The Future Is Bright—But Only If You Show Up for It
Recently, I had the chance to speak on an AI panel hosted by WeAreAnimals, and its infinitely engaging founders, Michal Augustini and Otakar Hypš, discussing what comes next with artificial intelligence. The conversation was refreshingly hopeful. It wasn’t about robots stealing jobs or AI running amok—it was about why the future could be brilliant if we engage with it now, not run from it.
That chat is what sparked this piece. We’re also launching a new chapter in this blog—longer reads, deeper insight, more editorial thinking about the fundraising sector and the world around it. And this felt like exactly the right place to start.
Because if you work in the charity or non-profit space—or anywhere, really—there’s a new landscape forming. And it’s moving quickly.
A Living Economy, Not a Digital Desk Job
Imagine a world where the underlying mechanics of life—administration, logistics, scheduling, compliance—don’t weigh us down, but quietly work in the background. A world where our days aren’t spent behind screens managing the world, but out in it, shaping it.
This is the world AI makes possible: a living economy. One where people are liberated from constant admin, and supported by invisible infrastructure—an ecosystem of tools that are as present and helpful as they are invisible.
Britain could once again become a nation of shopkeepers—but this time, our shops won’t be stalls or storefronts. They’ll be boundless in scale and scope. And we won’t need to master every skill ourselves, because AI will meet us where we are. No-code tools. Natural language commands. Instant analysis. The tradespeople, marketers, designers, researchers, and strategists we once hired will now emerge through a tap, a voice, a prompt.
We become engines of idea realisation—driven by curiosity, not credentials. The barrier to building shrinks. The permission to dream grows.
Take Terry, for instance. He heads out for a walk through the park and notices something: dog owners often get caught without a poo bag. It's awkward, it’s unhygienic, and it’s common. So he gets an idea.
“Maybe there could be a drone flying around that carries spare poo bags,” he says aloud to his personal AI. Without stopping his walk, he gives it a list of actions:
What regulations might apply to having an autonomous drone flying in a public park?
How much did the council spend on dog waste cleanup last year?
Are there drones that already do this, or ones that could be adapted?
Could an AI identify when a dog is doing its business, using image recognition?
As Terry walks, the AI gets to work. And by the time he’s leaving the park, it pings back with answers. The idea is viable. Terry’s excited.
He gives it more:
Source the right drone and place the order.
Find three drone image recognition specialists in London and message them.
Contact the relevant council lead and pitch a pilot project.
Build a project plan and send it to Terry’s home computer.
And then—just before reaching home—Terry remembers he needs to see his friends:
Book a table at The Ivy for May 8th, 14:30 or later.
Send invites to Fred and Sue.
WhatsApp his wife about it.
Send an email making appropriate excuses for conflicting appointments.
Terry walks through the door, sits down at his computer, and there’s the project plan, waiting. Ready for him to bring the idea to life.
This isn’t sci-fi. It’s a very near future. And it’s not about replacement—it’s about realisation. About becoming more than what we are, not less. It’s about dreaming without compromise.
AI Isn’t Here to Replace Us. It’s Here to Free Us.
Let’s get one thing straight: this isn’t about a post-work world. This is about a better-work world. One where AI doesn’t replace human beings—it augments them. It takes over the parts of work that drain us, slow us down, and keep us from our best thinking. The spreadsheet sorting. The inbox overload. The manual reporting. The hours spent trying to do too much with too little.
What happens when all that’s handled? You get to engage. To create. To think. To walk around and notice things.
We Expand to the Size of Our Tools
Humans are endlessly adaptable. That’s why we went from savannah to skyscraper. And every time we’ve had a new tool—writing, printing, the internet—we’ve expanded into it.
AI is the next paradigm tool. Not a smarter calculator. Not a robot butler. A true amplifier of thought and imagination.
As Bret Taylor, Chair of the OpenAI board, put it: "When Excel was introduced, people feared it would make accountants redundant. Instead, it made accountants more strategic. The same thing is happening with AI."
I’ve seen this in my own work. I’ve always considered myself a decent writer, but I’m a hyperactive person—I find it hard to sit down and focus for long enough to produce what’s in my head. So ideas would sit in notebooks, or float around half-formed. Now? I speak to AI. I tell it what I’m thinking, shape it, challenge it, ask for facts or references. It drafts. I refine.
It’s not 100% mine. It’s more than mine. It’s what I wanted to create but never quite could. And I still have to polish it. Check sources. Inject voice. But that’s the point—it’s still my work. It’s just that I’m more productive, more expressive, more able than I was before.
AI isn’t cheating—it’s collaboration. As long as you’re steering, it’s still your work. AI just takes care of the heavy lifting: the structure, the synthesis, the slog. You bring the spark—the 20% that transforms something serviceable into something extraordinary.
A Rare Moment of True Access
Here’s the thing that’s easy to miss: AI is one of the first truly democratised powerful technologies.
Usually, the best tools are out of reach for most charities and small organisations. Can’t afford the expensive analytics suite? Too bad. Can’t justify the fancy automation platform? Move on.
But AI is different. The tools you can use right now—many of them free or available at low cost—are mind-blowingly powerful. And they’re the same ones being used by tech giants and start-ups. For once, everyone is at the starting line together.
So why wouldn’t we run?
And maybe—just maybe—we’re entering a post-company era. One where your creative, intellectual, or commercial output isn’t brokered through a middleman. Where AI-to-AI communication can autonomously scout opportunities, spot trends, and discover the right audience for your work.
That’s not utopian fantasy. That’s structural evolution.
There’s a Moral Obligation to Adopt AI
Let’s not dress this up as optional. If you lead a team or organisation, you have a responsibility to understand what AI can do—not just for your mission, but for your people.
Because if you don’t?
They fall behind.
If the future of work is increasingly AI-augmented, and your team has no exposure to it—no confidence, no fluency—they’ll be at a disadvantage in every future job market. And your organisation? It’ll be doing more work, more slowly, with fewer results.
If you know this can make your team faster, more effective, more creative—and you don’t act—that’s not a strategic choice. That’s a failure of leadership.
This Is the First Step in a Bigger Shift
Some worry that AI will be dominated by the big companies. That it will centralise power. That it’ll churn out soulless content and generic products. But why should it? If we all have access, then we all have a say. And as we decentralise creativity and cut out traditional middlemen, we open up new ways to discover, create, and connect—AI to AI, recommendation to recommendation, based not on algorithms of profit, but shared intent.
This isn’t the end of human creativity. It’s the rebirth of it.
And we know that it works. A study published in Nature Human Behaviour found that human-AI teams significantly outperformed both AI-only and human-only groups when it came to creative and strategic tasks. The combination of human insight and AI speed created better results than either could alone.
So What Comes Next?
What comes next depends entirely on who shows up. If you engage now, experiment now, adapt now—you help shape what AI becomes. You get to be part of building the systems, ethics, workflows, and expectations around how we use these tools. You help define how it works for people, not around them.
If you sit it out?
You don’t get that say.
You’re not part of the conversation. And when it moves on without you, the learning curve gets steeper. The catch-up gets harder. And the window to shape something better starts to close.
The Future Is Bright—for Those Who Participate
This isn’t the time to hesitate. It’s the time to explore, to experiment, to play. Try the tools. Make mistakes. Talk about what you find. Equip your team. Ask your funders. Open the conversation.
Because the future is bright.
But only if we show up for it.
