Reflections from the Engaging Digital Comms Conference: Innovation, storytelling & making room for change

Powerful storytelling transforms digital engagement

ActionAid UK delivered one of the most compelling sessions, with Frances Leach challenging how women and children in humanitarian contexts are typically portrayed as weak or captured in undignified moments of crisis.

Their transformative approach includes hiring women photographers in their communities, ensuring dignified portrayal and sharing fuller stories highlighting women's strength. One powerful example showed a woman swimming in a lake, with the complete story revealing she's responsible for keeping children safe at a refugee camp swimming spot, making her vital to her community.

The London School of Economics shared another creative solution: engaging students to transform complex academic content into digestible videos for TikTok and Instagram. This initiative has run successfully for years, with students gaining valuable CV experience.

Digital instincts: Adopting AI without losing our voice

A recurring theme was both the promise and pressure of AI in the charity sector.

We heard inspiring stories of organisations using AI thoughtfully, from custom GPTs to AI-assisted service delivery like Citizens Advice's Caddy chatbot or RNID's online hearing test. This wasn't hype, but a practical implementation that genuinely enhanced their work.

Yet alongside the promise came important cautions. As Samir Afhim from Speech and Language UK noted, "AI doesn't know what it's saying" – and that matters tremendously when your mission depends on trust. Many charities expressed concern that AI is moving digital marketing further "behind the curtain," creating multiple opportunities to damage brand authenticity.

The smartest organisations are approaching AI not as a silver bullet but as a supplement, a creative co-pilot that speeds up tedious tasks without replacing the human voice at the heart of their work.

They also recognise what AI simply can't do: it can't care or draw from lived experience. It can't know how it feels to lose a loved one to cancer, struggle with housing, or navigate benefits with a disability. These human experiences matter in the charity sector more than most, and that's why humanity will always be our edge.

'Slack' time – innovation can't happen without room to breathe

Perhaps the most striking paradox was captured in two consistently repeated messages:

"There's so much potential here, we're really excited about what we could be doing."

AND

"We're spread so thin, it's a constant struggle just to cover the basics."

While we heard about incredible innovations, we repeatedly heard how organisations struggle to manage existing channels, let alone explore new opportunities.

Innovation requires space. You need to experiment, try things that might not work, and essentially "waste" some time. Clayton Christensen identified this challenge in The Innovator's Dilemma: established organisations fall behind because their resources are fully allocated to business as usual. For different results, you need "slack time" – deliberate breathing room to explore new ideas.

In a charity context, this kind of slack can seem wasteful. But if you're overloaded delivering today's work, you have no hope of finding better ways to approach tomorrow's challenges.

When your work truly matters – as it does in the charity sector – we need to reframe slack time as the opposite of wasteful. It's potentially irresponsible not to make time for interesting conversations and new approaches. Without this space, the sector risks lagging behind on technology, digital innovation, and the AI revolution.

Find balance

The conference highlighted an interesting tension: there's enormous potential in new technologies, but realising that potential requires both resources and space to experiment.

What became clear is that organisations that make space for creativity, centre authentic human experiences, and approach new technologies with curiosity and caution will be best positioned to thrive.