Impact Report 2025–26
Impact Report 2025–26
Accelerating the agency, presence and influence of social impact organisations in the technologies that affect us all.
CAST (Centre for the Acceleration of Social Technology) is an award-winning UK charity working to accelerate the agency, presence and influence of social impact organisations in the technologies that affect us all.
Since 2015 we have supported social impact organisations to make the fullest use of digital technology — with an increasing focus on AI — and worked with funders, partners, digital specialists, government and other stakeholders to create a networked environment of support.
Our mission is to ensure that every UK social impact organisation has the skills, confidence and opportunity to critically engage with digital and AI.
We work directly with social impact organisations, helping them become more responsive to their audiences' changing needs, behaviours and expectations, more test-driven, and more confident in embedding digital and AI into strategy, culture and services.
We also work closely with funders, advisory bodies, advocacy collectives, sector leaders and digital specialists — to advocate for the sector, platform civil society's voices, and improve the quality and range of digital and AI tools, training, funding and advice available.
We continually connect organisations across the social sector and the wider support infrastructure. We share what we learn, and build on the work of others through reuse. This reduces the cost of change while enabling pace and scale.
Ultimately, CAST's work strengthens social impact organisations' digital agency, presence and influence, so they become more responsive and resilient within themselves — and better equipped to achieve their missions and deliver lasting public benefit.
Our vision is for an empowered, vocal and influential civil society: resilient and responsive to the changing needs of their communities, and confidently using digital and AI to maximise reach, efficiency and impact.
Digital and AI continue to reshape the ways charities reach communities and deliver services. We want to ensure the social sector doesn't simply adapt to these changes, but takes an active role in shaping them. We help charities critically engage with and embed digital and AI across their services, strategy and governance — and explore new technologies as they emerge. We work with funders and sector leaders to create an environment that supports charities to explore the full potential of existing and emerging technologies.
As laid out in our Theory of Change, we support charities to develop their agency (developing skills, relationships and practices); presence (creating charity- and sector-owned technologies) and influence (supporting leaders to have greater voice within and beyond the sector) in the technologies that affect us all.
Our connection with multiple touchpoints across the sector means that we are at the forefront of understanding emerging needs — and flexing our approaches accordingly. As such, a major part of our focus over the past 12 months has been working with thousands of social impact organisations, funders and sector leaders to identify the key challenges and opportunities with regard to AI, and design multiple strands of support and connection.
At the heart of all three is CAST as a connector — between charities, funders, leaders and digital experts.
Between April 2025 and March 2026, we reached more than 80,000 people from almost 5,000 organisations. We helped thousands of charity practitioners critically engage with digital and AI — and worked with hundreds of funders, partners and digital specialists to build an environment of support.
In response to sector needs, we increasingly focused on support, connection and advocacy around AI specifically, while maintaining a wider digital support offer. The sections that follow set out key achievements across all fronts.
AI continues to form the basis for the majority of emerging needs, opportunities and concerns — across the social sector and its supporting infrastructure.
We've seen this in conversations with organisations, funders and other stakeholders, and in the data from our communications channels: the three most-accessed pages of our website across the past year have all been AI-related. In response, we focused much of our time on supporting charities, social impact organisations, funders and other stakeholders to respond to the challenges and opportunities AI presents.
Since AI is now a thread that weaves through much of our work as standard, it will naturally appear in the sections throughout this report. This section covers our key standalone AI interventions.
To stay at the forefront of changing sector needs, behaviours and priorities, we conduct both periodic and ongoing research. We've run an annual AI survey since 2024, using the results — alongside other research — to design tailored support and to influence the response from grantmakers. We also gather data via our Survey of Surveys and Insight Engine.
A collaborative dashboard prototype that synthesises complex data on AI adoption, sentiment and readiness across UK charities. It serves as a baseline, helping us identify resource gaps — particularly around training and risk management.
A collaborative platform building a shared, data-informed understanding of AI in the charity sector. Grounded in ethical principles, it applies natural language processing to qualitative sources — workshop notes, survey responses, consultations — to anticipate training needs and design targeted interventions.
Both tools were developed by our Head of Technical AI Experiments. We plan to integrate the Insight Engine with the Survey of Surveys dashboard, and to explore public-facing dissemination options, for a more holistic view of AI adoption and sentiment across the sector.
All of this research helps us understand where the gaps lie in unmet needs and emerging priorities. We design support interventions to meet these, as detailed on the following pages.
We consistently hear that one of the biggest barriers to using AI is simply not knowing where to begin. Our self-serve AI course launched in January 2025; in May 2026 we updated and extended it. The new eight-week version adds material on safety, risk and ethics, advice on prompting, and real use cases.
92% of survey respondents described the course content as 'engaging and relevant' — and respondents returned an average result of 9 out of 10 when asked how likely they were to continue applying what they'd learned. Building on that feedback, we created a follow-on course for people advancing with AI who want to support colleagues to do the same: almost 200 people have started it, scoring 8 out of 10 on continuing to apply their learning. A version for senior leaders is expected to launch in August 2026.
In speaking with charities and funders, we consistently hear calls for examples of the ways in which organisations are experimenting with AI. In response — and as part of our wider Deloitte partnership — we built an MVP AI Experiment Library, tapping into our network to help organisations share their experiments as short written summaries. We created a simple template, user-tested the MVP, and made improvements before publishing.
A selection of the experiments has been included in Make Sense Of It's 2026 AI Playbook for charities.
Between May and July 2025 we partnered with Deloitte to deliver an intensive AI learning programme for the charity sector — three workshops, three drop-in Q&A clinics, two peer learning sessions, two funder briefings and the development of the Library of AI Experiments. All of it was designed to help charities move from curiosity to practical AI capability.
The programme deliberately targeted smaller charities at risk of being left behind in the AI transition — and reached the decision-makers within them. 80% of participants were from small-to-medium organisations, and four in ten participants were CEOs, directors or trustees.
Much of our work is informed by a framework of thought we've termed Worthwhile AI. The term helps ensure our use of AI enhances our mission, serves our communities and aligns with our values — while helping us work towards shaping AI that is genuinely worthwhile for all.
The concept is intentionally fluid, but we began sharing it externally late last year via a Q&A with CAST's Director Dan Sutch — partly to get a sense of how it resonated with the sector, and partly to set the scene for Worthwhile Chat. The Worthwhile AI website launched on 20 January 2026.
Worthwhile Chat is a pioneering, sector-led AI tool built in collaboration with The Developer Society. It gives charity practitioners a trusted space to explore AI safely and confidently, grounded in the realities of nonprofit work — with strong safeguards around data privacy alongside a focus on peer learning and inspiration.
Led by our Head of Design for AI, Worthwhile Chat moved from proof of concept through to alpha testing this year. With support from Deloitte we are preparing for a beta release starting in August 2026.
With support from Deloitte, we've identified a series of common charity-specific AI-assisted tasks, and designed 'use case' prompts and guidelines that deliver high-quality, peer-informed outputs. The first set of 16 use cases will be made available to the sector in July 2026. We're actively exploring governance of Worthwhile Chat and ways to cover development and running costs through subscription models, credit-based access and sponsored licences. Building on our partnership with Okta for Good, we're exploring how best to support teams to work well together, with and alongside AI tools.
We continued to update the 'living library' of frameworks, guides, case studies, courses and toolkits in our online AI hub; added AI tools to our Digital Toolkit; and shared our AI Canvas and AI Spheres visual through our channels and at sector events.
Events included the Digital and Technology Conference, Digital Leaders AI Week, the Charity Digital AI Summit and the AI Impact Clarity Summit.
We take a holistic approach to AI — exploring the 'macro' picture alongside the 'micro', and learning as a team through our internal AI Together initiative.
As the digital and AI landscape moves at pace, connection and communication across the sector become ever more vital. A growing part of our work now involves bringing people and communities together for support, inspiration and advocacy.
We convene three major groups. All are free to join — and all showed significant growth over the past year.
Set up in late 2023 to give UK funders of all sizes a space to explore approaches to AI, the group meets online every six weeks for spotlight talks from sector leaders and discussion of the challenges and opportunities AI presents. In the most recent all-group survey, members scored an average of 8 out of 10 when assessing how valuable the experience had been for them. In November 2025 we marked the group's second anniversary with a three-perspective blog featuring Dan Sutch (CAST), Alex Parker (IVAR) and Brian Yim Lim (Barts Charity).
Launched in February 2025 and co-chaired by Dan Sutch (CAST) and Zoe Amar (Zoe Amar Digital), the task force champions the responsible, inclusive and collaborative use of AI across the social sector.
In May 2025 it issued a response to the government's AI Opportunities Action Plan, leading to regular contact with the Head of AI Adoption, Governance and Skills at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology — maintained until DSIT's closure in July 2026. This helped ensure the charity perspective was included in conversations and decisions around AI. Members have also drafted a set of shared principles, identified a roadmap for the collective's objectives, and run sub-groups exploring AI across the sector.
Established in 2022, the Digital Leads Network (DLN) brings together people leading, shaping or supporting digital work in charities, social enterprises and community organisations across the UK. It had its most active 12 months to date between March 2025 and April 2026.
AI remained the defining theme of the period. In early 2026 the DLN piloted a new format — AI Learning Hours, offering Show & Tell and Peer Discussion sessions, all led by network members. The pilot confirmed a strong appetite for practical peer learning, and surfaced clear direction for the programme going forward.
Member feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Participants consistently highlighted the value of hearing from peers, accessing real examples, and having protected space to think through challenges together — the very things the DLN was designed to provide.
27 emails sent to the group, with an average open rate of 57% and a click rate of 24% — well above sector average.
Our informal peer-matching service ran four rounds. In the most recent, 325 people were matched — a 16% increase year on year.
Alongside the more structured Digital Leads Network, we have continued to run our Coffee Connections service, matching peers within the social sector every two months for an informal chat about digital. Across the reporting period, matches took place in June, October and November of 2025 and February of 2026. During the most recent round of matches, 325 people were matched — an increase of 16% year-on-year.
As well as creating discrete communities of charities, funders and advocates, we work constantly to build connections between them — to increase visibility of needs, priorities and expectations, and to join up support efforts.
In March 2025 we joined forces with the Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR), in an effort to help charities and funders engage with AI in ways that are responsible, equitable and rooted in trust. Through workshops, webinars, events and peer groups — including a series of bridging workshops that bring charities and funders into the same room to examine AI and grantmaking in depth — the collaboration has reached more than 1,300 charities and funders. We have been making our progress available to the sector via a quarterly Digest.
In September 2025 the AI Exchange came together with the Technology Association of Grantmakers to reimagine the form-based grantmaking application process in the age of AI. Participants produced five alternative prototypes. A follow-up event is being organised for September 2026.
We continue to maintain and promote GrantAdvisor UK, a platform designed to encourage open dialogue between UK social impact organisations and grantmakers by collecting authentic, real-time reviews of grantseekers' experiences of working with funders. This year we supported registered funders to grow and interpret their reviews, and worked with IVAR on a research project exploring what the reviews reveal in relation to their Open and Trusting commitments.
We worked with Fund Gloucestershire to develop a way for the county's voluntary, community and social enterprise sector to access the funding it needs — maximising resources for delivery and reducing the time and cost of applying. For funders, the aim is that more of what they give can be spent directly on activities and services, while freeing up time to focus on purpose, outcomes, criteria and relationships with applicants.
After a research phase with partners, funders and charities, we worked with The Developer Society to develop and test an end-to-end MVP service that lets charities in the region find funding opportunities more easily — and we've been experimenting with AI in the due diligence and assessment process.
Alongside our AI work, we continue to maintain a range of evergreen digital skills resources — and to convene the wider network of organisations providing digital support to the sector.
Our Digital Toolkit is a collection of 32 free tools and resources supporting organisations through the process of researching, defining and developing a digital product, platform or service. This year we added more AI resources and promoted the toolkit through our AI courses and communications channels.
Learn User Research and Learn Design Thinking sign-up pages attracted more than 500 unique visitors, with 100 people signing up.
Almost 5,000 unique visitors and 9,200 page views. The platform is now paused while we focus on the Library of AI Experiments and Worthwhile Chat use cases.
With continued funding from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, we convened a network of support comprising eight complementary initiatives — five led by other organisations (Agencies for Good, Digital Candle, Digital Trustees, Dovetail and The Curve) and three by CAST (Design Hops, the Digital Leads Network, and a reuse infrastructure strand).
Six of the eight initiatives were covered in the CAST newsletter, and a dedicated LinkedIn page — set up and maintained by Third Sector Lab — received 112,000 impressions in total.
We began promoting the 2026 Design Hop — our seven-week online training programme teaching innovative digital techniques — in March 2026, with sessions starting in April. When recruiting we prioritised attendees from organisations led by people with lived experience, holding a third of places for organisations meeting this criterion. All post-course survey respondents said they felt more confident talking about digital and using a design process in their organisation.
We worked to develop open IP and reuse approaches across our peer networks, including deep dives with five funders to integrate Open IP clauses into their grantmaking. We showcased reusable examples through our peer networks and digital spaces, and our best practice guidance for grantmakers remains open for reuse. In late 2025 we established a new partnership with the Tech for Good Alliance — supported by Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales' Financial Resilience Fund — to support charities to find and use digital tools that meet their needs.
Although the official Esmée funding period has ended, network members remain connected: all initiatives remain live, and we hope to work together on future opportunities.
We're working with The National Lottery Community Fund, Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales and a host of other partners on this Grant Holder Support Programme pilot. Together, we are testing a new model of tailored support for charities and community interest companies, to help them build resilience, adapt to change and thrive. Beyond this, we are reimagining how funders and partners can join forces in new ways to ensure civil society organisations can navigate an increasingly complex landscape.
Over the course of the year we have worked with Lloyds Bank Foundation and the partnership to both secure funding for this pilot from The National Lottery Community Fund and design an approach to providing capacity building support for around 640 organisations, as well as embed partnership working.
Alongside our programmes, resources, peer groups and platforms, we work one-to-one with organisations — providing bespoke support on AI, project management, ways of working, monitoring and evaluation, user-centred research and design, co-production and service delivery.
Since October 2025, we've been supporting the design and delivery of an internal Digital Accelerator within The National Lottery Community Fund, to reinvent the way in which organisations apply for and receive funding, with the objective of making it easier and more accessible, particularly for grass-roots organisations.
We are collaborating to discover, design, test and deliver a new digitally-enabled approach to grantmaking, bringing together a cross-functional team from across the Fund, working with CAST, IVAR and The Developer Society. We've seconded six staff from funding portfolios across the Fund to be our Accelerator subject matter experts and we're also joined by service design, digital and tech experts from across the Fund. We're carrying out user interviews and testing with funding staff with expertise in grantmaking, EDI, compliance, risk, data and other important areas. We've summed up the progress to date in a Q&A blog.
Our twelve-month contract to manage digital infrastructure applications to the Foundation's Open Grants Programmes was extended by six months, finishing in summer 2026. The team assessed applications for grants of between £5,000 and £50,000, making around £700,000 of grants to almost 70 organisations across the UK. This work provides the building blocks of digital maturity across the sector, especially as differing levels of AI adoption threaten to widen digital inequalities. We also supported the Foundation to introduce an Impact Framework allowing assessors to prioritise between eligible applications on lived experience and on projects enabling significant organisational change.
One of the main learnings from the past year has been that the huge demand for funding in this area is much greater than one funder can possibly meet. In response, The Clothworkers' Foundation and CAST are in the process of consulting with interested funders to consider ways to collaborate.
Between June and October we led an independent research review of Deloitte's Laptop Donation Programme — one of the UK's longest-running corporate device donation schemes — including interviews with beneficiaries and stakeholders alongside desktop research into comparable schemes. We found strong foundations, and clear opportunities to deepen impact through wrap-around support (connectivity, digital skills, accessibility), improved impact capture, and a new strategic disability-focused pilot. The review produced a three-strand action plan: a proposed 'Tech for Disability' pilot with the Digital Services Consortium, business-as-usual refinements to the donation package, and a stronger impact and storytelling approach.
In a two-year project, which began in February 2025, we are working as an Evaluation and Learning partner to the Digital Services Consortium — an alliance of 12 leading UK charities supporting disabled and seriously ill children and young people and their families. We're embedding shared principles, establishing robust learning loops and impact measurement, co-designing the programme's evaluation framework, and supporting the development of digital leads across the partnership.
At the heart of this is the community of practice, facilitated by CAST. Members meet quarterly to share honest accounts of what is and isn't working, and come away with ideas they can apply directly. Many describe feeling understood by peers facing the same challenges in a way they don't within their everyday working lives. It is also where much of the year's most important learning has taken shape: a year in, members are growing into more confident digital leaders and the consortium has developed a richer, shared understanding of digital exclusion through its collective learning and experience.
In an ongoing project which began in 2023, we are helping the Foundation to deliver their groundbreaking Intercept project. Throughout the reporting period, we continued to support the Foundation to deliver the project and embed an innovation approach across the organisation. This support will continue throughout 2026.
From October 2025 until March 2026, we worked with the Heritage Lottery to develop a three-year AI action plan. We led the work from discovery through to the final plan, developing it collaboratively with staff across the organisation. The plan covers the key areas of governance, capability and adoption — and takes a phased, evidence-led approach that reflects the Heritage Fund's public accountability obligations and the pace of change in the field.
As part of the TUC's 'Leading Change' programme, we again worked with the TUC Digital Lab to design and deliver a transformative digital change leadership module.
We are providing light touch support over three years as Prudence Trust supports two organisations using digital tools to support young people's mental health. This is a new area of work for Prudence Trust, and our support aims to help both the charities they're funding and the Prudence Trust team.
We strengthened our efforts to amplify awareness of CAST — the organisation, the services we offer, and the networks and connections we create — so our support reaches as many people and organisations as possible.
In 2025 CAST was shortlisted for Charity of the Year at the Charity Times Awards. In March 2026, CAST's Director Dan Sutch was recognised by Computing as one of the 25 most inspirational figures shaping AI today.
Our Medium platform is a hub for learnings, reflections and advice from across the CAST community. Between April 2025 and March 2026, 29 articles were published, collectively attracting more than 16,000 views: this is a 72% increase in views, year-on-year.
We're committed to sharing stories directly from the small but mighty core team. Seven of our eleven team members wrote articles, covering AI experimentation, Digital Leads Network news, AI survey results, Clothworkers' Foundation learnings, 'worthwhile' AI, and our AI Together programme.
We also highlighted aspects of CAST as an organisation, with details of our all-staff meetup, a series of 'Top Ten' articles to highlight our tenth anniversary, and two Q&A pieces introducing the new members of the team. Going forward, we're looking to commission blogs from sector leaders and specialists we work with.
We regularly update our website with the latest projects, programmes, resources, events and opportunities — as well as with updated impact figures and organisational developments. Engagement figures for the reporting period are significantly higher than previously: 32,000 unique users, compared to 19,600 last year.
We send our newsletter to 6,000 individuals each month (with a break for the August and December holidays). The newsletter averages an open rate of 42% and a click rate of 10% — both significantly higher than sector standard. Feedback is consistently positive: respondents to our most recent survey returned an average score of 8 when asked how useful they found the newsletter, on a scale of 0 to 10.
We also continue to share regular posts across social media: we post regularly on our LinkedIn and Bluesky channels. During the reporting period, we shared hundreds of original posts across both channels, resulting in thousands of clicks through to the content across our various communications platforms.
Throughout the reporting period, we reached more than 58,600 people via our communications channels alone: a significant increase on last year's 40,000.
The infographic below provides a snapshot of our collective impact as an organisation over the reporting period; see the impact page of our website for more information.
Below is just a snapshot of the many positive comments we have received over the past 12 months. You can see more in our full testimonials reel. If you'd like to get in touch to tell us about your experience with CAST, we'd love to hear from you: please email hello@wearecast.org.uk.
Great that you are providing this platform for discussion and learning to help third sector staff explore and deepen their understanding of this rapidly developing and contentious group of tools. Thank you.
(I've gained) unrivalled thought-leadership, a sense of belonging, and the reassurance that we're all in this together. Our adoption and meaningful experimentation with AI has been successful because of the careful and practical suggestions that have come from CAST peers.
I've just completed this course and I loved the format — a manageable email each week with reading and exercises helped me to fit around my day-to-day role without having to carve out a full day of learning. Really great content too. Thank you!
The newsletter is really good — the mix of content is always really good. It also has a nice tone to it and is clearly laid out.
Just had a fab Coffee Connections chat with my match this month. Do sign up for this if you want to meet new digital folk and hear about how they are using digital. It's free and fun. Thanks CAST!
The team at CAST were really knowledgeable. I've got key takeaways to think about over the summer in terms of how AI might impact us, particularly around fundraising but also on a more strategic level.
I think it was excellent! I am glad we have a post course check-in. And glad of the opportunities to stay connected as I think that will help with the sustainability of this in my org.
I found the network meetup really inspiring. It's so interesting hearing how other non-profits are adapting to the ever-changing digital landscape to offer a better service for their communities. I always come away feeling excited about the future and full of great ideas!
Thanks for the excellent AI presentation last week. We thought that the panel session was one of the best that we have seen — with lots of challenging ideas.
Across the reporting period, CAST has continued to strengthen the social sector's ability to engage critically and confidently with digital and AI. By combining practical support, peer learning, research, partnerships and advocacy, we are helping organisations not only respond to technological change, but play an active role in shaping it.
CAST's work is carried out by our core team of 11 people, guided by the Board and united by a clear set of values, co-designed by the whole team. However, as a networked organisation, we are continually collaborating with others in order to drive positive change across the sector — and as such, we'd like to thank all of the charities, funders, partners, digital specialists, peer group members, sector leaders and other individuals and organisations that have engaged with CAST over the past 11 years. Together, we are working to shape a future where civil society leads the way in using digital and AI responsibly, inclusively and for social good.
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