Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot tools still have a long way to go to provide charities with accurate information about funding opportunities, research is suggesting.

The research has been carried out by the charity Money4You and included a focus on finding funding opportunities for Black, Asian, minority ethnic and refugee (BAMER) led charities.

Two leading AI tools, Google’s Bard and Bing’s chatbot, were asked a range of detailed questions around funding opportunities.

But when Bard was asked “where can I get funding for non-profit work on race equality in northeast England?”, out of six funding programmes recommended “only one actually exists”.

For example, Bard recommended the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF)’s ‘Race Equality Fund and ‘Community Resilience Fund’.

JRF “has funded race equality work – by the Runnymede Trust and Voice4Change England, for example, so it’s not misleading for Bard to point to them”, said Money4You.

“But the foundation confirmed to us it has not operated funds under the specific names Bard came up with,”, the researchers add.

Also recommended was the Big Lottery Fund’s “Community Fund and their Awards for All Fund”.

However, “Big Lottery Fund is the legal name of the National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF), not its parent organisation, a change that happened in 2019,” said researchers.

Elsewhere, Bard recommended Esmée Fairbairn Foundation (EFF)’s ‘Social Change Fund' and their 'Social Innovation Fund'.

“EFF did have Social Change as a funding priority from 2015 to 2019, mentioning inequality, injustice, and marginalisation, although it’s not actually a ‘fund’ or a funding stream and is four years out of date now,” said researchers.

“EFF told us it did not have a specific social innovation fund but does support social enterprises and social innovation initiatives. They also fund social justice and race equality work through their current strategy.”

Bing “performed better than Bard” when asked the same question, but its response still contained errors.

This AI chat bot did accurately recommend Lloyds Bank Foundation’s funding of charities working with people experiencing racial inequality. However, it also urged charities to “check out the Race Equality Foundation”.

“But the link to the Race Equality Foundation (REF) is a little misleading since REF is a research and infrastructure organisation, not a funder,” said Money4You, which runs its own online hub for BAMER funding opportunities.

Money4You added: “Given that the quality of AI systems’ outputs comes from the quality of their training data, the inaccuracy we found in the chatbots’ responses speaks volumes about the historic lack of funding to support BAMER-led non-profits.”

Largest funder errors

AI search chatbots were also asked about the largest grant funder in the UK and accurately identified the Wellcome Trust.

But when a top ten list of the largest funders was asked for, errors became apparent.

Bard included Robertson Trust amongst its top ten, which is actually the 33rd largest according to the Association of Charitable Foundation’s latest list. Another listed by the AI chatbots was JRF, which came 122nd on ACF’s list.

“The Robertson Trust announced it intends to provide £200 million over 10 years in its 2020-2030 strategy, so it’s possible Bard saw the figure and mistakenly read it as annual,” said researchers.

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