Helping Wales’s third sector learn and make choices about AI

Sgil AI is a five-year programme to help third sector organisations learn and make choices about AI. 

We are training organisations across Wales, creating paid roles for young people to solve real challenges and paying organisations to design and test AI uses alongside the communities they serve. Everything we produce is published openly, in Welsh and English.

Sgil AI is funded by The National Lottery Community Fund through its Supporting Great Ideas programme, which has awarded ProMo Cymru £499,998 over five years.

Why this project exists

In 2025–26, roughly £5 million of AI and digital transformation funding was made available to public bodies in Wales. None of this funding was made available for the third sector.

Meanwhile the sector is adopting AI anyway. The 2025 Charity Digital Skills Report found 76% of charities using AI, and 60% worried about what that means for service quality and data privacy. 

We spoke with many organisations and there was a feeling that many are being left behind. One respondent put it plainly: “AI will be used in all sectors, and if the third sector doesn’t learn how to use it, we will be left behind.” In addition, most respondents told us they were using AI themselves, but this wasn’t supported by their organisation. 

There is a clear parallel with the rush to digitise services a decade ago, which left some communities further out than it found them. We want to ensure that people are involved in shaping how services may use AI  

What Sgil AI does

The project runs as three connected strands.

1. Training based on need

Not everyone needs the same thing. A frontline worker wanting to cut down on admin, a chief executive responding to a call for evidence, and an operational lead already using AI and trying to implement it safely across an organisation, all need different types of support.

Our training is built around ProMo’s four-stage AI Maturity Model – Aware, Experimenting, Confident, and Creative.

So, organisations can find the level that fits and move up over time. Sessions range from practical tool use, to strategy, to wider implementation of AI tools, and include hands-on workshops where groups build working software together in a matter of hours.

We will train 625 organisations over the five years.

2. Young people designing what comes next

Twelve young people will be taken on in paid Trainee Service Designer roles across the five years, a small number at a time, on rolling recruitment. They join the team as colleagues, not as consultees or focus group participants with the same say in what gets built, and the same exposure to the constraints of actually building it. Together we identify emerging problems, including problems AI itself is creating, and design tools, methods and software to meet them.

There is a reason to do this now. There is early evidence that AI is already reshaping entry-level employment for the worse. Paying young people to help us is the right thing to do and the best way to learn how we can support more young people in the future.

3. A paid co-design cohort

Training alone doesn’t tell you whether a use of AI is a good idea. That takes the people the service is actually for.

The cohort strand brings third sector organisations together with their own communities to design and test practical AI uses, and to check them against the judgement of the people they affect. Organisations are paid for the time they put in meaningful work; stretched teams shouldn’t be asked to do it for free. To take part, an organisation has to show it is genuinely involving its community, not consulting after the fact.

Four partners are confirmed for the first cohort, chosen because they reach people most often left out of digital transformation: Welsh Refugee Council, Mind in Gwent, Stori and CVSC (Community and Voluntary Support Conwy). Between them they work with refugees and people seeking sanctuary, survivors of domestic abuse, people with mental health difficulties, and small voluntary groups. More organisations will join over the life of the project.

We expect around 10 organisations in the cohort.

Everything we make is open

Guides, methodologies, tools and software produced by Sgil AI are published openly and bilingually, in Welsh and English, written in both languages from the outset rather than translated as an afterthought.

An organisation in Wrexham should be able to pick up something tested in Newport without repeating the work and should still be able to do so after the funding ends.

What we expect to change

• Third sector organisations in Wales have the confidence, skills and knowledge to use AI ethically and effectively with the communities they serve.
• Communities, including those historically excluded from digital transformation, have a real say in how AI is used in the services that affect them.
• Young people in Trainee Service Designer roles gain practical experience in an emerging field, and we show more widely what a good early career in design and AI looks like.
• Open tools, guides and methodologies exist and are shared, so organisations across Wales can adopt ethical AI without starting from scratch.

How we will know

Sgil AI is independently evaluated at its mid-point and at its end. Alongside that we run six-monthly learning reviews and annual reports, using baseline questionnaires, the AI Maturity Model as a diagnostic, Most Significant Change narratives and case studies. We will publish what we learn, including the parts that do not work.

Get involved

If you work in the third sector in Wales and want training, or your organisation is interested in joining the cohort, we would like to hear from you. Everything starts with a conversation.

Sgil AI is funded by The National Lottery Community Fund.

For more information, email andrew@promo.cymru