needs. If you can help, let us know!
What next?
In our full report, we’ll share more about the digital progress organisations have made, funding needs and digital inclusion. We’ll also look at any differences in responses across the country, as well as for organisations led by specific population groups.
There’s still time to share your experiences and views! You can complete the survey here by 9am on Monday 28th April. Please also pass this on to other charities, share this with any networks you are part of and include it in any newsletters you publish.
84% of respondents said the survey helped them to reflect on their digital progress. If you are a registered charity, you can also enter a prize draw, for the chance to win one of five prizes of £300 unrestricted funding.