How Non-Profits Can Use AI to Unlock Potential and Overcome Challenges

AI is already integrated into many digital tools used across all sectors, including within the non-profit space. Opening the webinar, Herschander pointed out how AI use in non-profit organizations already largely exists, however, it is still generally in the stages of experimentation. Capabilities are mainly being used to streamline mundane tasks, such as volunteer onboarding, resume screening, and grant proposal editing, only scratching the surface of its vast potential.

Herschander rationalized that factors such as lack of familiarity, funding constraints, inadequate training, and absence of organizational policies are holding organizations back from fully leveraging AI technology capability. On top of that, she noted the lack of organizational guidance on the use of such technologies, with nearly 80% of non-profits lacking an organizational wide policy for AI use.

Barnett moved on to provide practical examples for how AI is being implemented across organizations, with examples ranging from disaster response customer service workflows to supporting minority-owned businesses. He also used his own organization as a model, explaining how Giving Compass uses AI to support over 40,000 pieces of content about donor education, which attracts roughly 100,000 site users each month.

Contributing panelist Ginger Ausloos, Vice President of Technology at the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, also used her own organization as a leading example to demonstrate the practical implementation of AI, discussing the internal automation of HR and accounting tasks. Drawing from personal experience, Ausloos emphasized the importance of transforming roles and responsibilities, securing leadership buy-in, and providing comprehensive training and support for staff.

Both Ausloos and Cain stressed the importance of adopting and establishing organizational AI policies. Providing a general framework for developing organization-specific policies, Cain first suggested that employees should identify areas that could use support from AI. By understanding employee needs, a list of digital tools to be explored and implemented can be generated and categorized, based on the nature of the work and proximity of content output to the end user. Generalizable principles, such as refraining from uploading private or confidential information, should be observed across organizations.

Addressing sentiments of concern among certain actors in the non-profit sector, panelist lead Herschander posed questions to explore AI's potential impact on the workforce. While acknowledging valid ethical concerns related to unrestricted AI use, Ausloos was optimistic about AI's role as an assistant rather than a replacement, noting that employees using AI feel more fulfilled at the end of the day, avoiding mundane tasks and being able to fully leverage their deep work capabilities.

Barnett, whose organization, Giving Compass, gave $100 to each employee to explore practical applications of different AI tools, noted that “AI is an opportunity for the non-profit sector to rethink our relationship to innovation”. He stressed that even if certain AI tools are not ultimately implemented, having staff experiment with such tools will spark conversations that ultimately drive beneficial culture change in the workplace.

Cain echoed a similar sentiment, acknowledging that AI won’t necessarily replace non-profit sector jobs, but rather transform the existing roles and responsibilities. He sees future roles as being more data-fluent and literate in digital tools, such as those driven by AI capabilities. Barnett further noted that by transforming workforces to leverage these tools, the non-profit sector can have a greater overall influence in the further development and advancement of these technologies, thereby benefitting from future applications.