Spotlight on Thinking ForWord Social
In our latest member spotlight, we’re delighted to welcome Colin Rodgers, Founder and CEO of Thinking ForWord Social. This organisation works on making digital advancements accessible to third-sector organisations and to close the affordability gap.
What does your social enterprise do, and why do you do it?
We build AI assistants for charities, community groups, churches, and social enterprises – tools that answer questions 24/7, in 16+ languages, with voice input and text-to-speech built in.
We exist because the organisations doing the most important work in our communities are usually the least resourced to keep up with digital change. I saw that first-hand at home. My partner used an early version of the Staff Knowledge Hub to pull together a report that normally took over an hour – it took ten minutes. That moment made everything real for me. If it could do that for one person, imagine what it could do for an overstretched team at a food bank, a community development trust, or a small charity trying to serve hundreds of people with a handful of volunteers.
AI is moving fast, and the gap between what a well-funded organisation can access and what a small charity can afford is growing. We want to close that gap.
Our CIC delivers the same quality of AI assistant as any commercial client – at 30-35% below market rate – because we believe the third sector deserves the same tools as everyone else.
The impact is immediate. Staff spend less time answering the same questions. Volunteers find what they need without hunting through folders. Beneficiaries get answers in their own language, any time of day or night.
What products, services and/or experiences do you currently offer?
We offer two core products, both priced specifically for the third sector:
- Website AI Assistant – a 24/7 chatbot trained on the organisation’s own content. It answers questions from website visitors, works in 16+ languages automatically, supports voice input and text-to-speech, and captures enquiries. Tiers from £39/month.
- Staff Knowledge Hub – an internal AI assistant that searches the organisation’s policies, procedures, and documents and gives cited answers. It reduces repetitive internal questions and helps new volunteers and staff get up to speed quickly. From £49/month for teams up to five.
Both products include a 15% annual discount for annual payment, UK-hosted document storage, full data processing agreements, and founder-led support from Ayr.
We also run a Gift Programme – where businesses or individuals can fund a full year of AI access for a charity that needs it.
What’s your personal motivation?
I’ve spent years watching brilliant people in under-resourced organisations lose hours every day to the same repetitive tasks – answering the same questions, searching the same documents, trying to stretch tiny teams across huge workloads.
AI can genuinely fix that. But most AI products are built for big business and priced to match.
I set up the CIC because I wanted to put that same technology in the hands of the people who actually need it most. There’s a version of AI that works for a food bank, a community development trust, a small church with a busy social programme – and it doesn’t have to cost the earth. That’s what we’re building.
What is next on the horizon for your social enterprise, and how do you plan to get there?
Our immediate focus is growing our client base across Scotland – starting in Ayrshire North, East, and South. We’re applying for a National Lottery Awards for All grant to fund 20 AI assistants across 10 organisations, which would significantly accelerate our reach and build our evidence base.
Longer term, we want to scale the Gift Programme – making it simple for businesses and individuals to sponsor AI access for charities that can’t afford it themselves. We’re also exploring how we can help third sector clients access existing funding streams to cover their own AI deployment costs.
We’re building through relationships – South Ayrshire Council, Social Enterprise Scotland, and the wider third sector network – and one good client at a time.
What’s the hardest thing you’ve had to overcome in your social enterprise journey?
Honestly? Being told there was no way forward.
I spent years working in a hospital, giving everything I had, but hitting the same wall every time I tried to progress. No degree, no route up. So I got my degree – and was told the same thing again. No opportunities. No way in.
I’m dyslexic, and when AI started emerging, I had a lightbulb moment. If this technology could help me work the way my brain actually works, what could it do for the people I used to work alongside? There was so much admin in that hospital. So many brilliant, dedicated people are drowning in paperwork and repetitive tasks. Before AI even existed, I’d managed to cut colleagues’ admin workloads by around 25% just by finding smarter ways of doing things. Now AI is here – and the opportunity is on a different scale entirely.
My partner works in a role where she has to complete a detailed report after every single client meeting – making sure everything meets company standards, every time, without fail. That was eating into her evenings and weekends, every week. Using the Staff Knowledge Hub, what used to take four hours now takes around forty minutes. She gets her evenings back. She gets her weekends back. That’s not a small thing – that’s her life.
There are people right now trying to hold charities together with not enough hours in the day and not enough people to help. If I can give them even a little of that time back, that’s worth building something for.
The hardest thing I’ve overcome is being told there’s no way forward – and deciding to build my own way instead.
What is your most satisfying achievement so far?
Getting the CIC registered and properly constituted – board in place, Technology Licence Agreement signed, asset-lock confirmed, and a live client already using the technology. We went from idea to a functioning, compliant social enterprise in a matter of months.
But the moment that stays with me is watching someone cut the time it took them to pull together a report, from over an hour down to ten minutes, using the Staff Knowledge Hub. That’s what all the governance and compliance work is actually for. That’s the whole point.
How has being a member of Social Enterprise Scotland helped you?
We’ve just joined, and the welcome has been genuinely warm from day one. The Spotlight opportunity itself is a great example of the value – it’s exactly the kind of visibility a new CIC needs to build credibility quickly. Aimee and Jayne, the membership team, have been helpful and human, which matters when you’re a sole founder figuring it all out.
We’re looking forward to deepening that connection as we grow.
Who in the social enterprise community inspires you and why?
NADARS in Irvine inspires me – not because of technology, but because of the vision behind it. Bringing so many different services together under one roof, so that someone who needs advocacy, support, and guidance doesn’t have to navigate ten different doors to get help – that’s exactly the kind of joined-up thinking I believe in.
Organisations like NADARS and Voiceability show what’s possible when you put the person at the centre and wrap the right support around them. What strikes me is that the knowledge those organisations hold – their services, their guidance, their expertise – is often locked away in documents and folders that staff have to dig through, and that clients never get to access directly.
That’s what drives us. If an organisation like that had an AI assistant trained on everything they offer, both the professionals working there and the people they serve could get the right answer instantly – in any language, at any time of day. The vision of everything under one roof, extended digitally, available to everyone. That’s worth building towards.
What top tips would you give to other social enterprises?
Don’t wait until everything’s perfect before you start. Get registered, get a client, and learn from real experience. The governance falls into place faster when there’s something actual to apply it to.
Build relationships before you need them. Every warm introduction we’ve had has come from someone who already knew us a little – South Ayrshire Council, Social Enterprise Scotland, the wider third sector network. None of that happens overnight.
And don’t underestimate the strength of being honest about what you are. Founder-led, community-rooted, values-first – that’s not a weakness in this world. It’s exactly what people want to work with.
For more information about Thinking ForWord Social, please visit their website, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Want to read more Member Spotlights? Visit our blog. If you’d like to be featured, please email membership@socialenterprise.scot.