Responsible AI for Charities
Trustees carry ultimate legal responsibility for their charity's AI use. This half-day course gives boards the knowledge to fulfil that responsibility, without turning a board meeting into a technology seminar. Designed for trustees, chairs, and senior charity leaders. No technical background required.
£995 ex VAT
Half day (3.5 hours)
Trustees, chairs, treasurers, CEOs, and governance leads. No technical background needed.
Request a booking79% of charities are using AI in some form (Charity Digital Skills Report 2026). Only 3% of trustees report their charity uses AI (Charity Commission, 2024, BMG Research, c. 2,500 trustees). Only 12% of charities believe their board has strong AI skills. Just 2% of boards are rated excellent. A third are rated poor, and 46% of charities have no trustee with relevant digital expertise at all (Charity Digital Skills Report 2026).
That gap is a governance gap.
71% of UK employees have used unapproved AI tools at work, 51% on a weekly basis (Microsoft / Censuswide, October 2025). Staff are using AI for grant applications, donor communications, and beneficiary enquiries. The board is governing AI use it doesn't know about.
The Charity Commission, the Fundraising Regulator, and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 (DUAA 2025) all impose duties on charity boards in relation to AI. This course prepares trustees to meet them.
Trustees, chairs, treasurers, chief executives, senior charity leaders, and governance committee members. Also for those who design or commission trustee development programmes. No technical background is required. This course can be taken at any point; AI Fluency is not a prerequisite.
| Right for you if | Not right for you if |
|---|---|
| You want to understand your legal duties as a trustee in relation to AI | You want practical training on using AI tools day-to-day (see AI Fluency for Charities) |
| Your board has been asked about AI governance by a funder | You are a manager building the charity's AI policy (see AI Governance and Funder Accountability) |
| Your charity uses AI and the board has no oversight of it | Your operations team needs detailed data protection training (see Responsible AI and Data Protection) |
| You want documented training evidence for funding applications |
Participants also leave with a repeatable method for putting governance questions around AI tools as they are introduced.
Each session is bespoke, shaped by the charity's size, current AI use, and regulatory position, confirmed during our pre-course discovery call.
Fiduciary responsibilities under the Charities Act 2011 and Trustee Act 2000 as they apply to AI decisions. What personal accountability looks like when governance is absent.
What the Charity Commission and Fundraising Regulator require of boards. What the DUAA 2025 meaningful intervention standard demands in practice. What questions to ask of staff and AI suppliers.
Half of all charities have no AI policy at all, rising to 62% among small charities (Charity Digital Skills Report 2026). A policy is one part of governance. Without trustees who understand what it commits the charity to, and how to oversee it, the document changes nothing. Major funders including the National Lottery Community Fund, Lloyds Bank Foundation, and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation have published positions on applicant AI use. BBC Children in Need has indicated it will ask about AI use during assessment. Documented AI governance strengthens applications in a way a policy file alone does not.
How to approve an AI policy appropriate to the charity's situation. How to oversee compliance and recognise when governance structures need updating.
Before any materials are written, we spend 30 minutes with the charity to understand current AI use, the tools in operation, the board's composition, and any existing governance documents.
The session runs in-house at the charity's premises or online, whichever suits the board. Groups of up to 15 participants per session. Larger boards are accommodated across multiple sessions at the same per-session rate.
Every participant receives documented training completion evidence meeting UK GDPR accountability principle expectations. This is the evidence ICO auditors, funders, and the Charity Commission look for when reviewing governance records.
The Charity Commission's dedicated AI guidance sets out two firm expectations. Trustees must ensure human oversight to prevent material errors. Trustees must not delegate critical decision-making to AI without reasonable independent checks. These expectations apply regardless of charity size or income. This course addresses both directly.
Trustee boards must be involved in strategic AI decisions with ongoing oversight. Charities must understand how AI tools use, store, and share data. This course covers both requirements.
Royal Assent 19 June 2025. When AI makes decisions affecting individuals, those individuals must be informed, able to make representations, and able to request human intervention. That intervention must be meaningful: a person reviews and can challenge the decision, not simply rubber-stamp it. This course explains what this standard requires and how trustees can verify it is met.
These obligations apply from 2 December 2027 for standalone high-risk AI systems and 2 August 2028 for AI embedded in regulated products. The Digital Omnibus on AI (Regulation (EU) 2026/1744), which deferred them from the original 2 August 2026 date, entered into force on 27 July 2026. Transparency obligations under Article 50 were not deferred and have applied since 2 August 2026.
For UK-only charities, these obligations do not apply directly. Charities providing education, access to essential services, or operating in migration and asylum settings with EU exposure are caught by them. Penalties for deployer breaches reach €15 million or 3% of worldwide annual turnover.
In force since 2 February 2025. Binding for charities with EU exposure. For UK-only charities, it is the benchmark that UK regulatory thinking is moving toward. It is not a blanket obligation across all UK charities.
Both are voluntary. The Leadership principle in the Charity Digital Code says boards should champion digital and AI awareness. The Charity Governance Code 2025 recommends a technology and AI policy for the first time. Funders and sector bodies increasingly expect compliance with both.
The ICO expects documented training programmes, completion records, and assessment evidence under the UK GDPR accountability principle. This course produces evidence that meets those expectations. ICO fines reach £17.5 million or 4% of worldwide annual turnover. The ICO does not mandate AI training specifically and has not enforced against inadequate AI training.
Insightful AI is listed on the UK Register of Learning Providers, UK Provider Reference Number (UKPRN) 10098807. When charities submit training records to funders or during an ICO audit, our registration confirms the provider is a formal, accountable learning organisation, not a freelance consultant.
The regulatory specificity in this course is deliberate. We cite the Charity Commission's April 2024 trustee expectations, the Fundraising Regulator's December 2025 guidance, the DUAA 2025 meaningful intervention standard, and Article 26 of the EU AI Act. Named obligations, not paraphrased impressions.
Training for leaders and trustees is the second most requested sector-wide support for AI adoption, asked for by 57% of charities (Charity Digital Skills Report 2026). This course is built to meet that need.
Designed and delivered by practitioners. Co-founders Ben Sefton and Kane Lukassen lead the team. No commissions from technology vendors. No preferred supplier relationships. No proprietary platforms.
This course is part of Insightful AI's Responsible AI for Charities programme. It can be taken at any point and does not require any other course as a prerequisite. The natural pairing is with AI Governance and Funder Accountability (course 03): trustees set the governance direction in this session, and course 03 equips the staff who carry it out.
| Course | When to add it |
|---|---|
| AI Fluency for Charities (01) | When the board wants the wider team to have foundation AI skills |
| Responsible AI and Data Protection (02) | When the DPO or operations manager needs detailed data protection training |
| AI Governance and Funder Accountability (03) | When staff need to build and maintain the governance structure the board approves |
| Safe Use of AI in Your Charity (04) | When the team needs practical guidance on safe daily AI use |
| AI-Enabled Threats and Cyber Risk (06) | When trustees want to understand AI-enabled fraud, deepfakes, and cyber risk |
At £995 for up to 15 trustees, the per-head cost is under £70. A board that can satisfy Charity Commission and Fundraising Regulator expectations, answer funder questions about AI governance, and demonstrate oversight is in place, is more fundable than one that cannot. The discovery call is 30 minutes, free, and focused on your charity's situation. No sales pitch.
Book a free discovery callWhether you're just getting started or looking to scale, we'll help you find the right path, responsibly.