AI Implementation for Nonprofits
AI is moving at a rapid pace, with no signs of slowing down. Its impacts are real, felt, and fraught. Statistics show that your staff is already using AI. Now is the time to shed light on the use within your organization, understand AI's varied impacts, and design policies (and/or implementations) that work.
Understand your organization's alignment with AI, as it relates to your mission, privacy, ethics, compliance, and data, among other points of the assessment. Of course, the gap-analysis method here is the same one I've used across a decade of organizational work: document review, structured interviews, findings you validate before finalization.
Staff and board education designed to give you the tools to see the breadth of impact of AI. Sample offerings: “What is AI?,” “Is AI right for our organization?,” “How can AI work for me?,” and “Can AI be racist?”
What you get: sessions scoped to your team's roles and comfort levels, in formats that fit the use cases and needs of nonprofits.
I've designed and delivered participant-driven learning for nonprofit audiences from 2 to 60. From primary sources to relevant facts, I strive to build trainings around the audience, not the agenda.
A recorded training excerpt is being finalized and will appear here.
Acceptable-use, data privacy, and disclosure policies your whole organization can understand and implement.
What you get: a stakeholder process, including staff input and leadership review, that produces policy documents that works for wherever your organization is on the question of AI.
Policy that people helped write is policy people follow (and understand). With more than 8 years in facilitating large, complex conversation and negotiation, I guide organizations through consensus-driven processes to develop your policy.
Support at a scale small orgs can afford.
Take an hour to discuss the particulars of AI, as it applies to your organization. Receive direct advising, resources, and better understanding of the AI Landscape for your needs. (Limit 3)
Alternatively, join a Learning Community to gain the insight of Trainings, within your budget. Beginning at regular intervals throughout the year, leverage both the understanding and the economies of your peers.
What you get: 1:1 time to navigate AI Implementation for your org, or membership in a facilitated cohort of peer organizations working through the same questions.
I've built peer learning communities among nonprofit practitioners and the community; I am ready to facilitate your learning.
There's a shadow over your organization's engagement with AI. In the absence of comprehensive guidance, your staff use AI as a panacea for heavy workloads, without understandings its impacts. Shining a light on AI means understanding the organization's position, articulating its reasoning, and identifying and incorporating existing "AI shadow use". Identifying gaps, aligning organizations, community, and staff, and giving necessary tools to empower have been central to my consulting practice for all of its 5+ years.
After spending early parts of my professional career in IT for a major corporation, as well as a startup SaaS, I brought a stack of tech tools to deploy in my nonprofit work. In 2023, in the midst of my consulting practice, I found myself increasingly intrigued by the prospects of AI. The public conversation was in full swing, and, despite reservations based upon a vague understanding of drawbacks, I jumped in.
Starting with prompt engineering, I quickly moved into underlying mechanics, concepts, and research and coursework (Anthropic, Blackbaud, DAIR, et al.). I built systems, making use of AI to automate workflows, analyze data, and present results. I failed, and I learned. Eventually, I recognized the hype, and the reality, of its downsides. Cognitive, social, economic, and environmental impacts came in quick succession. In general, historically marginalized populations continue to bear the brunt of exclusion (from training data, access, and potential benefit), negative environmental impact (noise, water, electricity, etc.), and economic fallout.
I invite you to join the conversation. I can guide your organization's understanding of AI, whether it's right for you, and, if it is, how to make best use of it, all on a budget that can work for you. We will maintain community in the conversation, holding space for its desire and impact. And, we will illuminate what AI use looks like for your organization, based upon data, research, and your organization's values.