How your small charity should be using Copilot Chat

The charity sector is doing more with less. AI can help.

Let’s be honest, the pressures on UK charities right now are real. Demand for services is up. Funding is tight. Staff are stretched. And the idea of investing in shiny new technology can feel like a luxury reserved for organisations with deeper pockets.

But AI adoption doesn’t have to start with a big spend. It can start with a chat window.

According to Microsoft research, 70% of people using Microsoft Copilot say they are more productive. Staff using it to catch up on missed meetings can do so four times faster. And for nonprofits specifically, Microsoft 365 Copilot has been shown to increase fundraising output by up to 20% over three years.

Meet Copilot Chat, the free AI assistant already in your Microsoft 365

In January 2025, Microsoft rebranded and restructured its AI offerings to make one thing very clear: Copilot Chat is free for any organisation with an eligible Microsoft 365 or Office 365 licence.

That means thousands of charities across the UK, many on free or heavily discounted Microsoft 365 Business Basic plans, already have access to enterprise-grade AI assistance and don’t even know it.

• Microsoft 365 Copilot (the paid add-on, available at a 15% nonprofit discount) connects deeply to your emails, SharePoint, Teams recordings and OneDrive files
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat (free with eligible licences) is your starting point; a secure, GPT-4-powered AI assistant that can draft content, answer questions, summarise uploaded documents, generate images, and search the web

For a small charity with 20 staff all on a free Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan, that’s 20 users of enterprise AI, at zero additional cost.

What can Copilot Chat do for your charity?

Grant writing and funding applications
The cycle of grant writing is one of the most time-intensive parts of charity life. Upload your organisation’s information or a previous application, and ask Copilot Chat to help you structure, refine, and adapt it.

Communications and content creation
Newsletter copy, social media posts, donor thank-you emails, volunteer briefings… Copilot Chat can draft all of it in seconds.

Summarising documents and reports
Upload a lengthy policy document, sector report, or funding brief, and ask Copilot Chat to give you the key takeaways. Perfect for trustees and senior leaders who need to digest information fast.

Research and idea generation
Need to understand a new piece of legislation, benchmark your services against similar organisations, or brainstorm campaign ideas? Copilot Chat can search the web and synthesise information in a way that’s relevant to your question, not just a list of links.

Preparing for meetings
Draft agendas, write up action points from notes, or prepare a briefing paper in minutes rather than an hour.

But what about your data?

When you access Copilot Chat through your Microsoft 365 work account, your prompts and responses are not used to train Microsoft’s AI models. Your data doesn’t leave your organisation’s Microsoft 365 service boundary. It’s the same contractual data protection that large enterprise customers get, available to you at no extra cost.

This matters enormously for charities handling sensitive information about beneficiaries, donors, or vulnerable people. You can use Copilot Chat confidently, knowing the guardrails are there.

The smarter path to AI adoption

Here’s what Phoenix recommends for smaller charities looking to get started without overcomplicating things:

Step 1: Start with Copilot Chat (it’s free)
Familiarise your team with AI-assisted working using the tools already available to you. Let people experiment. Identify the workflows where AI saves the most time.

Step 2: Build confidence and identify your high-value use cases
Not everyone needs a paid Copilot licence. Once you’ve identified which roles or tasks benefit most from deeper integration with your Microsoft 365 data, you’ll know exactly where a paid licence adds the most value.

Step 3: Scale thoughtfully
Microsoft 365 Copilot (the paid add-on) is available to eligible nonprofits at a 15% discount. But rather than rolling it out organisation-wide from day one, a targeted approach (licencing the roles that get the most out of deep Microsoft 365 integration) is far more cost-effective.