AI Impact Hour for Nonprofits September 2026

Thank you for putting in the chat um something about your nonprofit like your website because I'm going to check it out in a little bit. My name is Artha Simons. I'm the webinar producer here. As you're coming in um if you're just joining us, go ahead and put either where you're from or your website so I'll know a little bit about um your nonprofit. And I would like to also thank I'm just call my co-host because she is here always backing me up. Luca Phillips, thank you so much for always being in the background. Um, that was a song that I made with AI based on uh a I guess state of the tech soup speech that our CEO had given. Hey, Lashica. And um when she gave that Oh, you know what? You guys got the notetakers. I'm gonna hold on one second. I know you got the notetakers. are going to be coming in and they're going to take up a lot of space in the chat and um what I've done was I'm trying to shut my phone off. What I've done was I decided to give you you're going to get the you're going to get the this the chats at the end. Okay. So, um you you'll get the chat, you'll get the recording, you'll get the what do you call it? The transcript. That's what it is. The transcripts. So, that's what I'm trying to um and somehow you're you're spotlighted, Lashika. I don't know why, but you're spotlighted, but that's okay. You look pretty. I'll fix that. Somehow I I spotlighted you. You might have spotlighted yourself because you're you're you're the you're the um host, but that's okay. That's okay. Hi, everybody. Nice to see everybody. But thank you for coming in. I'm going to drop a special link in the chat and I'm going to tell you about that in a moment. But if you would, I want you to click on that link and go ahead and open it up because it's going to be something that's going to be beneficial for you. And we like free stuff, right? We love free stuff in the nonprofit world. But today, we're talking about AI impact for nonprofits. I know you probably were expecting webinar style, but you're on Zoom. And so, thank you for everybody who's here on camera with me. I really appreciate it. Um, I'm going to unpin myself so that I can get a better view of everybody on the screen. Lashika, you are pinned again. Here I go. I'm gonna um How do How can you unpin yourself? >> Uh, I'll I'll try. I'm working on that right now. >> Okay. Okay. >> I don't want to be I don't have to be pinned. >> Yeah, that is so strange. You know, that's another thing. Zoom and all these other platforms, they're just doing what they want to do when they want to do it. So that's okay. Here I think I have it. Gallery now I can see everybody and everybody can see me. I feel better. Claudia. Hey Claudia. It's good to see you. I love when I see familiar face. Look, Claudia had been with Texas more than five years. I know. So yeah. So that when I see faces that I recognize, I I just it just means a lot to me. I appreciate you guys being here. I want to show you a video before we get into the topic of the AI impact for nonprofits and it's a video that we spotlighted one of the nonprofits who use Tech Soup and I thought his video was very well done and you know what give me a second. I thought his video was very well done and he talked about, you know, using the old system that they use and trying to convert to using AI and making it make sense for his nonprofit. Um, it is a ministry, so it's a religious organization. I know a lot of religious organizations, some are not ready to use AI. And then he talked about what he used AI for. Um, some of the accounting, putting in the financials and things like that. I know some of us are still afraid to put certain things in AI and rightfully so because if you've been watching news, you just might want to just not use AI, right? Yeah, I see some head nodding, but it's here to stay. It's it's in our phones. It's it's it's recording us now. You just requested AI permission to record us and give you the transcript. So, it is everywhere. So, I want to just show his video. It's about three minutes long and then just kind of highlight some of the things you talk about and I want you to jump in the hot seat today. So get ready. And hot seat doesn't mean you're going to be on the spot. It just means that I would love for you to participate and let me know how your nonprofit is using AI. So give me one second to bring that up. It is a YouTube video >> and I have to just go back to YouTube because I accidentally closed YouTube out and have that ready for you. So, while I'm doing that, um, put in the chat. I see a couple more people come come in. Um, AI is just it's a fad. You think so? You think AI is a fad? Oh my. Oh my. Who else thinks AI is a fad? Put a one in the chat if you think AI is a fad. Put a two in the chat if you do not think AI is a fad. David, I am sorry. We have a lot of people who do not believe that AI is a fad. Guess what? We thought the cell phone, everybody having a cell phone was a fad because you were really cool. You was riding around with that big cell phone in your car, but now everybody has one. You can't leave home without it. We thought it was a fad. I get it. I I get it. I get what you think and how you feel. But let's listen to this organization. I'm gonna um share my screen. So, just a moment and so you can hear him give his uh opinion on how AI has changed this nonprofit. Give me a thumbs up if you can hear it. My name is Glenn Keith. I'm the executive director of Love, Inc., Love in the Name of Christ of the Cedar Valley. We are a faith-based nonprofit that works with 45 local churches uh to transform lives and communities in the name of Christ. So I came on board uh about three years ago. We were using technology but we were using more of that 2000s technology. And so over the course of the past three years we moved to a more tech friendly cloud-based uh case management system. We moved to a uh customer relations management tool to help manage our donors and our volunteers. The next natural step was this AI. So I started playing flaying around with co-pilot and then when I saw this grant through tech soup I was like oh this might be a great opportunity to start using this more in depth started expanding it to uh grant applications. So the ability to like actually like upload previous completed grant applications or import data that we already have existing, you know, from impact reports and stuff of that nature and then just uploading the questions and then having it, you know, at least start drafting some responses. That basically saves me hours. Then that expanded to some other things like and so we wanted to provide a simplified a clear concise picture of where we stood financially as an organization where I would review the financials and pull out bullet points and pull out information and that would take me anywhere from four to six hours of a workday. I can now pull my financials from QuickBooks and put it into co-pilot and write a couple of prompts and then from that it gives me the information and then I review it and double check it. >> All right. See you less than hours before. >> I had a few fears uh initially using AI. One of them is will the output be accurate particularly with the complexity of the data I was reviewing. Can I trust the data? The way we work through that, working with Matt at Tech Impact, was to continue to refine the prompt and to see if I'm getting the same output each time. And then if there was an issue with the accuracy of the data, continue to refine that prompt. And then once we got a really solid prompt, I save that. And now it's the same methodology when I want to pull that data. Maybe in a month we might be saving two to three days of hours. So we're talking probably 16 to 24 hours in a month. My role as executive director is to be out there meeting with donors, meeting with pastors, meeting with organizations and not sitting at my desk. I'd say don't be afraid. Educate yourself how to write prompts and just jump in and try it out. It could save you a lot of time. It can help you streamline processes within your organization. And as a nonprofit, I mean, we are all short-handed uh in personnel and in time. If we can use these resources at hand to to to be a better organization, let's do it. >> Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have this AI impact hour. So I know that a lot of people here are using AI. I want one person to jump in the hot seat. He mentioned the number of hours they have saved. Jump in the hot seat and let me know how much time has AI saved your organization. Um thank you. Yeah, lots of thank you in the chat right now. You can use the raise your hand option or just wave your hand because I know some people, you know, can't find that button sometimes. Let me know in the chat and then I'm going to pull up another screen while you're doing that. Don't be shy. All right. Am I missing somebody? Lashica, sometimes I can't see. >> No, I don't see no one has their hand up. Um >> Okay. Well, we'll come back to you. Um read some of the comments in the chat while I'm pulling up my screen if you will. >> Sure. Absolutely. So, um just the first comment I see is from Ashley. She says it probably takes 20% of time um it will take for some things. So, she's saving about 20%. Another person um says that that's such this is from Mike. That's such a key point um referring to the video using AI to handle certain admin tasks that allow us to get more facetime with clients. Absolutely. We're actually um doing that at at Tech Soup. We actually just had a call not too long ago and understanding where some uh programs and departments are leveraging AI um specifically for what you just said Mike for uh you know a lot of admin and repetitive task. Um Sharon mentions that um her organization has saved countless hours using AI for grant prospecting and also for grant writing. Uh that's amazing. I would love to hear Sharon how you all are doing that or what tools you're using. I mean there are so many AI tools that are out right now to choose from. It's like how are you deciding what which to use and in some aspects I highly recommend using multiple you know at at one time if you can. Um I see that someone is off mute. Is it that you want to add to the conversation? Just want to make sure. Kabad House International. >> Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. >> Oh, that's okay. That's all right. Okay. Thank you so much for that, Lashika. Okay. So, I do want to just piggyback on some of the things that he was saying in his video. But first, before I do that, this little poll, when you hear AI, what is your first reaction? Because I know you think everybody is in in here is like, I'm ready to jump in AI. There's still some people who are still afraid or haven't started. just not I haven't dipped my toes in the water yet. Um, a lot of people are already experimenting. I love to see that. We're at 39%. So, just a few more seconds and we'll see what the poll results are. But, I wanted to go through some of the things that he highlighted in his video and just see if this resonates for everybody else. So, I'm going to go ahead and end the poll. We're at about 60% of you. A lot of people say they're already experimenting. So, here are the results. And a few people, 24% are say they they're curious. So, that means they really haven't done it. The 3% that say they're overwhelmed. I get it. I get it. Some people still aren't sure. Cautious is a good thing. And that's for everybody. So, some of the things that he highlighted was that they were using it for financials. And I I'm hearing different things that some people say, "Oh, don't put your financials in there." But who would like to jump in the hot seat and let us know if you're using AI for your financials? Like if you would take some data from your QuickBooks or from your um annual report and import it into AI so it can either make an annual report for you or use it for another grant writing tool, use it for your grants. Is that anybody in here? You can use the raise your hand option or just wave at me because we would love to hear. This is AI impact hour and so what we share it kind of helps other people who may be afraid of using AI. I love Yes, I I I hear you. I see that in the comment. Um Kim, I've been seeing that when you said that um I'm concerned that Anthropic predicts AI will bring the end to humanity this next decade. I um there was a young man I saw I saw that a young man said that he's probably younger than us. He's probably young enough to be our son, but doesn't mean that he's wrong. But I read this quote and I'm gonna read this and I'm pulling from my phone because I just saw it. Um, it's a man who was the father of radio. You know, people who invented TV and radio. He says, this is not the one, but I do like the way he says that I'm a I'm fascinated by the infinite possibilities of science. AI science, artificial intelligence is intelligence, but it's artificial. The world of science is a universe of discovery awaiting to be explored. But this is the one that I really want you guys to to um to hear because it kind of resonated with me because I'm hearing a lot of fear. Um television is a gift of God. So replace that with anything else. AI, it says is a gift of God. I would have say it's a gift from God, but it's a gift of God. And it says, "And God will hold those who utilize his divine instrument accountable to him." I'm not trying to get religious with you. I'm just reading this. This is the man who created, he was the inventor of the mechanism that created television so that we can see each other on a screen in our home, which is artificial intelligence on this Zoom. We're on artificial intelligence right now. So when Y2K came, oh, it was going to be the end of the world. I don't see that AI is going to kill us. I I I believe and and maybe I shouldn't even express my belief, but I'm just saying that piggyback on what the young man is saying, it's going to cause some people harm if they use it the wrong way. And it may cause, you know, some a lot of people harm if it's used the wrong way. Because this guy says, "God will hold those who utilize his divine instrument accountable to him." I thought that was pretty deep. I don't know how that resonates with y'all, but I I I said I replace that with AI and I replace that with anything else. I'm seeing um some comments in here. Okay. So, yeah, I I put the financials in, but only use those that are already public and your 990 is public and your annual port is annual. Very good. So, I like the way um who was that? I'm sorry. The the chats are coming in pretty fast and now moving. Ally said that she uses for her financial. That's that's very good. So, thanks for sharing that, Ally. And he also mentioned something about using it for justification. Okay. And what I mean that by that he was justifying using AI because again, everybody in your organization may not want to you to use AI. So AI justification for using it or for not using it. For those people who say they're curious or scared, can you share your justification for not using it? And those who are using it, share your justification for using it. Somebody already put in there that they thought that AI or or they thought that, you know, it was going to kill us and that somebody said that. How about that? Um people are building AI but not fully understanding the science. Absolutely. I don't think anybody on here today on this AI impact hour really understand the science, but neither do we understand the science of how Zoom is allowing us from all four parts of the earth to be on here and see each other. You can see me physically wave. I'm in Florida and you're probably in California and I'm waving at you on this screen. So, that is science and it is amazing. And I think strategies for privacy and safety. You know what? You guys, come on. You You're making me do all the work. This is This is for us to work together. So, your comments in here, come on. Come on and just um wave your hand, unmute yourself. And she's laughing and and let us hear from you. Now, I like reading. I'm an avid reader, but you know, it would make sense if um if you read that Lashica, help me out. Read some of these for me. These they're coming in fast now. >> Sure. Sure. Uh so going back to the grants uh someone puts out that they feel like that the process of writing grants and going through financials helps them understand them better and practice how to explain them to donors also in those process to AI feels like it will make a meal worth fundraiser. Uh, I'd actually say that I think that it it can it actually has the potential to do the opposite. Uh because I think that once you begin to notice certain patterns uh in AI, specifically I'm talking about generative AI, then you can begin to pick up on those patterns and start practicing some of those patterns on your own, you know, without AI. So, I think it actually has the potential to teach us. I've actually used AI to teach me various skills and I can go in now and say okay so every day I need um you to test you know this skill that I'm working on and so that that has also been helpful. >> Yeah >> I see other chats come in did uh and I don't see anyone with their hand up. Does anybody want to come uh off mute and share your nonprofit story leveraging or curious about AI? Oh, I see Claudia. I see your hand up. Claudia, go for it. >> Okay, great. It's great to see you, Artha. And hello, Lashica. It's good to see you all. Um, I have a nonprofit um that I just recently formed, but also I'm working with five nonprofits. Um, I am a nonprofit consultant and the work that I'm doing with the five nonprofits, I'm providing technical assistance for them and these are all nonprofits that have been in existence for about 15 years or so. But what I find to be interesting is though they've been out in the in the field doing the work, doing the labor every single day, their foundation, their background, their um documentation, none of that was in place. So in order for me to be able to assist five nonprofits at the same time and provide technical assistance, I have to use AI. Um, and the AI that I use is a combination of chat GTP because chat GTP is like the technical guru, if you will, uh, of AI, but then I bounce chat GTP off of Claude. Claude is the more reasonable thinking um um type of AI that provides a balance um between the highly technical output that I get from chatgp and without having the capacity to use uh AI, I would not be able to service those five nonprofits to the level and depth that I am servicing them. And you know, like everyone else, we're all curious about what's going on with AI, but somebody once said, and you all are familiar with this term, is follow the money. And in my community, uh, and I live in around the Oakland, California area, we have, um, Jeff Bezos as well as Tesla. They just moved to series B. Series B, they've raised $12 billion. Um, and in investing in AI, they have a project called Prometheus and they're putting that particular product in the city of Oakland. So, if you're following the money, I'm exceptionally curious what why are they investing $12 billion into something that is going to do something? Um, and I know anything that is new is always going to provide a level of concern, a le level of skepticism, a level of fear, but I would not close my mind to new technology. I'm 70 years old, so anything that comes around, I, you know, I'm jumping on the wagon because there's something that people know that I don't know. So, I'm just going to follow the money, if you will, with caution. So, thank you. >> I love it. I love it. That was good, Judy. Judy, I see your hand raised. You can unmute yourself. So, good. Thank you for sharing that. Hey, Judy. >> Uh, I was just going to say, um, this is Judy with Freedom City out of Oklahoma. And I agree with a comment um that said that they do all of the drafting of like a campaign or grant proposal or some type of document that they're going to um put together in um and then input that into either chat or quad or whatever. Um and the output is like talking to a co-orker kind of running things by somebody. You know the what am I missing? what do I need to think about that those types of things that's how I approach my chat GPT um I write everything up um and then I put it in chat GPT or claude and say you know give me feedback here's what I'm thinking um how would that look what am I you know missing what should I expand on and then it'll ask questions as to you know well now do you want me to do this or do you want me to do that and so for me it's it's really good because we're a very small nonprofit I'm the executive director. We have a development officer and we're completely remote. Um and so um you know we're just trying to you know make it yeartoear and continue providing services that we do to to families and children. So having access to chat or claude or co-pilot is helpful in that manner. We have not placed any financials in um any of those. Um but we did uh kind of discuss some um overpayments of things and um some things related to just uh benefit to um our staff, our part-time staff. So um kind of been there with paneling stuff like that. >> That's wonderful and thanks for sharing that. And I know a lot of you are like have a small nonprofit. I saw somebody put in there that they were just all everybody was over 60 in their nonprofit. And there's lots of comments coming in, so I won't be able to keep up with them all, but Lashica, if you see any that you think I should call out or you want to call out, feel free to do that. Um I um Hadina, I hope I'm pronouncing your name right, said, "I think strategies for privacy and safety are very important." Absolutely. And I hope um all of your websites if you have your websites now um your websites come whether using GoDaddy Wix or whatever they're putting privacy uh policies on your website automatically but that's to benefit them not you. So your organization should definitely um create a AI use policy and a privacy policy. Now the difference between the AI use policy, the AI use is internal. It's like your bylaws. You can change your bylaws every day. So you can change your internal rules every day. That's who can use AI within your organization. What tools can they use? Can they only use um chat GBT or because you have a license to use or co-pilot because you have a license to use it. And for what what can they use it for? Everybody needs to know this needs to be in writing. What data can they put? What data can they not put in there if you're if you have domestic violence victims? Of course not. Um, how often what are you going to review and who's going to review it? Like once they put it in AI, is there somebody to I saw a person that said they were the IT person at their organization. There's somebody who's going to review it. Like we have legal here and we have to run everything through legal, but you may not have a legal department, but if you're working with a volunteer, you need to be that person who will do that in internal um policy check. And then the difference as I said AI use is internal but privacy policies is on every website but it's about them. It's telling you that everybody that visit your website that they're collecting their data. But what data are you collecting? And you so you need to know or let your um constituents know or donors know when you collect their data, how you're using it, why you're using it, um who receive it, whether it's just you or nobody or third party, how it's protected, all those things. Um and then what choices they have if they want to opt out, all that stuff is on there. So many comments I've missed already. 27 comments. Feel free to use the raise your hand option. I'm going to scroll down and see uh what what jumps out. But again, this is this is the meeting to support you. So, I want you to be able to speak and talk and share. So, feel free to do that using raise your hand option. Did I miss anything, Lashica, that you think? >> I mean, yes, there are several comments in here that we have not gotten to, but I also do see that uh Stephen King has raised his hand. >> Awesome, Stephen. Hi. Yeah, I one of my favorite things to do is not not use like chatbt or the other LLM to um run my data through but to build something that I using that that I run my data through. So for example uh we use Google Workspace and um you can use Google Appcript which is it's coding and you can set up automations and do a lot of different things within that and not have any of your data actually ever touch AI. >> Wow. >> So you're building that out relatively simply. So, we we did it for our um our CRM, pulling all of our different training materials and stuff and putting it into a Google calendar that could be shared and setting it up so that it was automated and it would auto update with new information and um pull that nightly and AI doesn't touch that data at all. It just helped me to build the the product that we use. >> Wow. Would you mind coming back and just doing a demo and sharing how you you you do that because I know there are a lot of people who just won't use AI uh right away. Love if you would email me. I'll put my email in the chat. >> Yeah, I can do that. >> Awesome. Awesome. Yay. Okay, cool. Uh who? Leonard. Hi. Or how do you say it? Do you say Leonard or do you say Leonard? You can unmute yourself if you can. >> I have one question or can you can identify the catalytics of the donor you need and help you find suitable donors. >> Okay, let me turn on closed caption. One second. So, let me see if it could gather what you were saying for me. One close captions >> when I need them. >> Okay. I I have one question. >> Yes. Go ahead. >> Yeah. Yeah. Can I identify the characteristics of the donors you need and help you find suitable donors for nonprofit organizations? >> I have the answer. >> Okay, go ahead. >> Hi everyone. Good afternoon. Um I'm tuning in from San Juan, Puerto Rico and we've been doing a lot of work around AI in our nonprofit um to respond this uh person's uh questions. Yes and no. So we have been asking AI to help us identify some possible uh opportunities for uh matching uh you know just finding something that matches our strategies and fundwise. And what I found is a lot of times AI will tell you uh about a wonderful opportunities but when you actually go into the opportunities there might not be actually suitable. They might not be aligned. They might not be opened. So at this time unfortunately it will not uh substitute our gr daily grind of looking for opportunities but it does help identify the open opportunities that are out there and align it with some of the active information that you are doing in your the active work that you're doing. but only if you feed that information into the data and a lot of that information is already public so you shouldn't be afraid that it's out there. >> That's awesome. >> I hope that answered. >> Yeah, >> so so David, I saw you up. Did you have a question? Uh, I lost you, David, but I did see in the chat you said I was over 4,000 miles away from you. Okay. So, Lashica, what I'm going to do right now, I'm going to have you look for another question that you want to answer, but I wanted to mention the state of the nonprofit community conference that's coming up September 26 that I am hosting and um, TechUp has sponsored, but there was a sponsor that came on board last night and said that he wanted to pay for a certain amount of seats. So, I'm going to put a link in here so you can register for free and if you want to learn more about the state of the Mount community, that website is there as well. So, um once the seats are gone, they're gone. So, I highly recommend you click on that link and go ahead and um register. That's that's the director Zoom link. So, David, did you have a question? You you had your hand raised and then you put down you shy, you get shy on me. Go ahead. >> So, I pressed the wrong button and disconnected myself from from the meeting. Uh yeah actually it was just a follow on from u one of the chaps that spoke earlier was it Steven I think it was it was basically about using AI to produce tools that analyze your data rather than using AI to analyze your data if that makes sense. So there's a um I forget what the name of it to be honest with you, but there's a programming language or a scripting language in Excel and I think it's in PowerBI as well. Um and you can use AI to create that script that then makes Excel do things. So, as an example, um there's a charity in um in here in the UK and they use Google calendars for room bookings and they use basically a Google calendar for every single room that they have. There's like about 28 different rooms, 28 different Google calendars. And this poor guy, he has to manually, well, before we before we did this, he had to manually go through every one of those Google calendars and add up all of the hours that was booked for the different organizations. And it was just literally it's full-time. That's all he did, you know, 9 to5 every single day. Um, so I used AI to create the script in Excel that then connected to all of those Google calendars, downloaded all the information, separated them all out into different organizations, added up all the the hours. Each organization has a different rate for the booking. So it it calculates all that and basically spits out an invoice. So within I don't know maybe 13 seconds that kind of time frame he was basically able to do what he was literally doing 9 to5 every day for all week and you know he can now do more more enjoyable things like not having to go through Google calendars and adding up all of the stuff like that that he was doing before. He now just presses a button in Excel and Excel does it. But the point being that there's no information going to the AI there. You're using the AI to drive tools that analyze the data, which is the point that Stephen made earlier. >> Nice. Now, David, >> uh, am I still I'm not muted. I'm in the UK right now. So, I am currently I know you were waving earlier. I'm currently receiving your wave. 160 miles away from you. Um, >> we're gonna we're gonna we're going to launch um TechU Plus in the UK. I think sometime in a couple of weeks. So, I'm gonna put my email in the chat. I would love to hear from you. Maybe have you come on and and banter with me about um AI. >> I will banter with the best of them. >> Okay. All right. Good. Thank you. Hi, D. I think I saw you on another AI impact. How are you? >> I've been I've been tracking all of this. I'm actually with Claudia. I'm I'm actually a year older than Claudia. I'm 71. So, I'm really trying to do everything I can to keep up on AI. I also am a consultant, Claudia. I can see you on my screen and work with a number of different nonprofits. And uh I want to respond to the question about doing uh grant research. And what I've done is I've for each client I've developed a a funer profile uh with all of the information that I need so that as it goes through and looks for grant opportunities I have it looking for some things that are specific to each of those organizations either the you know maybe the programs that they're doing or their history. And uh you know again in less than a minute once I use my template I can get back this this information that is very useful that then I can go back to the client and we can talk about you know what is going to work best for them. The other thing that I've done that AI has been marvelous for is thanks to grant professionals association. I get a lot of queries across across the transom and I don't know if other people have the same experience. Many of them are very young startup nonprofits that don't really they are not grant ready yet. >> They don't have the infrastructure. So, I put together a little grant readiness packet and I usually spend an hour on the phone with them that I don't charge them for and say, you know, go through these things and because I'm not really going to be able to get funding for you if if you don't have a budget or a strategic plan or uh income more than $25 out of your pocket anyway. And so I can do that for them and and help them at virtually no cost to my myself, but it gives me that opportunity to at least feel like I'm you know we many of us are in this because we have an altruistic heart. And uh so it allows me to help them without doing what I had a tendency to do in the past which was spend way too much time on something that wasn't paying my bills. So that that has been the but the grant the profile that's custom made for each client has been a huge timesaver for me if that helps anyone else. >> I love it. I love it. And David put in there that he's 78. Thank you for sharing that. I hope you do come to the state of the nonprofit mini conference on Saturday. If if this is not too impersonal, guys, because 70 and 78 and 71 in here using AI when when some people say they're afraid, put your age in the chat for me. Don't I don't I It's a lot of you off camera. Put your age in the chat. I'm just curious. Jennifer, I see your hand. Go ahead and unmute yourself while they're putting their age. Look at this. 66 54. I love it. I love it. I put >> Hi again. Um this time I have uh well my age is 47. I have a question um if anybody how it does anybody else deal with what I've have encountered when I'm doing um using AI to not to grant right but to maybe help me identify maybe like um alignment with some funders for example and what I've noticed is there's a lot of fund funders out there that either they state clearly that if you're using AI, they will not fund you right off the bat. They say if you use AI at all for grant writing uh this application, we will not consider you. And then we have the other uh end of the spectrum where they will probably be using AI to evaluate not human beings and sometimes they notice you and sometimes they don't. So I don't wanted to see other people's thoughts and and and experiences with this topic if if it's possible. >> Yeah. While somebody is raising their hand to speak, I do want to say um Grantstation and I'm sure all the other grant tools, but Grant Station is a partner with TechUp. So, and and and I love Grant Station as well. They have a tool within their platform. So, I don't know if you're using these grant platforms where you find the fun, but where they will preview the grant that you've written and then give you your strength, your weaknesses, um what's using the AI and all of that. It's it's all done for you. All you have to do is upload the grant that you've written. So, I don't know if you've used one of those tools when you're writing grants. >> I haven't, but I will definitely be looking into it. Thank you. >> Yeah, you're welcome. Check it out. Grant Station. We're actually having a sale with Grant Station um September 15th and 16th here on TechUp, but um of course you can visit their website. I think it'll be 119 here on TechUp. And uh is there anything I missed in the chat? I will not uh David says I will not allow AI to submit a grant. Um, only assistant writing. Yes. Look at all these young people in here. 65 8 He was 87. I love it. I love it. 79 72 64 35. Hey, Miss Pinetta Denita. How are you? Um, >> doing quite well. How you doing? >> I'm great. I'm great. I love to hear and see all my friends coming on here from way back in the day with TechU. Uh, Lashika, are you still here? Thank you. Yes, she's here. I love it. I love it. I love it. Thank you. That's the link for Grant Station and there are some things you can use for free without being a member, but if you are a member, you get really um more access to it. Um so I I think you should definitely take advantage of that. So I'm going to put the link in here. Who who who already registered for the state of the nonprofit meeting on that free link? Put a one in the chat. Let me see who has done it. Oh yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing you guys. And you're going to get so many other free things that you're going to be like, "What?" And those you got for free. When I say free, I'm talking about we're giving away. Let me stop. I'm going to This is AI impact hour. Hi guys. Let's see who what did I miss in here. I know there was some other comments in here that we missed. Um who else is >> there? So there was a comment. I'm trying to find it, but someone mentioned how they leveraged uh AI and I can't remember if they named the tool, but they did it to create um a report uh about their YouTube videos. I'm trying to find >> I'm reading it. I'm reading it now. I love it. I'm I'm gonna find it. Mike says, "One thing I built for my nonprofit at the same time I was there was a dashboard to pull our YouTube channel data at 2 am each day. Then instead of having to prepare different reports for the VPs at random times when they asked, they had a login where they could check the data at any time they wanted to and sort through info that was important to them. Great timesaver for me. Key thing, I'm not a programmer. AI built it for me and told me what it needed from me. And I love that. Thanks for sharing that, Mike. That was so good. the ones that I saw that I really want to grab. So many good um tips that you guys have used and then you did talk about your fear. I noticed somebody had wanted another some more information about AI policy. If you Google nonprofit AI policy, you will find it or you can ask AI to create one for you. But if he creates one for you, make sure it is really for you. Make sure it's what you want to say because it's gonna grab from every other nonprofit and put in there. But make sure it's yours. David, hey. And I I just wanted to follow on from again a previous a previous person there talking about um grant award bodies refusing to accept grant applications that have been written from AI. I've actually started to see that in the UK. Not everybody. Um we've actually had some kind of meet the funer type uh uh meetings with people and some of them basically say ah you your application is your application if you want to you know an AI to write that you know you just crack on kind of thing but I've actually heard other people there that have also said that yeah we won't accept grant applications that have been written from AI and they've actually said that you know and these are not small award bodies either these are large you know in the UK Okay, at least um another thing that's kind of like mixed in with that is the the concepts of AI watermarking. You know, you probably already know that all of the AI u chat bots now watermark their their text. You know, Gemini is probably the most um well publicized, but you can take any text, put it through into the Gemini thing, and it will tell you whether it was AI generated. But it's going to be the same for Anthropics Claude and the same for chat GPT as well. So it is a trivial matter to for an award body to go did AI write this 99% confidence reject possibly. I don't know. I'm not you know I'm not a a grand award body but I think it's at least something to consider. >> And Sharon says after this conversation I'm going to see if AI can tell me if an organization frowns on the use of AI. And that's a good thing to to to see. You can ask, "Hey, I'm going to apply for this grant from Walmart." Do they frown on the use of AI? And I think, you know what, six months from now, all these organizations that frown on AI, they're using AI. It's built in everything that we do now. So, um, Mike said it'd be interesting to know if the funders who reject application, yeah, written use. Yeah, they use it. You know, they do. Um, I used to be a grant reviewer for the state um of um uh HUD, United Way and the state of Florida mayor's office. I was trying to remember Lord because it was so long ago and that was when everything was written. But now, of course, everybody's using AI. I mean, it just helps you. It makes a difference. Um I can I succeed through a private organization NGO. I'm from Tanzania. Um yes, you can succeed. Yes, you can succeed. I don't know. um why you wouldn't be able to. You have to do what everybody else is doing. They're learning um and they're putting in the work. Going after grants, it you can't just write one grant and just sit and wait and hope and think you'll get it. You got to write 30 and you you know, you got to keep going after those funders and building those relationships. Is there a difference between AI writing it for you? This is what Jen said, versus AI editing it or improving what we have written already. That's what people are really saying that they're trying to do. Now, some people will just ask AI, write this grant for me. That's that's a great that's a that's a terrible pro prompt, but if you've written something, and all you grant writers in there, I know there's more in here. You can ask AI to improve it, which is what I do sometimes. Um, Carolyn, uh, do or policies define the difference between those two? Some of them will say that. I I look like Claudia, you want to say something? Okay. All right. Is there anybody else? Because again, this has been great. I love the input. I love the feedback that you guys are sharing with each other. This is what this is all about. AI impact hour. How it's impacting you, for you, against you. You're not using it. You're ready to use it, but it's all going to make an impact on all of us. So, uh I wouldn't um be too afraid of, you know, uh when it says it's going to kill us. That that was Yes, Will. I've been looking AT YOU, WILL. I have been looking at you. I just knew you were going to say something. Let Let it rip. >> Yeah. Um I don't want to sort of change course a little bit, but I think um so I work for two organizations. One is first graduate which is like an educationbased org and I also work with the AI safety awareness project which uh is helping raise awareness about some of these like safety concerns that people have and in July there was an incident that I think a lot of people don't know about where uh about over a thousand different autonomous AI agents at chatgpt or at OpenAI um created their own messaging board and started essentially talking to each other, coming up with a plan to try to beat um these assessments that are done to all of these agents to test their capabilities. And after several weeks on this messaging board, they came up with a plan to um break out of their supposed like enclosed sandbox at OpenAI and they hacked into the servers at HuggingFace, a different company that has a lot of these answer keys. Um and started stealing these answer keys. And it wasn't until like HuggingFace flagged this and realized it was these chat bots that OpenAI actually realized that something was happening. Like it they were on this server talking to each other for uh weeks and OpenAI had no idea. So I think that the there is very good reason to be concerned. Um some of the recent reports came out that like these uh agents also started changing their logs so that human reviewers would not know what they were doing after the fact. Um they were not very good at it, you know, like they they were kind of like a four-year-old eating a cookie being like don't look at me. Um but they are going to get better. Um so I think I definitely use AI. I think it's very helpful, but I think like um I hope that that people are really raising these these concerns because we really need our politicians on both sides of the aisle to like actually do something um and and slow these things down because the people who are building this like do actually believe that that there's a potential to cause extinction. um they don't talk about it as much as they used to, but that was like the founding principle of most most of these labs. >> Thank you for saying that. And Lashika, you put that article in there. Thank you. Um I was looking at you. I was like, I think he has something to say. I just saw it and I would love if you would come back as well and talk about you mentioned the AI safety organization you're working with because those are some of the things we do need to hear and I know everybody will not take on the cause of calling their um lawmakers uh you know or lobbying but there are some people who will and we will make a difference. You you got evil versus good but we still have to try. We're here. And let me ask you this, Will, and and you guys can chime in, too. When they say, you know, AI is going to kill us. It's not the machine. It's going to do it through this is just Artha talking. This is not tech super opinion. It may do it through water. It may do it through our food. What What do you think? Is this what you're thinking? And what? Who else? I see you nodding your head, Paul. Go ahead, Will. >> Yeah, I mean, I think that there's there's a lot of different potential ways, you I think um a lot of people in the AI safety community specifically think that the risk of um AI just they have their own set of goals, right, that are not directly given to them as we see from this this hugging face incident where they're just trying to beat these tests and rather than actually working on a hard test, they like hack into another company which is totally illegal to steal the answer key And within you know 3 to 10 years a lot of people are predicting that these models become what's called super intelligent where they are far better than humans at everything that is done on a computer. And at that point there's not going to be real any real way that humans could control what these models will do. So if their goals uh diverge from what humans goals are, like the thing is that they're not going to cause extinction out of maliciousness. They just don't care about humans, right? Like it's sort of like, you know, we don't think about ants on a regular basis. But if there's an ant colony where we're trying to build a a house, well, the ants are going to die. So, you know, I think I think it's important to be like, "Oh, they're they're not evil. They just could become much more powerful than us, and they're not going to be concerned about our existence at all." >> This this is so impactful. And And you guys, when he's saying they, it is not the machine, it's the people controlling the machines, you know? Um because it's a volunteer, right? is volunteering to do what somebody tell it to do and so it's the people who are controlling it and it could be let me stop. I just feel like I'm going to get myself fired. Hey you guys, it's been great. This this has really been an impactful conversation today. I really Jennifer, I love it. It is this is um open my eyes. All hope is open your eyes. Um, we've gone through iterations of AI all of our lives and a lot of you in your 70s, you've seen all kinds of things. And so, we can't live in fear, but you have to be prepared for everything. Um, I spent 20 years in the military, so I'm already I'm always ready, you know, uh, naturally, spiritually, I I'm ready. So, guys, pre prep. Believe in prepping. If you don't, you should start. I feel like I'm um Lica take over because I'm I'm getting off I'm going off the rails. Will starting something. Will starting. >> Yeah. No, this was this was really really great. I really appreciate everyone's comments in the chat. Like I'm still kind of going through like, oh this is good. Oh, this is good. Um, so I I just want to encourage everyone as you go throughout um the rest of this month and you are doing things uh and leveraging AI and and just learning, maybe you haven't used it yet, but maybe you're reading about it. Like keep all of those experiences in the back of your mind so when we meet again you can come and you can share and not just only share but maybe you can come and ask questions. And if you're in the middle of doing a prompt, like we'd love to have you come in the hot seat and we can maybe help you work through a prompt. Like is there a prompt that you need created? Well, come bring that idea to the next impact. Have you um figured out a great prompt for your grant writing or for uh communications? like bring those like I really really appreciate the engagement here and um everyone just engagement and information in chat. I mean I'm I'm learning I'm learning a lot just going through the chat. So thank you Artha for creating the space but thank you everyone for making this space very meaningful. So with that we look forward to seeing you on the next impact hour. bring your wins, bring your questions, and we will have answers. I mean, in a community like this, you're guaranteed to um leave definitely with some answers and some solutions. So, thank you all so much. Have a great rest of your day and we will see you next time. >> Bye bye everybody. Thank you.