A few weeks ago, GC Gibson Charitable Trust, which manages a fund worth £16m, announced that it had stopped accepting online grant applications, citing AI as having “ruined the process”.
The grantmaker said on its website that the technology had made it “too easy to find us and write a submission and we had far too many applicants last year”.
In response to the news, some expressed concern on social media that other funders may take similar steps due to an apparent AI-driven increase in applications.
But while it may be easy to assume that AI’s rapid expansion is the driving force behind grantmakers being overwhelmed, the situation may be more nuanced.
AI ‘becoming more of a factor’
The Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) recently surveyed its around 400 members and asked for their views on the impact of AI.
In findings yet to be published but shared with Civil Society, ACF found that 22% of respondents considered grant applications written with AI a moderate challenge, while 7% considered them a significant concern.
Catherine Seymour, the body’s director of policy and programmes, says: “It's definitely becoming more of a factor.
“When our members talk to us about rising demand for funding and just the sheer number of applications, AI now is naturally part of the conversation in a way that it wasn't a couple of years ago.”
However, AI was not the chief concern for most ACF members that answered the survey.
In response to the question “what keeps you up most at night?”, 84% said it was the need among the beneficiaries supported by their grantees. Yet, 54% did say it was the sheer level of demand for trusts and foundation funding from charities.
On the overall reasons for high demand, Seymour says: “Since Covid, we’ve seen cumulative crises which have driven genuine need up, but also in that same time we’ve seen government grant funding significantly reduce.
“Most government money that’s going to charities is in the form of contracts rather than grants, and local authorities’ funding has been cut significantly, so what they can fund in grants is significantly less as well.
“There has been this double whammy of increasing genuine need and decreasing other forms of funding; that means trust and foundation funding is really the last stable form of funding that's available to fund seekers.”
In response to this greater need, charitable funders are spending more every year, Seymour says, with a 4% annual rise most recently on top of greater increases in years before.
“So there is more money coming from foundations and funders, but it's just not a patch on what the level of need is,” she says.
Seymour concludes: “It's very difficult to put a handle on how much AI is contributing to the sense of overwhelm, because we know that even without AI, that would be happening.”
‘Bigger systemic issues’
According to Joanna Jeffery, a freelance consultant in trust and foundation fundraising, says AI is “an easy thing to blame but it's not the sole reason why this is happening”.
Jeffery says: “I think the bigger systemic issues around funding of charities is the conversation that we're not having.
“It’s easy for grantmakers to say yes, AI has made it easy to find us and apply to us, but without stepping back to say why are there more charities applying to us in the first place?”
She says restrictions in the wider funding landscape, including statutory grants and commissioning, have led to more charities turning to trusts and foundations.
Alex Hayes, director of philanthropy at NPC, also says “the underlying economic position that many charities find themselves in”, with difficulty attracting donations as well as rising costs, has contributed to the rise in those seeking institutional grants.
However, he also says that “AI is now enabling you to pump out a huge number of applications quite quickly” and that many funders have reported their applications “doubling or tripling” despite having small teams.
“If those numbers of applications go up, it becomes very demanding, with different funders reacting different ways, whether that be closing applications or not,” he says. “They’ll be adapting their operational side to deal with the influx.”
AI ‘can be really democratising’
Jeffery, Hayes and Seymour all agree that systemic factors have led to increased demand, but how can foundations respond without closing applications?
Hayes says: “I don’t think we’re going to change the overall economic picture that lots of organisations find themselves in. There’s only so much of this picture that trusts and foundations are going to be picking up.”
However, he suggests funders and charities alike could combat overwhelm by focusing on aspects of the funding process that cannot be replaced by AI.
He suggests an increase in grantmaking approaches that involve more human-to-human contact between funders and applicants. “How can we drive it in a more human-centred and relational way?”
For charities applying, he adds: “It’s how you use AI responsibly so that you’re making sure you apply to more places that fit the most with the work you’re trying to do and that it’s still human-centred.”
Seymour, meanwhile, says that funders should support charities, especially smaller ones, with digital skills and infrastructure to use AI in a way that can support the grantmaking process rather than hinder it.
“AI can be really democratising in that it enables a small charity to apply something that they otherwise wouldn't be able to, so it can make it an even playing field,” she says.
“But being able to use AI in a skilled way to enhance applications to save time does require access to a more sophisticated type of AI and training on how to do that.
“That's something that we see some funders do and that could be part of a bigger solution.”
