WCIT CHARITY REVIEW
WCIT CHARITY IT AWARD 2018
04
Artificial Intelligence helps charities to handle
an ever-increasing number of enquiries
Charities face
rising call
and online chat
volumes with
insufficient
human
resources to
service all the
contacts they
receive
CALM and Missing People, joint winners of the
WCIT Charity IT Award 2018, each face the
problem of rising call and online chat volumes
with insufficient human resources to service
all the contacts they receive. They therefore
both seek to make innovative use of
chatbots, supported by Artificial Intelligence
(AI), to prioritise the calls and increase the
number of enquiries successfully handled.
Missing People’s goal is that every missing
person, along with their family, is ‘one safe
click’ from support. With the help of funding
through the WCIT Charity IT Award 2018, this
is becoming a reality.
A chatbot has been built and tested in
readiness for a pilot. The initial focus will be on
serving children at risk of being missing and
exploited. Other organisations involved include
the Children’s Commissioner for England,
NSPCC and Barclays. Missing People is already
seeing the potential to utilise the technology
to benefit other vulnerable groups.
Geoff Balmont, Missing People’s IT Director,
said: “With WCIT support, this year, we’ll
start enabling more people to access expert
The Awards ceremony
at Mercers’ Hall in
September 2018.
Through the 2018
Awards, and the AI/ML
Learning Exchange, the
WCIT Charity is playing
a leading role in
developing the use of AI
in the Charity sector.
support digitally; when they want, how
they want, and wherever they are. You are
setting up Missing People for long-term
sustainability and growth in the numbers of
people we can help. Thank you for the
amazing support!”
2019 will also be an
exciting year for CALM
and Project RIO, the
charity’s AI-enabled
machine learning
triage service. Seed
funding from the
WCIT IT Charity Award
2018 has allowed
CALM to hit the ground
running. CALM has already secured another
£175k of funding and hopes to secure a
further £300k shortly.
The project is on track. 2019 will see Project
RIO put through its paces during rigorous
testing in preparation for the phased live
launch, which is planned for early 2020.
Simon Gunning, CEO of CALM, comments
“We’re delighted to be working with the
WCIT to develop Project RIO, a product with
AI at its core that will radically improve
helpline services in the UK and, without
question, save many lives. We couldn’t have
got to this point without the WCIT members.”