Responsible Adoption of AI in the VCSE Sector

How the VCSE Sector Can Embrace AI Safely, Confidently and for Community Good — HMHC Leads the Way


Over the past 18 months, AI has moved from a niche technical topic to something shaping daily life — from the way we communicate to how we access information, manage services, and support communities. For many charities and voluntary organisations, this rapid change brings a mix of excitement, uncertainty, and huge potential.

At Healthy Me Healthy Communities (HMHC), we believe the VCSE sector has an important opportunity: to adopt AI in a way that strengthens community power, improves digital inclusion, and supports people who are most affected by social and economic inequalities.

That’s why we have been actively learning, testing, and leading in this space.

Why AI Matters for the VCSE Sector

Charities face increasing pressure: higher demand, reduced funding, limited staff capacity, and growing digital expectations. AI cannot replace the human relationships at the heart of community work — but it can help us do our work better.


Responsible, ethical AI can support VCSE organisations to:


  • Free up staff and volunteer time
  • Automating repetitive tasks such as admin, reporting, case notes summarising, communications, marketing, and evaluation
  • Improve digital inclusion
  • AI tools can translate content, simplify reading level, generate audio, produce visuals, and support people with disabilities or limited literacy.
  • Strengthen service design
  • AI can highlight themes in community feedback, support co-production sessions, and help us respond to community needs faster.
  • Tools like Canva AI make visual design far more accessible, while AI writing assistants can help volunteers and staff produce strong funding bids, newsletters, or impact summaries.

For many organisations, AI acts like a second pair of hands — giving ideas, providing reassurance, and helping build digital confidence.

The key is doing it safely, ethically, and in line with community values. And that’s where our work this year has focused.

Spring: AI Train the Trainer

Earlier this year, we hosted one of Manchester’s first VCSE-focused AI Train the Trainer sessions in partnership with MMU Computer Science lecturers

Manchester City Council’s Digital Inclusion Team. It was fully booked within days — showing the demand for relevant, accessible training for charities.


Autumn: AI for VCSE Workshop

Building on this success, we delivered a free workshop specifically designed to help VCSE colleagues use Generative AI safely and effectively.

Participants explored:


  • Data privacy and confidentiality
  • Understanding bias and mitigating risk
  • How AI works in simple, accessible language
  • Prompt design — including how to get AI to ask clarifying questions
  • Using personas to support service design
  • Canva AI for visual content and engagement


Canva AI, unsurprisingly, stole the show.

Strategic Leadership: Building a Responsible AI Approach

Over the past year, HMHC’s Chair of Trustees, Jamie Hibbert, has been representing HMHC at the Manchester Digital Leads Network, learning how the VCSE community is adapting to both the challenges and opportunities of digital transformation.


Jamie has shared:

  • A Generative AI model comparison tool
  • A timeline for safe and ethical AI adoption
  • Insights into sector-wide digital capability
  • Examples of best practice for data responsibility
  • 

All of this is informing HMHC’s next major steps; co-creating an organisational AI strategy centred on inclusion, safety and community power.


We are committed to approaching AI in the same way we approach everything else — with people, ethics and empowerment at the centre.

Three women are sitting around a table. They each have a tablet or laptop in front of them. There is a screen with examples of AI software such as 'Chat GPT' and 'Copilot'.

Impact on the Ground: AI Supporting Digital Inclusion

One of the most powerful moments this year came not in a training room, but in our digital inclusion drop-in at Gorton Central.

A resident, nervous about technology and unsure what AI even was, sat with our volunteer James. Within minutes, she typed the ingredients in her fridge into ChatGPT.

AI produced a full sample menu. She shared, “I didn’t know it could help with things like this.”


This is the potential of gentle, responsible, human-led digital inclusion. AI becomes less of a threat and more of a tool for everyday empowerment.

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