2025 Review & 2026 Predictions, with Kevin Antao

Top 5 Digital Technology related actions for all Charity Leaders in 2026 with Kevin Antao

Listen to the podcast at: https://virtuevirtuosity.com

Part 1: https://open.spotify.com/episode/65XKQAe6KPQ7Vs82yyke0J?si=ed9e659227074b9b

Part 2: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2D5YhDiEUw0FMlLevCtc1L?si=2774b71985814342

Part 3: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7vzfTzoFSjKpx4hjuuRus5?si=647403f144204d1f

Welcome back, and happy 2026!

Over the final weeks of 2025, Kevin Antao and I released a special three‑part podcast series looking back at the major digital and AI trends shaping charities in 2025 — and the five agenda items every charity CEO, CTO and leadership team should carry into 2026.

Across the three episodes we reviewed what shifted last year, made a few bold predictions, and mapped out a practical action plan for the year ahead.

If you missed them, here’s the distilled version.

1. Treat Data as Your Strategic Asset

2026 is the year that unified data platforms — Microsoft Fabric, Salesforce’s Data 360 and equivalents — move from “nice idea” to essential infrastructure.

In a call this week, someone mentioned to me the phrase ‘Data is the new oil’ - which we’ve all heard so often. But, whilst we’re pretty clear that most charities don’t have huge reserves of oil, many of us are sitting on big datasets hidden away - spread across countless applications - and not delivering anything like the value they could be.

The tools that are out there for bringing data together have got so much better in the past few years, and paired with the natural-language capabilities from AI that have developed in the past 12 months, we’ve really seen the costs, risks and complexity of better organising your data drop, whilst the potential insight-related benefits from AI have increased. Some charities have made huge progress on this… but many haven’t.

2026 is the year that the value‑gap between data-ready “organised” and “disorganised” charities will widen sharply, and become really apparent.

If you listen to just one back-catalog episode after this, make it last year’s most‑downloaded one: Making an Impact with Simon Vaux at The King’s Trust.

2. Strengthen Digital and AI Oversight & Governance

Boards and leadership teams are already acknowledging that they’re under‑skilled in digital, data, AI and regulation. In 2025 we saw a quiet but important shift: more charities recruiting digital trustees, more informed board-level conversations about the impact of AI and Digital Technology. and a growing realisation that governance must evolve as fast as the technology.

The EU AI Act (mid‑2026) and updates to UK data regulation make this urgent. Oversight can no longer be something delegated to “the tech people”.

If you want a deep dive, Episode 8 from this season covers digital trusteeship and oversight brilliantly.

3. Make Cybersecurity a Strategic Advantage

2025 was the year cybersecurity stopped being hypothetical. The UK faced four nationally significant cyber incidents per week — and some of them directly slowed national economic output.

Our argument is simple: Cybersecurity should be part of your mission. Handled well, it becomes something you can actively reassure supporters and beneficiaries about. This is a shift. It is no longer just risk‑management; it’s trust‑building.

Sorry - no podcast link on this one - but a cybersecurity‑focused episode is on my to-do list for 2026 (get in touch if you want to be on it!)

4. Build AI Literacy Across Your Organisation

The AI shift in 2025 was bewildering. Was it technical? Was it political? Was it world-changing. Well, in my organisations, it was cultural. Teams that invested in AI skills saw meaningful productivity uplift; teams that didn’t felt increasingly disoriented.

Large organisations globally have already committed to mass AI upskilling in 2026. Charities, with their strong culture of investing in people, and their large knowledge-focus should be benefitting even more.

This isn’t about predicting the entire AI landscape — it’s about ensuring your people have the capability to adapt as it evolves.

A great companion episode is our conversation with Paul Smith and Jane Huntingdon on skills and capability building.

5. Prepare for the Unexpected

One of our strongest themes from the podcast (and echoed by tech, geopolitical and economic commentators globally) is simple: volatility is the defining feature of 2026.

Black‑swan events — from cyber‑AI intersections to market corrections to global political shifts (we’ve already seen some of these) — are low‑probability individually but high‑probability collectively. Most risk registers don’t reflect that.

Now is the time to refresh how you assess probability, impact and mitigations — and don’t just do the same as every year. Take a new approach - and involve as many people as possible. And if you have a Copilot or Gemini licence, ask it to scan your emails. documents and meeting transcripts to surface emerging risks; it’s surprisingly good at it.

If you’re looking for an episode from the back-catalog where we discuss risk - then this one with Trevor Gordon from Save the Children is great.

Final Note

All episodes — plus previous newsletters — are available on the Virtue Chain website with full transcript search and keyword indexing. I’ve also got a nice agent that runs over all of the transcripts and can package up insights from our guests. If enough people are interested, I’ll make it available on the site.

Here’s to a year of better data, sharper governance, stronger security, more confident teams — and preparation for the unpredictable.

If you’ve enjoyed reading this newsletter, why not send it around internally in your organisation, or put a link on your intranet or teams channel. Please do comment, and repost on Linked In. You can also subscribe to the newsletter outside of LinkedIn by going to https://virtuechain.co.uk and scrolling down to the subscribe link at the bottom of the homepage.

And if you’re keen for me to feature something going on in your charity, NFP or similar, please get in touch - and do comment on anything in here, or in the podcast that you like.

Sponsorship

Please do get in touch if you want to sponsor this newsletter or the podcast.

Podcast Links

Remember – follow on your favourite podcast platform, today, so that you don’t miss an episode.

https://virtuevirtuosity.com

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0G3vGA98kpk6biZqQVsSVL?si=005d3205859d4668

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/virtue-virtuosity/id1742994475

Podbean: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/ynvth-2fcfed/Virtue—Virtuosity-Podcast

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VirtueVirtuosity

Castbox: https://castbox.fm/channel/Virtue-%26-Virtuosity-id6126681

RSS feed: https://feeds.alitu.com/63115191

(please ask if you think there is somewhere I else I should be publishing, and I’ll endeavour to add it!)

About our host and guests

Kevin Antao, Independent consultant

Kevin Antao is an experienced technology leader with a strong track record of driving digital transformation in non-profit and commercial sectors. As a Digital Trustee, CIO, and Technology Advisor, he has spearheaded strategic initiatives that optimise technology infrastructure, enhance cybersecurity, and improve operational efficiency across global organizations.

Stuart McSkimming, Podcast Host

Stuart is a thought-leader in AI for charities and not-for-profits, and recognised in the 2025 AI100 list of the top 100 people shaping the future of AI in the UK. He is the founder of the sector-specific Technology & AI consultancy, Virtue Chain . He has over twenty years’ experience in NFP/Charity leadership roles, predominantly in the technology/digital and transformation space. He is an expert in getting the most from teams and focusing organisations on strategic goals to get the most from Technology & Digital. He is passionate about organisations focusing on inclusion and finding ways to attract a diverse mix of top talent into their teams. He has worked as a CIO for two organisations – Shelter and Royal British Legion, and also a variety of roles elsewhere. Stuart is extensively networked in the not-for-profit sector both in the UK, and internationally, and is the Vice Chair of top membership organisation, Charity IT Leaders. Stuart enjoys regular public speaking, and also has been known to do stand-up comedy gigs occasionally.

Virtue Chain builds the link between enthusiastic and talented technology teams, and organisation strategic goals. By focusing on people, strategy, governance and decision-making structures, Virtue Chain can help your charity get the right leadership approach across AI, Technology, Digital, Data, and transformation. We use maturity models, and partnering approaches to help trustees, CEO’s and exec leaders see the potential for technology in their organisation, and understand where to start in turning ideas into action.

Get in contact with [email protected] if you’d like to chat. Typically the conversation starts from either a trustee, CEO or CTO level.

In case its not obvious, views expressed are the personal views of the podcast host and guests and don’t necessarily represent those of any organisations they work with or for, either now or in the past.