Digital teams in large charities
This section of the report is new for 2026. We wanted to find out about AI, innovation and digital roles, responsibilities and capabilities and the barriers to moving forward in large organisations. We know from the rest of the report that skills are a significant challenge to AI progress and we were keen to find out how resourcing is developing for organisations that can afford to buy in skills. However, we learned that large charities are also facing sizable challenges in progressing with digital and AI.
How are digital roles typically set up in large charities?
Whilst core digital teams are the most popular model for 53% of charities, 14% have no dedicated digital roles.
- The most common way for large charities to structure digital roles is anchored by a core team, with 29% doing so alongside agencies and freelancers and 26% doing so as a centralised team.
- It’s surprising that 14% have no dedicated digital roles and rely on using suppliers occasionally.
- It’s also interesting that the ‘honeycomb’ or distributed model, predicted as the future of digital roles pre-pandemic, has only been implemented in a minority of organisations, with just 13% putting digital roles in place alongside a core team and 10% distributing digital roles across their organisation.
Do large charities have dedicated innovation roles or teams?
The vast majority of large charities (76%) do not have a specific innovation role or team.
- More than three-quarters of large charities (76%) lack a dedicated innovation team or role.
- Just 14% have an innovation role or team.
- Some qualitative comments noted that their organisations had innovation leaders on their senior leadership team, or that some digital roles lead on innovation:
“One of our leadership team leads on innovation.”
“Innovation is part of all digital and marcomms roles, although I would say evolution not revolutionary innovation.”
What challenges do large charities face with their current digital roles and structure?
More than half (58%) of large charities say they are struggling to deliver their digital ambitions because they do not have a dedicated AI role.
- More than half of large charities (58%) do not have staff members dedicated to AI.
- On a related note, around half are held back by a lack of resourcing, with 58% hamstrung by limited budgets and 49% by their digital team being stretched thinly.
- Almost a third (32%) want more internal support (e.g. from Learning and Development) to upskill.
- Ways of working, such as siloed teams, make achieving ambitions harder for 29%, whilst 1 in 4 are dealing with unclear roles, responsibilities and decision making and 23% are concerned that relying on external suppliers is not building their capabilities.
In summary, even large charities’ structures, ways of working and skills development plans have not caught up with the scale of adoption and pace of change that AI and wider tech disruption brings with it.
How are large charities feeling about how AI could reshape their organisational structures, roles and responsibilities in the future?
We asked this as a new qualitative question to get a sense of how charities are thinking about the future of the workforce. Of 176 responses, 60% were positive. Responses covered a number of themes:
1. Cautious optimism
“Feeling generally positive about the potential for AI to save us time and increase capacity but also nervous/cautious about the risks and impacts.”
“Really excited with an element of trepidation. I am not sure how much change non-tech staff are prepared for.”
“Curious, excited, cautious.”
2. Efficiency and freeing up time for more human work
“I see AI as the next evolution of technology tools and if used in the right way, for the right types of work, it can increase efficiency and automate repeatable tasks to free up time for people to focus on things that are more valuable for humans to do.”
“Excited – there are lots of opportunities to streamline how we work and what we do while freeing up people resources to focus on building relationships and being creative/innovative.”
“Positive. We see the value in freeing up staff time to work on the truly human work.”
3. Capacity and resource constraints
“Nervous more than excited because I don’t have time to dedicate to experimenting and piloting and innovating.”
“I feel that there is a lot of potential but it is hard to build an adequate picture of the possibilities for innovation. This is partly because AI is such a fast-developing field, but also because, like many charities, we are supporting more complex needs and challenges with less resource and fighting for the resource we have. There is a lack of internal capacity and headspace.”
“We are beginning to grasp AI and how it can support and feeling optimistic but we are still a very small team with limited capacity and funding to dedicate to this.”
4. Leadership lag and lack of strategy
“It’s frustrating to recognise that AI is shaping the future, only to realise that the organisation has neither plans nor genuine interest in adopting or leveraging it. The topic isn’t even part of internal conversations. Instead, the responsibility falls entirely on individual staff to seek out and build their own capacity in existing technologies, figuring out independently how to apply them in their work.”
“I think it’s abundantly clear how fantastic an opportunity AI is going to play in the charity sector; however, the leadership of my charity are utterly devoid of the awareness of this, and they squash any and all attempts to try and implement it. I’ve been trying for 12 months to no avail.”
“I personally feel optimistic but I would say that AI is being embraced by a few members of staff within our organisation but there is no AI strategy for our organisation, no training and no internal support or advice on its use.”
5. Concerns about jobs, roles and the human element
“Very nervous as SMT [senior management team] are very behind the ways AI can increase productivity but I feel are viewing through too short term of a lens. I am worried about longer-term costs of this technology, the amount of work produced increasing but at a worse quality, and job losses.”
“Mixed – optimistic about the possibility of reducing unsatisfying work and releasing time for the most impactful work. But worries about deskilling, having an intermediary between us and our beneficiaries, and about the flaws and vulnerabilities.”
“AI could reduce administrative tasks but the core work of what we do with the people we support should and will remain human-centred.”
6. Training, policy and ethical concerns
“Speeding ahead with riskier projects without laying the foundation properly first. General staff are not trained in ethical and responsible AI use.”
“I personally have real reservations about the way AI is being integrated into every area of work when there are so many ethical and environmental concerns that haven’t been fully addressed. I would feel more positive if I could see proper evidence of time-saving, but at the moment I don’t see that being the case and I really worry about the erosion of basic skills, creativity and critical thinking.”
“Very positive – we have an AI academy about to launch with 30 people which should help upskill a lot.”
Analysis
We were struck by the nuance in these responses, where optimism was often balanced by caution. Charities are simultaneously excited about the potential for greater efficiency and innovation whilst worried about the impact on their organisations. It was also notable that large charities are constrained by the systemic barriers we see to digital progress across charities of all sizes year on year, namely headspace, resources and support from leadership. There was also a recurring theme about what AI means for the human side of charities’ work, along with concerns about the ethical and environmental issues.