How AI can help boards manage and mitigate risk

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Charities use artificial intelligence (AI) more than ever. The Charity Digital Skills Report 2025 shows that more than three quarters (76%) use AI in their work, a massive increase from 61% of charities in 2024. The growth likely stems from an increased awareness, especially around simplistic uses of AI, which broadly mimics what we’ve seen in other sectors. 

The use of AI in charities is growing. But the way charities employ the tech remains stagnant. Charities use AI mostly for project management (48%), grant funding (36%), and comms (34%). That shows a reluctance to expand use cases. It points to a degree of caution. 

The cautious approach likely stems from the sector’s risk-aversion. And, without doubt, AI poses serious risks, especially for people using it without awareness or intention. But an oft-ignored – and very important – point is sometimes missed: AI can help charities reduce risk. 

In this article, we explore how AI can reduce risk for charities, how trustees can use AI to manage risk, and easy ways to get started. So, without further ado, let’s talk about governance.  

How AI helps boards with risk 

As demonstrated in a recent Azeus Convene Whitepaper, governance remains essential if charities wish to deliver on their mission. Governance typically means ensuring the charity operates legally, ethically, and sustainably. Effective governance thus means evaluating legal, ethical, and financial risk. And various AI systems can support that act of evaluation.  

Consider AI-driven risk verification and analysis, for example. AI systems are capable of pulling and analysing huge swathes of data from multiple sources, including finance systems, compliance and regulatory publications, safeguarding reports, and the usual suspects of marketing analytics.

Charities, always following the standard data protection regulations, can input data sources to identify potential risks, forcing disparate data sources to interact.  

It is important, here, to note that charity leaders must be confident in the security of their AI tools. AI itself poses a risk, if the platform used isn’t secure – it could lead to data breaches or other security implications if the data is used to train the AI model. There are benefits to using AI within existing tools, allowing them to work with your data in a secure environment and reducing the risk of trustees or board members uploading potentially sensitive data into an external platform that isn’t aligned with a charity’s data protection policy.  

But once confident that the system is secure, AI can then safely be used to reduce risk, not heighten it. Depending on the tool, AI might be able to highlight any potential risks and at least point to irregularities, such as unusual financial transactions, drops in donor retention or engagement, conflicts between regulation and reporting, and other abnormalities in the data.  

That could help charities understand imminent risk. But predictive and generative AI can flag future and emerging risk, flagging anomalies or high-risk patterns. You could employ predictive insights, using historical data to ascertain future risks, such as funding shortfalls, volunteer attrition, or regulatory pressure on the horizon. Or you could employ scenario modelling, presenting possible crises – such as a cyber breach or the loss of a core income stream – and consider the degree of risk and evaluate contingency plans in place. 

How can boards get started with AI 

The first, and most important, step is to make sure all of your comms and necessary data is consolidated in one open, transparent place. Board portals, or board management software, provides a secure digital environment for trustees to share information safely and effectively.  

For example, Convene’s AI assistant can help with solving technical difficulties, navigating the app, and even summarising board packs. Additionally, it boosts board efficiency by presenting minutes and creating and delegating action items to encourage continual progress. Using inbuilt AI tools within a board portal ensures that organisations have taken the right precautions in mitigating potential data leaks. 

Using the AI is relatively simple. You can pick a platform that serves your needs. So, for predictive insights, you might prefer to use a generative AI platform, one that can present trajectories based on existing data. For present risks, you might want to look at machine learning platforms, which can perform supervised or unsupervised learning to find patterns from historical and present data. Trustees can help pick the best platform and there are plenty of resources online, including many from Charity Digital, that can support that process.  

Then you can put the insights on the board portal and discuss the various findings, perhaps reading ahead of meetings and annotating any important elements. You can use AI to take meeting notes and summarise them for future board meetings. And, crucially, you can start planning ahead, for every eventuality. You can use AI for scenario modelling, whereby an AI platform is used to create various potential scenarios, which are then shared with leaders ahead of time, creating a visual evaluation of upcoming risks.  

That affords trustees complete visibility, not just of available data, but future scenarios. And the job of trustees comes into full effect. Their knowledge of the charity and the sector allows them to excavate and assess the extent of the risk. And, of course, trustees are then tasked with considering next steps, thinking of how the charity might address that risk.  

The charity sector seems to be embracing AI. And trustees seem broadly aware of the many risks that accompany AI. But trustees need to be more aware of the many opportunities that AI provides, one of which includes the ability to mitigate risk. As ever with AI, intent remains vital. Trustees should avoid risks when using the tech and use the tech to avoid risk.