Copilot’s Benefits to the UK Human Rights Sector

Microsoft Copilot can save human rights charities, campaign groups and legal advice organisations a lot of time on the work that fills the week: summarising long reports, drafting briefings and consultation responses, and catching up on meetings and email threads. Because the sector holds sensitive casework and personal data, the bigger question is whether your Microsoft 365 permissions are in good enough shape to switch it on safely.

This post covers where Copilot helps human rights organisations, how it handles sensitive data, what it costs a charity to get started and what to sort out before you roll it out.

What can Microsoft Copilot do for a human rights organisation?

Copilot sits inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and OneNote. With a Microsoft Copilot licence it answers questions using the emails, files, chats and meetings each person already has access to, as well as the web, and it links back to the sources it used. For a human rights organisation that tends to mean:

• summarising long reports, inquiry findings and NGO research so staff can get to the relevant sections quickly
• drafting first versions of briefings, consultation responses, funding bids and campaign plans from your existing documents
• recapping Teams meetings with a list of actions and who owns them, which helps coalitions where several organisations sit in the same meetings
• catching up on long email threads after time away
• working through case or survey data in Excel, suggesting formulas and building charts

Copilot produces a first draft. It does not replace the legal and policy judgement your staff bring, and anything that goes out under your name, particularly on a legal point, still needs checking by someone who knows the subject.

How does Copilot help with advocacy and campaign work?

Campaign teams spend a fair bit of time pulling evidence together from reports, previous submissions and internal research. Copilot can gather what is already in your Microsoft 365 tenant on a topic, summarise it with links to the sources and turn it into a draft briefing or a set of key messages. A researcher starting a new piece of work on modern slavery, for example, could ask Copilot to summarise what the organisation has already published and discussed on supply chain reporting, rather than searching through SharePoint folders and old email to find it.

Copilot only knows what is in your tenant and what it finds on the web, so the answer is only as good as what you have stored. If last year's briefing and three draft versions of it all sit in the same folder, Copilot may well quote the wrong one.

Is Copilot safe to use with sensitive casework and personal data?

Copilot only surfaces content the signed-in user already has at least view permission to. Microsoft states that prompts, responses and data accessed through Microsoft Graph are not used to train the foundation models, and when staff sign in with their work accounts Enterprise Data Protection applies, so prompts and responses are covered by the same contractual commitments as email in Exchange and files in SharePoint.

That puts the weight on your permissions. Human rights organisations often hold case files, safeguarding records and information about people at risk, and if a SharePoint site holding case files was shared with the whole organisation years ago, Copilot will find it and summarise it for anyone who asks the right question. Before Copilot that content was technically visible but rarely found by accident.

The tools to deal with this are already in Microsoft 365. Microsoft Purview sensitivity labels classify and protect sensitive content, and the Microsoft Copilot licence includes SharePoint Advanced Management, which helps you find overshared and inactive sites, and restricted content discovery, which keeps specific sites out of Copilot responses while you review them.

How much does Copilot cost for a charity?

Microsoft offers Microsoft Copilot at discounted nonprofit pricing to eligible organisations, and it needs an underlying Microsoft 365 licence. Eligibility is checked through the Microsoft Nonprofit Hub. Microsoft also runs time-limited promotions that can sit on top of nonprofit pricing, so check the current position with your licensing partner before you set a budget.

Staff without the paid licence still get Copilot Chat, which answers from the web and from files they upload but does not search your organisation's data on its own. For staff who mostly need help with drafting, that is a reasonable place to start.

What should you do before rolling Copilot out?

• review who can see case files, safeguarding records and HR content, and close off anything shared too widely
• make sure every SharePoint site and Team has a named owner
• archive or delete out of date policies, old drafts and duplicates so Copilot is not working from stale material
• apply sensitivity labels to the content that matters most
• write a short acceptable use policy covering what Copilot can be used for and what must be checked by a person before it goes out
• pilot with a small group of staff on real tasks before licensing everyone

We cover the rollout in more detail in our practical guide to Microsoft Copilot.

Frequently asked questions

Is Microsoft Copilot GDPR compliant?

Microsoft states that Copilot meets its existing privacy, security and compliance commitments to Microsoft 365 commercial customers, including the GDPR. Your organisation is still responsible for how personal data is handled, so review your data protection impact assessment and policies before rollout.

Does Copilot use our case data to train AI models?

No. Microsoft states that prompts, responses and data accessed through Microsoft Graph are not used to train the foundation models, including those used by Copilot.

Can Copilot show staff files they should not have access to?

Copilot can only use content the person already has permission to see. The risk is that permissions are often wider than intended, through old sharing links or sites open to everyone, and Copilot makes that content much easier to find. Reviewing permissions before rollout deals with this.

Can charities get Microsoft Copilot at a discount?

Yes. Microsoft offers Copilot at discounted nonprofit pricing to eligible organisations through Microsoft for Nonprofits, and it requires a Microsoft 365 licence. Eligibility and offers vary by country, so check the Nonprofit Hub or ask your licensing partner.

What is the difference between Copilot Chat and Microsoft Copilot?

Copilot Chat comes with eligible Microsoft 365 licences and answers from the web and from files you give it. The paid Microsoft Copilot licence adds grounding in your organisation's emails, files, meetings and chats through Microsoft Graph, along with priority access to Copilot in the Office apps.

Talk to us about Copilot

If you are a charity or campaigning organisation thinking about Copilot, our AI readiness assessment checks your permissions, content and governance before you switch it on. Get in touch and we will talk it through.