Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Stuart Pearson, head of innovation at Citizens Advice Stockport, Oldham, Rochdale and Trafford, and Zoe Amar, founder of the digital consultancy Zoe Amar Digital.

Stuart explains how Citizens Advice developed Caddy, an internal-facing AI-powered chatbot that provides information to the charity’s advisers and eases demand on supervisors fielding high volumes of requests.

Zoe sheds light on the skills gap preventing some charities from progressing with AI adoption. She outlines the principles of using AI responsibly and ensuring its roll-out is consistent with organisational values.

They both stress the importance of continuing human involvement, from the development to the implementation of AI tools to support the delivery of charitable services.

Further reading

• Zoe’s article on disintermediation
• The Citizens Advice Caddy tool
• Zoe Amar Digital’s AI Leadership Essentials videos 
• Research on the success rates of AI pilots by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Emily’s feature: How can charities combat misinformation?

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Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Emma Revie, co-chief executive of Trussell, and the strategy and change management specialist Martyn Drake.

Emma explains why Trussell’s mission statement has been altered to place the provision of food aid second to its aim of eliminating the need for food banks. 

She stresses the need to work with others to drive systems change and shares her belief that resources should never be taken away from long-term solutions in order to provide a temporary fix.

Martyn shares examples of other charities that have recognised the need to change strategic direction to avoid being enablers of the problems they are trying to solve.

He describes the importance of granting staff at all levels of an organisation the autonomy to work flexibly with other partners in order to achieve shared goals.

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Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts are joined by Ruth Marvel, chief executive of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, to talk about the charity’s new impact measurement framework.

Ruth describes the importance of a theory of change to guide DofE’s activities and inform the development of its measurement framework to test assumptions.

She explains how using national open data sets for comparison purposes has helped make the process meaningful and cost-effective.

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Lucinda Rouse visits the Dogs Trust’s head office to meet the charity’s chief executive, Owen Sharp.

Owen talks about the recent restructure of Dogs Trust as part of a new strategy and shares some of the lessons he has learned from an ongoing redundancy process involving 300 staff.

He gives his view on ways in which the voluntary sector could be responding differently to current instability, such as taking a less siloed approach to shared challenges.

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Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Toby Freeman, chief executive of the Robin Cancer Trust, and the charity finance and governance specialist Pesh Framjee.

Toby shares his experiences of founding a charity to which he has a deep personal connection, and outlines the ways in which he is preparing the organisation for his departure.

Pesh puts forward his view that founder’s syndrome is a relatively uncommon occurrence. He stresses the importance of succession-planning in founder-led charities and the need to nurture future leaders within the existing team.

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Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Nicole Sykes, director of policy, communications and research at the Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales.

They discuss some recent research by Lloyds Banking Group that found charities are the second-most trusted source of financial advice after family members. They consider how charities can best respond to the finding, and why it should be a cause for celebration.

They cover a range of other topical issues affecting the sector, from the emergence of the impact economy to the need for charities to adapt to new ways of finding information with the advent of AI.

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Lucinda Rouse and Dami Adewale are joined by Natasha Friend and Robin Morgan-Chu, the director and chair respectively of the grantmaker Camden Giving, to discuss the merits and challenges of participatory grantmaking.

Natasha describes how grantmaking decisions at Camden Giving have been devolved to panels of people with first-hand experience of the challenges the funding is seeking to address.

Robin explains how the role of the board differs from more traditional funders, with a strong emphasis on safeguarding to support the frontline nature of the charity’s work and the way it makes decisions.

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Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle summarise the contents of the recently-launched Civil Society Covenant between the government and civil society.

They reflect on comments made by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, and consider what’s next for the charity-state relationship.

Read our analysis: What will the Civil Society Covenant mean for charities?

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Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by are joined by Dan Lawes, co-chief executive of the youth democracy charity My Life My Say, to consider how charities working in all cause areas can interact effectively with younger people.

Dan explains how My Life My Say engaged with brands including Tinder, Lime and Snapchat to promote its 'Give an X' campaign to encourage young people to vote in the 2024 general election as part of its wider youth outreach activities. 

He also provides his perspective on voluntary sector leadership as a younger-than-average chief executive.

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Lucinda Rouse and Andy Ricketts  are joined by Nihara Krause, chief executive of the youth mental health charity Stem4, to talk about the organisation’s quest for long-term sustainability in the face of falling grant income.

Nihara describes the challenges faced by Stem4 in developing partnership and merger prospects, as the charity has sought to stay afloat since the Covid-19 pandemic.

She outlines the internal changes made to commercialise some of the charity’s products and foster a more entrepreneurial mindset, with a greater focus on profit.

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