If there’s one thing we can count on in 2025, it’s change. AI and technology are evolving at lightning speed, and recent politically driven shifts at the major social media platforms are already reshaping how organisations and communities interact. Staying ahead of it all can feel overwhelming—but the organisations that will thrive are those that embrace adaptability and resilience.
To help you navigate what’s ahead, we’ve pinpointed key areas to focus on for 2025. Drawing on insights from some of the bright minds at manifesto, we’ve identified the trends that will shape digital experiences across the sectors we work in—along with practical ways your organisation can turn even the most unpredictable changes into opportunities.
Here’s what we’ll explore:
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Embracing AI in 2025
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Breaking silos, driving impact: Reimagining leadership’s role in digital transformation
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Adaptive leadership: Navigating uncertainty with a bias for action
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Digital marketing and the rise of martech
2025 is set to bring both challenges and opportunities. With the right strategies and a forward-thinking mindset, your organisation can not only adapt but thrive. Let’s explore what’s next and how you can prepare for the future of digital experiences.
Embracing AI in 2025
Antony Haddley, Digital Strategist
In 2025, more charities will meaningfully experiment with AI.
As AI tools become integrated into the lives of your users and practices of your suppliers, exploring this technology will no longer be optional.
With so many use cases and ethical considerations, it can feel hard to start. But improvement work should never be about adopting AI for its own sake.
2025 is the moment to invest in the groundwork of understanding user needs. From there, hypothesise how AI could help and start experimenting.
Keep it human, keep it small and 2025 will see you stride towards purposeful change.
Breaking silos, driving impact: reimagining leadership’s role in digital transformation in the charity sector
Cherie Chambers, Senior Digital Strategist
The recent announcements around mission-led government highlight the growing recognition that a new approach is required to solve complex societal challenges. We need a radical rethink of how organisations collaborate and use data and technology to break down operational silos.
We see 2025 as the moment for charity leaders to fundamentally reimagine their roles, driving an approach to digital transformation that sees technology, not as an add-on, but as a strategic enabler across everything an organisation does.
Our ambition in 2025 is to support leaders with this transition through the projects we deliver. We'll move beyond just providing a new digital experience, using these opportunities to transform how the work is done. We'll help organisations move from outputs to outcomes. By thinking about connecting touchpoints and systems, we can use these opportunities to drive collaboration.
Adaptive leadership: navigating uncertainty with a bias for action
Rebecca Hull, Managing Director
Those organisations who adapt and think about their leadership
and make and embrace a more adaptive leadership style will be those organisations who thrive.
Uncertainty is nothing new, it's definitely not going away and it certainly feels that the pace and scale of change is not letting up.
This really calls for a new kind of leadership. One that's open to constant evolution, that's grounded in agility and is confident in the vulnerability that uncertainty creates.
When I think about it in my role I know that five years ahead feels impossible to predict and five years in the past is no longer a reliable guide.
Research backs this up. Studies show that leaders who embrace ambiguity
who champion experimentation, boldly outperform those who cling to past precedents.
But decision paralysis is a major risk. When things become uncertain our nervous systems go into a type of freeze. Adaptive leaders can counter this freeze by fostering a bias for action.
So taking small intentional steps, making what I call no regret decisions
and gathering feedback to course correct along the way, has more impact than building an enormous strategy from the very beginning.
It's definitely not about having all of the answers.
I'd love to see leaders move into the space where they accept that this is the case. It's about knowing what questions to ask. And, it's about building momentum - creating cultures where teams feel safe to innovate even when the path forward isn't as clear as we'd like it to be.
Digital marketing in 2025
Phil Aiston, Digital Marketing Director
TikTok will become a more serious consideration of digital marketing mixes. Many marketers still believe it to be a platform for viral dances, but it’s fast becoming a significant stage for engaging a wide-ranging multi-generational audience. A third of the UK now have a TikTok account, and almost 5m accounts are held by the 45+ age groups. Surprisingly the 45+ audience is as engaged with the platform as younger groups. TikTok can’t easily monetise the much younger groups, so will continue to invest heavily in attracting older groups with more disposable income. Hopefully more marketers will cotton on to this!
There will be a big shake up of search marketing - on a number of fronts, SEO practitioners will face some serious turbulence next year. Google has also rolled out new features like AI Overviews. These summaries give you quick, relevant info on complicated topics, making searching a whole lot easier and more satisfying as a user, but keeping users in the SERPs and not in branded environments. Are Google going to continue to cannibalise their AdClick traffic to this degree? I think not - but what they’ll do to monetise their platform remains to be seen. Add to this Gen Z's shifting preference for using TikTok as a search engine and ChatGPT and Bing investing heavily in their own search offerings, things might change very quickly.
Especially in the charity sector, we'll continue to see AI adoption in marketing practices. Despite internal resistance, research from CAF indicates the public are generally 'net positive' in their attitudes towards charities in employing AI tools, and this is actually even more true for more generous donors. AI will almost certainly play a growing role in charitable giving in 2025, offering opportunities like better decision-making, and reduced administrative burdens. However, the public will expect caution, transparency, and clear communication about how AI is used to support a charity’s mission.
From product-led to journey-led experience design
Lou Barton, Senior Digital Strategist
With the development of omnichannel journeys powered by data and personalisation, there are more routes into the website for users than ever.
Traditionally the UX team plans and designs the website experience and the CX or marketing teams define and execute the way to get users there. But in most cases, we see these teams are not collaborating.
Whilst silos in disciplines make it nice and neat from an organisational view - to your audience, you’re just one organisation. Right now, many users may experience a disjointed version of you.
Next year, we propose doing things differently.
With advancements in platform and technology and a stronger emphasis on omnichannel design for users flowing through channels more fluidly, there’s an opportunity to stand out in the sector.
One key trend we’re seeing is the merging of User Experience (UX) and Customer Experience (CX) into unified, cross discipline journey-centric ways of working.
By embracing a more user-centred, journey-first, not product, channel or platform firm approach, organisations can enable their audiences to flow seamlessly across channels—digital, physical, and beyond. This kind of journey planning will widen and deepen loyalty and retention.
The rise of martech
Hugh James, Chief Growth Officer
I think 2025 is going to be the year of martech or marketing technology
By this I mean engagement tools,digital marketing, CRO, personalisation,
customer data platforms; bringing all of these things together so that they work in perfect harmony
Why do I think this will be a trend for next year?
We've seen the impacts of the election, of the budget. We're witnessing much slower spend in our customers and we're seeing organisations think a lot harder about how they want to make use of what they've got - optimising for efficiency, bringing teams together so that they can make the best use of supporter funds
Personally, this is a really exciting time, because it gives digital teams, marketing teams an opportunity to be that catalyst for real change in organisations, bringing together multiple silos, multiple departments around one shared common goal.
Did any of these trends strike a chord with you and the challenges you’re working to solve in your organisation?
If you’d like to chat about any of this, email hello@manifesto.co.uk with a couple of lines about what’s happening for you and we’ll be in touch soon.