This month marks Charity Finance Week (5-9 October), including the Charity Finance Summit (8 October). The theme for the week, summit and this month’s cover theme section is futureproofing finance – powering purpose.
It can be difficult to find time to think about and plan for the future. Those working in charities are stretched to capacity, so being able to step off the daily treadmill of just keeping on top of the basics is a luxury some will feel they simply do not have.
Hopefully, by focusing on this theme, we can help raise some issues that charity finance professionals need to consider. The future can sometimes feel like a far-off place, but the rate of change means it will be upon us before we know it.
One obvious area that is accelerating change is the fast development of AI. Only a few years ago, the launch of ChatGPT seemed a remarkable and curious development. Now AI is a part of daily life (whether we like it or not), with organisations throughout society adopting it and the technology becoming embedded in existing systems.
The charity sector is no exception. AI is bringing efficiencies to many areas – including the finance function. However, it needs to be used correctly and concerns over its use must be carefully considered.
For example, the Charity Digital Skills Report 2026 found that over three-quarters (79%) of voluntary organisations routinely use AI. This was an increase from 76% last year.
However, the rise of AI is not without concerns. The report also found that 35% said they had a lack of trust in AI tools – up from 15% last year.
Separately, in CharityJob’s Voices of Fundraising 2026 report, most fundraisers it surveyed were concerned about AI but some could see its potential “to free up time to enable fundraisers to focus on the relational side of fundraising”.
Recent headlines have probably increased fears over the future of AI. For example, Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic (one of the world’s largest AI platforms), told the BBC that a so-called “kill switch” might be something that needs to become mandatory by law for AI systems.
While it is clear strong guardrails need to be in place for AI (and there is not space here to also touch on the environmental concerns), the genie is out of the bottle. Charities need to consider how they use this technology and ensure they have their own governance guardrails around AI in place.
Tristan Blythe is editor of Charity Finance
