This Trustees Week I’ve been out and about speaking at the Festival of Trusteeship and also the Jewish Leadership Council’s trustees’ event. I’ve learned a lot about what’s on trustees’ minds about AI.
A lot has happened since last Trustees Week. We know from our Charity Digital Skills Report that 79% of charities are using AI, and 28% of charities are either using, considering or testing agentic AI. We also know that adoption is running way ahead of governance and workforce planning. 51% of charities still don’t have an AI policy. And only 10% are planning for the impact on the workforce.
Most worryingly, boards and their CEOs are not in the same headspace when it comes to AI. Half (51%) of CEOs believe their charity’s culture encourages experimentation and new ways of working with AI tools. However, only 27% of trustees feel the same.
What all of this change says to me is that the nature of charity trusteeship has changed. The new capabilities and risks that AI offers mean that trustees’ oversight has increased. Charities need guidance from their boards on how to reshape their strategies and support from trustees to move forward.
In other words, we are in a new era for charity governance. Charities are going to have to innovate to get value from AI. And that means boards need to support their charities to do this, and provide the right checks and balances on risk.
So how does your board do this? Here are four things I’ve been talking about with trustees this Trustees Week.
Data protection rules for AI apply to trustees too
Please consider this blog your public service announcement to not put board papers or other sensitive board information into free AI tools. And please don’t put them into secure, paid-for tools that belong to you or your workforce either. I have heard from trustees who, without knowing what they are doing, are putting sensitive data into AI tools outside their charity’s tech stack. Please talk to your charity about providing secure AI tools, or just don’t use them as part of your role. Despite working in AI, I will not use these tools as part of my trustee role unless I have access to secure tools provided by the charity. The charity sector isn’t alone in this. In the US one study found that close to half of company directors (49%) have heard of board members using publicly available or consumer-facing AI tools for their board roles, instead of permitted tools.
Review your AI policy regularly
What I heard from the trustees I spoke to this week is that there are still a lot of questions about AI policies, from ‘do I really need one?’ to ‘is ours effective?’ If you are just getting started with your AI policy then have a look at my blog about what makes an effective policy. Because the technology is moving so fast we recommend to charities that they look at theirs quarterly. If you think this is overkill, hear me out. This doesn’t necessarily mean a full review. It could simply be that someone who knows about AI on your staff team or board has a read through to check if the policy is still doing a good job of managing the risks in AI. I spoke to a trustee this week who pointed out that regularly reviewing AI policies will encourage boards to engage with the policy and take accountability for it, both of which are essential for the policy’s implementation.
Upskill your staff and board
This week, and every time I do a session for boards, I am hearing a lot more about how they prepare their people for change. This should include developing skills but also asking the bigger, tougher questions about whether roles and responsibilities need to change. I am not suggesting that boards axe headcount. What I am suggesting is that they ask senior leadership teams to talk to staff and find out how they are using AI, how it is already changing their jobs and how they see it changing what they do in the future. This evidence should inform how you plan for what your staff team could look like as they adopt AI further. It is much better to do this now, rather than make knee-jerk decisions based on cost alone. We’ve included a checklist to help trustees and charity leaders plan for AI’s impact on the future of the workforce in our whitepaper written with Corndel and Microsoft.
Create a shared idea of what success looks like
I’ve spoken to several boards recently where they and the staff have different visions for what AI could help their charity achieve. Remember that gap I mentioned earlier, where 51% of CEOs think their culture encourages new ways of working with AI tools but only 27% of trustees agree? That’s what this can look like in practice. Sometimes this happens because trustees have different experiences of AI from their day jobs. Perhaps they have a very specific idea of what innovation looks like, or a focus on tech enabled cost reduction, because they have seen it in their workplace. You’re never going to be able to move forward as a board and leadership team if you have different ideas of where AI could take you. This may be one to explore at your next board meeting.
With 79% of charities using AI, our sector is changing. That means governance needs to evolve too. The question for charity boards now is whether they choose to maintain the status quo or embrace the future. Where is your board at?