Over the past few months, we’ve been feeling the waves of change at CAST - not just in terms of wider sector developments such as the rapid rise of AI, but closer to home, as in April this year - and after five years of close collaboration - we completed the process of incubating Catalyst from an initial project into a stand alone CIC.
But two things haven’t changed: our core mission and the core team we have in place to deliver it. And so this felt like the perfect time to reflect, regroup - and refocus our collective energies on shaping our plans for the months ahead: what do we want to help the sector achieve, and how are we going to do it?
And of course the other thing that hasn’t changed, is our commitment to sharing in the open! As ever, we’re excited to share our plans with you - and as ever, we’ve asked for your input. Thanks so much to everyone who reached out and connected with us: we hope the below Q&A with CAST’s Director Dan Sutch proves to be informative and interesting. But this is not a closed process: if you have any further questions, please email [email protected] and we will update this article with any additional questions and answers.
Can you give us a brief overview of what CAST is - and why it exists?
Dan Sutch (DS): CAST is a UK charity that supports social impact organisations to make the fullest use of digital technology, in order to be as responsive and resilient as possible. We work to remove barriers, create opportunities, spark connections and nurture the supporting conditions that enable social impact organisations to accelerate their agency, presence and influence in the technologies that affect us all.
We’re a digital-first, networked-based charity, which means we achieve our ultimate impact by supporting, training and empowering other civic organisations: bringing the best of digital, data and design, with a deep understanding of the sector, matched with a passion for social justice and equality.
It is CAST’s mission to ensure that every UK social impact organisation has the knowledge, confidence and opportunity to harness the full power of digital. Our vision is for an empowered, vocal and influential civil society, resilient and responsive to the changing needs, behaviour and expectations of their communities, confidently using digital tools to achieve individual and collective impact.
We know that the way in which social impact organisations create public benefit and impact relies increasingly heavily on their access to - and use of - digital tools and approaches. Post-pandemic, the spaces where people gather, connect and access information have largely shifted from physical to digital. And so if charities do not have a strong digital presence - and the confidence and support to adopt new tech trends as they emerge - their vital services will become less visible and accessible, and their influence will be diminished.
This is where CAST comes in: we work with charities and social impact organisations to help them embed digital and design across their services, strategy and governance - and with sector leaders and funders to create an environment which supports and encourages this. By building social sector organisations’ digital capacity, CAST helps them to become better equipped to thrive in the face of rapid social, economic and technological change.
Who do you work with, and what do you help them to do?
DS: We work directly with social impact organisations, helping them to become more responsive to the changing needs of the individuals and communities they serve, more test-driven in the way that they deliver value to those audiences, and more confident in embedding digital principles into their organisational strategy, culture and services.
We also work closely with funders, advisory bodies, advocacy collectives, sector leaders and digital specialists, to radically improve the quality and range of digital tools, training, funding and advice available to the sector - and to maximise the uptake of these offerings.
The way in which we deliver support can be described by three parts:
- We incubate sector and community-led interventions, building the best environments and teams to develop and scale social impact through digital.
- We design and deliver training, peer support and programmes that help develop the agency and capability of individuals and organisations to use digital, data and design to achieve their objectives.
- We host and support collections of experiments into how emerging technology, particularly AI, can bring about social value. We support shared testing and learning so the sector makes quicker progress in the use of digital, data and design.
We continually strive to make connections between all parts of the sector: this can involve directly connecting people or organisations to each other, or sharing insights with and between audiences - e.g. sharing the social sector’s emerging AI needs with funders, in order to mobilise a collective support effort. Central to this is our commitment to working in the open: we share what we are learning, and build on the work of others through reuse. This reduces the costs of change, whilst enabling pace and scale.
Our connection with multiple touchpoints across the sector means that we are at the forefront of understanding emerging trends and needs - and flexing our approaches as needed, in order to offer the most valuable support. As such, we are currently working with hundreds of social impact organisations and funders to identify the key challenges and opportunities with regard to AI, so that we can mobilise support and help the sector to harness the full potential of this technology.
Why have you chosen this particular time to focus in on a plan for the path ahead?
DS: From the moment we launched back in 2015, CAST’s core mission has not wavered: accelerate the use of digital by charities of all sizes to transform their services, strategy and governance, and the way in which they serve and support their communities. But the landscape has changed, and the micro and macro environments around CAST have shifted.
Naturally, the pandemic brought changes (as digital became a necessity for charities across the board); the rise of AI is creating waves of change throughout every sector — and most recently, we’ve seen a specific change at CAST, as we recently completed the process of incubating Catalyst from an initial project into a stand alone CIC.
So this felt like a natural time to refocus, and concentrate our energies on articulating exactly what we want to achieve - and how we’re going to do it.
What does the ‘path ahead’ plan look like, in practical terms?
DS: Our plan for the path ahead focuses on three core fields, aligned with the three overarching outcomes as laid out in our theory of change. That is: accelerating social impact organisations’ agency (developing skills, relationships and practices), presence (creating charity and sector owned technologies) and influence (supporting leaders to have greater voice within and beyond the sector) in the technologies that affect us all.
For each of these elements, we have laid out the ways in which we believe CAST can best use its collective skills, knowledge and connections to create the greatest positive impact for the sector.
Agency:
Overall objective: Significantly increase the number of charities and social impact organisations we are supporting.
What will we do? We will continue to create, deliver and scale interventions that develop skills, capabilities, relationships and opportunities for those working within social impact organisations.
How will we do it? We will create new funded programmes to support charities with digital; increase the use of existing CAST products and services, and establish new relationships with funders to support them to get more/better resources/support for charities’ digital work.
How can you get involved? If you are a funder who would like to work with us, either on a consultancy basis, or on a structured programme such as Deloitte Digital Connect, Community Explore or the Innovation and Digital Accelerator, please get in touch via [email protected]. If you work for a charity or social impact organisation, please do explore the full range of free initiatives and resources we have available to the sector - and please contact us with any specific questions or requirements at [email protected].
Presence:
Overall objective: Create a collection of experiments that grows the reuse of sector and community-owned digital tools.
What will we do? We will continue to support social impact organisations to develop digital services and products, incubate technologies and initiatives that help to create the digital infrastructure for civil society, and focus on growing the use and reuse of open, sector and community owned technologies.
How will we do it? We plan to partner in the creation of four new digital services that are sector and/or community owned; to establish patterns of reuse with two funders, seeing 20+ charities reusing community and sector owned technologies, and to secure significant investment in more than ten AI experiments.
How can you get involved? Please take a look at our Shared Digital Guides platform and the library of Community Explore assets: browse the available advice and resources, and if you are able to share any similarly useful information for the sector, please get in touch with us at [email protected].
Influence:
Overall objective: Influence national debate and policy by platforming civil society digital leaders.
What will we do? We will continue to support the growth of the Digital Leads Network, connect civil society organisations with opportunities to inform business and government, and deliver products like GrantAdvisor UK to create feedback loops and share insight.
How will we do it? We plan to increase membership and engagement of the Digital Leads Network; document engagement and influence with sector bodies; engage 100+ Trusts and Foundations around AI, and place people from the Digital Leads Network or CAST partners into influencing opportunities with conferences, boards and advisory groups.
How can you get involved? If you work for a charity or social impact organisation in a digital lead capacity, please sign up to join the Digital Leads Network, a vibrant community of around 80 individuals. If you work for a UK Trust or Foundation, please join our AI in grantmaking peer group, which convenes every two months to discuss the greatest opportunities and challenges of using AI - and if you are interested in embedding open IP into your work, please join our Open IP for Funders peer group. And if you would like to involve the CAST or Digital Leads Network teams in any speaking engagements or advisory opportunities, please do get in touch at [email protected].
These areas each build on the strengths of the CAST team and our reputation, the identified needs of charities and other social impact organisations, and the available insight into how we can create the greatest positive impact.
The work within these three areas is not discrete: activity within one tends to interconnect with and inform the work of other/s. The CAST team works across multiple areas simultaneously, and comes together regularly to share learnings and insights that can be applied across myriad streams.
How did you arrive at this ‘path ahead’ plan; was it collaborative, or put together by an exec team?
DS: Like almost everything we do at CAST, it was fully collaborative, involving every member of the team. In the run-up to developing this plan, we held a series of deep-dive sessions into CAST’s role within the sector; ran an all-team workshop to collectively shape a refreshed theory of change - and reviewed the data and evidence for the assumptions underpinning our strategy. Most recently, in May 2024, our Project Manager Jackie Brennan held one-to-one chats with every member of the CAST team, to discuss the overall plan and each of the three areas in detail; following this, we refined the plan in accordance with the team’s comments and suggestions.
That said, we are always open to hearing more views, and finessing the plan accordingly. For CAST to make its greatest contribution, our strategy and associated plans must respond to the changing context in which we operate, and also continue to align with key partners, filling gaps in the needs and capacity of our sector. We’ll only achieve our vision if we work collectively, and as such, our strategy must be informed by - and align with - the evolving strategies of other organisations and groups. So if you have any comments or suggestions, we’d love to hear from you: please email us at [email protected].
Where does AI sit within this plan?
DS: Because CAST is focused on accelerating the agency, presence and influence of social impact organisations in the technologies that affect us all, we have a particular focus on emerging tech, such as Generative AI: the opportunities and challenges presented, and how we can support organisations to respond to these to bring about positive social change.
As such, we are weaving AI into almost every strand of work that we do at CAST. On an organisational level, we are transparent about our use of AI - and we are working to support a wide range of individuals and organisations via a number of interventions: convening AI peer groups (for both charity digital leads and funders); delivering AI talks (at events including Charity Digital’s Transform and Thrive, London Funders’ Festival of Learning and the The Civic AI Observatory Unconference); incorporating AI into our Digital Skills Framework; delivering an AI mini-series in partnership with Deloitte and a series of AI masterclasses in collaboration with Refugee Action; making our AI diagram and experimentation canvas open for reuse - and setting up a brand new resource hub on our website.
This is just a snapshot: our AI support function is evolving and growing as we learn more about what the sector needs. Over the past year we’ve been working with charities, Trusts and Foundations, and technologists to explore the perceptions, practices, concerns and opportunities for AI in the charity sector. As part of this work, we’ve worked to identify and test different support needs that help charities to engage with AI in ways that support their mission - whether that’s in adopting, using or influencing AI.
We are putting extra focus into this area because we appreciate the scale of the challenge: Generative AI has the fastest adoption of any technology – ChatGPT took just three months to get to 100m users. (To give a sense of comparison, Facebook took four and a half years and Instagram just over two years.) Given the pace and scale of the changes driven by AI, we desperately need an empowered, vocal and influential civil society, confident in their use and understanding of digital.
Who are the people that will be involved in delivering the elements of this strategy?
DS: All work is managed and overseen by the core CAST team. We work with partners to co-design and deliver a range of programmes, and with funders to build stronger Tech for Good programmes, supporting grantees with practical training in user-centred digital service design.
We’re fortunate enough to have something of a 360-degree view of the sector landscape, operating as we do at the intersection of the social impact organisation / funder / digital specialist relationship. We have a broad spectrum of knowledge and experience across all three of these fields and are well placed to identify (and be alerted to) needs, trends and opportunities - and then take action and make connections as needed.
As a team, we take test-driven, user-led approaches to creating value, and we share our methods, insights and impact throughout. We are guided and united by a set of strong core values - and indeed, these are the result of a collaborative process: in May of this year, we got together as a team and worked through a redesign process to refresh our values into five core statements that resonated with everyone.
Where can we find out more as the planned activity unfolds?
DS: We will update this page with any further responses to questions and we’ll run further Q&As in due course, to update on progress. And in the meantime, you’ll find regular updates, reflections and links to useful resources on our Medium, X and LinkedIn channels.
Dan was interviewed by CAST’s Head of Communications, Sonya Hayden