Key insights from the Charity Digital Skills Report 2025

At a high level, there’s an urgency coming through above all else around strategy and AI, and that challenged some of my somewhat biased assumptions around adoption. Torchbox’s Charity Sector division has hosted a range of breakfast events and webinars over the last 12 months that have been extremely well attended by some incredible charities, with (often very) senior leaders attending en masse. This has been great to see. I had perhaps overestimated progress in this space. But this year’s report challenged my assumptions, highlighting a range of issues with adoption.

Charities are being asked to adapt to a tectonic shift in the technology landscape, at the exact same time as being squeezed by unprecedented financial pressures.

The data in this year’s report shows that 50% of charities say they are either poor at, or not engaging at all with, investing in digital effectively, with 69% of charities citing organisational finances as a primary barrier to digital progress. What’s more, only 44% of charities have a digital strategy in place, which has declined from 50% year on year. As charities are forced to tighten their belts, and as the cost of living crisis continues to hit, investment in digital upskilling is being pushed down the list as other, seemingly more critical issues take precedence. This is urgency bias playing out in real time.

39% of charities are poor at website and analytics data, up from 31% last year.

The data infers that the charity sector is moving further away from quantitative measurement, which signals a concerning trend when it comes to a core part of impact measurement. It is common for Torchbox to see organisations making decisions around digital fundraising (user journeys, donations flows, website design) without looking at their underlying data. Furthermore, the available data is often flawed — broken, inaccurate or just unhelpful behaviour tracking. And yet we know that a lack of data know-how is an issue that comes up time and time again when charities are asked what their biggest tech challenges are. It’s why we’re continuing to grow our Measurement and Impact team at Torchbox over the coming 12 months, and focusing on closer integration with our engineering team to explore how we can better support the sector with measuring impact through a new blend of qualitative and quantitative insights.

Only half of the charities surveyed are developing a strategy for digital, data or AI.

The data in this year’s report shows a concerning trend around strategic adoption of AI — 37% of charities have not undertaken any actions to move forward with AI, 64% of charities make limited or no use of AI tools in their day to day work and 50% of charities are struggling to keep up with trends. Perhaps this is symptomatic of a sector-agnostic malaise around AI in which we’re all in the collective “trough of disillusionment” while we work out the problems these tools might solve for us. Regardless, the only way out is through: progress over perfection has to be the answer here. It is the role of leaders at charities to responsibly empower people on the (digital) ground to take steps forward, no matter how small those steps.To quote WPP’s CTO, Stephan Pretorius, “the future is putting pressure on the present”: not moving isn’t an option.

Now is the time for leaders to sharpen their digital skills.

28% of charities who responded to the survey said their boards have poor digital skills. That’s a jump of 11% on 2024’s findings, suggesting a sense that the bar has quickly been raised by staff for their leaders to get on the bandwagon. The pace of AI change is throwing a harsh light on digital skillsets in new ways. The good news for leaders who might be hesitant to engage for lack of seeming “behind the curve” is that everyone in the sector, regardless of seniority, is learning the landscape. We’re at a new “year zero” for tech skills, and there’s no shame in senior leaders and board members saying “I don’t know” about these tools, because for the first time in a decade, most of us also don’t know either. We’re seeing C-level staff and trustees engaging in the AI fundamentals workshops we’re running in the sector which has been great to see — this ground level engagement needs to continue if leaders are to push their organisations forward.

The great “levelling” for smaller charities is yet to happen.

A good friend of mine recently got in touch seeking advice ahead of setting up a registered charity. They were looking for ways to use digital effectively as a startup with limited funds and resources. One of the suggestions I made was to engage fully with the new AI tools that are becoming commonplace, like Midjourney and ChatGPT. These tools have been heralded as “leveling the playing field” for small charities, offering access to video, image, website and content creation capabilities that were the preserve of only large charities only a few years ago. And yet this year’s report shows adoption of AI tools in smaller charities continues to be far behind. Of course this is to be expected at one level given the vast gap in resources and budgets between small and large charities. But it challenges the “easy headlines” that these tools will open up untapped capabilities at the touch of a button for smaller charities.

Final thoughts

In a conversation I had recently with Zoe about the report’s findings, she reflected on the critical need to support the sector with the adoption of fundamental AI infrastructure — the day-to-day adoption of tooling for small but time consuming tasks, the skills that turn quite good reports into much better reports, the building blocks of people’s day-to-day work. Much of the focus of AI usage is looking to the horizon, to the imminent asteroid that may never come. In that environment, it is understandable to freeze and for paralysis to kick in: sometimes it can feel like small steps feel like they’re not enough. But now is the time for those charities who’ve yet to take the first step to take it, and for those larger charities already making moves to continue doing so without fear.

We'll be doing what we can over the coming months and years to support the sector to take those steps towards larger evolution.