CAST - Centre for the Acceleration of Social Technology

📅 Digital Leaders AI Week: Join our AI trends session!

As part of Digital Leaders AI Week, we'll be hosting a session focusing on five key #AI trends for digital leaders, drawn from our experience of convening peer groups for charity digital leads and grantmakers.

12.30pm, 20 Oct 👉 buff.ly/1qtlyiM

👀 Free workshop: AI Experiments for Charities.

Join David Scurr and Ross McCulloch at 11am this Weds, 8th Oct, as they cut through the AI jargon & show how charities can experiment with AI today.

Access free tools & templates - and bring your own questions for an open discussion 👉 buff.ly/Esg5ipy

🆕 AI Together: Data & Privacy

Tori Ellaway shares the key discussions & actions that came out of our latest AI Together internal learning session on data security, including seven practical tasks designed to strengthen the ways in which we handle data & privacy when using AI tools 👉 buff.ly/X1S0x8F

🆕 AI learning platform!

Digital inclusion charity @goodthingsfdn.bsky.social has created the AI Gateway: a free, interactive platform designed to demystify AI, enabling you to learn at your own pace and gain confidence to use AI in your daily life.

Explore the new platform here 👉 bit.ly/ai-gateway

👀 Free workshop: AI Experiments for Charities.

Join David Scurr and Ross McCulloch at 11am next Weds, 8th Oct, as they cut through the AI jargon & show how charities can experiment with AI today.

Access free tools & templates - and bring your own questions for an open discussion 👉 buff.ly/Esg5ipy

AI Week 2025 The UK's nation wide week of learning and sharing best practice in AI.

📅 Digital Leaders AI Week: check out all the free #AI #charity sessions!

Digital Leaders have gathered some key charity speakers, to offer insights into the ways in which AI is being applied by the sector right now, and the key things to consider when using AI in a charity context 👉 buff.ly/iZ87PpC

🆕 Shared Digital Guide!

@citizensadvicesort.bsky.social share the steps they took when building CaseNote, a speech‑to‑text and AI summarisation tool.

The tool is designed to halve the time spent writing case notes, whilst still preserving advice‑quality standards and data privacy 👉 buff.ly/7Ilx5D4

🧪 Ten ways in which organisations are experimenting with AI

CAST's Programme Lead Ellen Smyth outlines ten ways in which #charities and #funders are experimenting with #AI — and shares a link to our AI Experiment Library, which now contains 30+ experiments from 18 organisations 👉 buff.ly/BuHD4iR

📅 Digital Leaders AI Week: Join our AI trends session!

As part of Digital Leaders AI Week, we'll be hosting a session focusing on five key #AI trends for digital leaders, drawn from our experience of convening peer groups for charity digital leads and grantmakers.

12.30pm, 20 Oct 👉 buff.ly/1qtlyiM

👀 Ten simple AI tools - with tips, demos and experiments to try for yourself!

David Scurr provides an overview of ten simple AI tools, outlining which tasks each tool is best suited to, and sharing a host of tips & demos - as well as tiny experiments you can dive in and try today! 👉 buff.ly/8nEq6zb

🆕 Library of AI experiments!

Check out our growing collection of 30+ AI experiments, shared by 18 orgs.

Topics include user research, AI policy creation, data analysis & transcription - with contributors sharing what worked well, what didn’t, and the advice they’d give to others 👉 buff.ly/GFZP45O

🧰 New Guide: Building a #chatbot that enables staff to access internal info.

From researching user needs & selecting a supplier, through to testing the chatbot & supporting staff to use it, @rspcaoffficial.bsky.social provide a host of tips & tools, alongside their own experiences 👉 buff.ly/t8wZx0i

👋 The Digital Leads Network is open for membership!

The DLN is a vibrant community of 400+ members, dedicated to peer learning & sharing across the sector.

Members gain access to events, networking sessions & an AI peer group.

Joining is free; fill out the short form at our site 👉 buff.ly/4agzkCk

AI for Grantmakers peer group meeting - CAST An open invitation for funders of all sizes to come together as peers, exploring the opportunities and challenges of AI.

This summer, Mary Henes at the Martingale Foundation and Harry Harrold at @neontribe.bsky.social worked on a project exploring thoughtful AI use in fundraising.

Keen to hear more about it? Register below for tomorrow's peer group meeting hosted by @techforgoodcast.bsky.social 👉 tr.ee/ofcT7D

📅 Digital Leaders AI Week: Join our AI trends session!

As part of Digital Leaders AI Week, we'll be hosting a session focusing on five key AI trends for digital leaders, drawn from our experience of convening peer groups for charity digital leads and grantmakers.

12.30pm, 20 Oct 👉 buff.ly/1qtlyiM

🚀 Two free AI courses!

We've created two free, self-serve courses: one providing an introduction to AI, and another aimed at those people who feel they are advancing with AI, and want to support their colleagues to do the same.

Intro course 👉 buff.ly/4gfaOEF
Follow-on course 👉 buff.ly/1KSivpU

🆕 Newsletter out today! Featuring:

🔟 Ten AI tools - with tips & demos
🚀 CAST's two free AI courses
📅 Digital Leaders AI Week talk
👋 AI for Grantmakers group invitation
👀 AI Leadership Essentials: new videos
📅 IVAR's Leading in Uncertainty dates
⭐ New CAST team members!

And more! 👉 buff.ly/uwo252h

👀 Check out the latest Shared Digital Guides!

➡️ Euan's Guide on recruiting staff using Airtable
➡️ RSPCA on helping staff find info using a chatbot
➡️ Noise Solution on using GenAI to analyse video content
➡️ Citizens Advice SORT on automating case notes with AI

See all 92 Guides 👉 buff.ly/3zIbdzS

🧪 Ten ways in which organisations are experimenting with AI

CAST's Programme Lead Ellen Smyth outlines ten ways in which #charities and #funders are experimenting with #AI — and shares a link to our AI Experiment Library, which now contains 30+ experiments from 18 organisations 👉 buff.ly/BuHD4iR

🧪 Five ways funders are experimenting with AI.

Ellen Smyth takes a look at five ways in which funders are using AI, with content from @londonfunders.bsky.social, @tnlcommunityfund.org.uk, @healthfoundation.bsky.social, The Masonic Charitable Foundation and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

👉 buff.ly/am8u7Qs

🆕 Shared Digital Guide!

@citizensadvicesort.bsky.social share the steps they took when building CaseNote, a speech‑to‑text and AI summarisation tool.

The tool is designed to halve the time spent writing case notes, whilst still preserving advice‑quality standards and data privacy 👉 buff.ly/7Ilx5D4

With the support of our partners at IVAR, the learning from this peer group feeds into the development of Open and Trusting use of AI in grantmaking 👉 buff.ly/gccz18h

📅 Open invitation: AI for Grantmakers peer group

If you work in #grantmaking and are interested in the challenges & opportunities presented by #AI, please join us on Weds 17th Sept, from 1-3pm, as we bring together #funders of all sizes for a peer discussion.

Book your free place 👉 buff.ly/49dF4MS

🆕 We've just kicked off our 'AI Together' programme, designed to help us build AI skills as a team.

In a new blog, we outline the workshop format used, detail some of the challenges identified, and lay out our planned next steps - as well as sharing links to AI support resources 👉 buff.ly/TkaUEOz

🆕 Ten simple AI tools - with tips, demos & experiments to try for yourself!

David Scurr provides an overview of ten simple AI tools, outlining which tasks each tool is best suited to, and sharing a host of tips and demos - as well as tiny experiments you can dive in and try today! 👉 buff.ly/8nEq6zb

The CAST team - five men and six women - holding their CAST anniversary mugs

🎉Last chance to win a CAST mug!

We’ve got ten exclusive CAST mugs to give away! The mugs - which feature a tenth anniversary version of CAST’s ‘all hands’ logo - are designed to keep your drinks piping hot or refreshingly cold throughout meetings.

Enter by 1st September 👉 buff.ly/DtOGYBO

🆕 Library of AI experiments!

Check out our growing collection of 30+ AI experiments, shared by 18 orgs.

Topics include user research, AI policy creation, data analysis & transcription - with contributors sharing what worked well, what didn’t, and the advice they’d give to others 👉 buff.ly/GFZP45O

🧰 New Guide: Building a #chatbot that enables staff to access internal info.

From researching user needs & selecting a supplier, through to testing the chatbot & supporting staff to use it, @rspcaoffficial.bsky.social provide a host of tips & tools, alongside their own experiences 👉 buff.ly/t8wZx0i

🚀 New free AI course!

If you feel you're advancing with #AI and you'd like to support your organisation to do the same, then our new course is for you!

You'll receive a weekly email for 8 weeks, full of tips, tools & templates that build to help you support your org step by step 👉 buff.ly/1KSivpU

🗂️ New library of AI experiments!

Check out our growing collection of 30 AI experiments, shared by 17 orgs.

Topics include user research, AI policy creation, data analysis & transcription - with contributors sharing what worked well, what didn’t, & the advice they’d give to others 👉 buff.ly/GFZP45O