Maximizing Mission Impact Through Strategic Technology Planning and Budgeting

She's going to have a lot to share with you. So, I'm going to turn it over to you. Welcome Melanie Myers from Tech Impact. You guys have already seen how you can engage today. Make sure you type your questions in the Q&A if it's a long question. If it's in the chat, I'm sure we can grab it. And this is being recorded. We're going to send you the recording and the slides to you later today or early in the morning. Melanie, over to you. Have a great webinar. >> Hello everybody. Thank you for joining this afternoon. Um, a little bit about Tech Impact because you're probably like, who is Tech Impact? Unless you're familiar with us, but we are a nonprofit serving nonprofits um, with hands-on technology assistance. We do everything from full managed IT support to organization. You know, we're going to talk a lot about strategic planning for technology today. We do a lot of strategy, security assessments, cloud adoption projects. Um we have an innovation team that does a lot of AI work, um digital marketing, web services, and then we have our own workforce development um program where we teach young adults IT skills and help place them in formidable careers. Uh we are 20ome years in existence. So if you've never heard of Tech Impact, we are long-term partners with Tech Soup. So, it's um you know, happy to introduce ourselves and glad you're here today. Um little bit about me. I have my formal title. Sounds really fancy, VP of partnerships and growth, but really I'm like a lot of you. I started out my career in a nonprofit. Um serve, you know, served about a staff of 20. Not much, but we, you know, we were uh maybe not big in staff size, but our impact was big. And I was that young person who walked into the office, not young anymore, but I was young. And I became what we call an accidental techie. Um, I was the most techsavvy person on staff. I stayed at that organization for about 20 years. And before I left there, I was in charge of IT, our data management, our marketing, our big events and sponsorship. So, I was truly a um a unicorn like most of you, wearing many hats and really got to learn throughout that 20 years, evolve, develop, and then about seven or eight years ago, I joined Tech Impact to really take what I've learned and help spread that wisdom to other nonprofits. Today we're going to talk about the importance of a strategic tech plan you know and within that strategy we're going to look at infrastructure productivity collaboration again big buzzword but really important AI and advanced data um and then how we you know how you handle governance security resources and how you take it from an idea to an actual plan. And of course, I talk to a lot of nonprofits and budget, money, resources are always some of the top concerns when looking at any investment in it. So, like I said, I talk to an incredible amount of nonprofits on a daily basis. I would say probably about 20 25 nonprofits a week. Um, I'm really, I would say, in my infancy at using AI. I do know that we have strong AI governance security policies. Um, and I record all of my meetings with the nonprofits that I meet with. Again, that information stays siloed. But really, I wanted to share this slide. I was uh doing a lot of work today with AI and I asked AI. I said from the nonprofits that I'm talking to on a daily basis, can you give me where the n, you know, this is a good idea, like good way to see where the nonprofit sector is in terms of technology, but I'm like, can you summarize those conversations and tell me where our sector is as a whole? Um it's really interesting to to see um how that information was summarized and it and I am vetting this this is you know something where I'm meeting with these nonprofits and this just kind of put it in the numbers but I completely look at this I review it and I'm like yep this is this is a great summary. So right now I think our sector as a whole um is more reactive to technology. Um that there's really no roadmap. There's no like hardware life cycle budget. We have aging devices. We're trying to figure out how to budget for those devices and really no support when something breaks. Uh about 35% are operational. They're keeping the lights on. um they have you know managed support and core cloud tools they have basic security and IT spending but I think technology is still treated as an overhead um 20% of those are really strategic you know technology supporting their mission they have a multi-year roadmap and replacement cycles you know any good managed service provider can get you there pretty easily and leadership's involved in in risk planning and leadership really sees the investment of it tied to the organization's growth and outcome. And then we have that 5% that are really transformational. Maybe they're not reach more of the transformational aren't reaching out to us, but you know they're seeing really where technology can multiply their impact. They have mature governance and data strategy. They're using automation. They're AI ready. They're continuously improving on what they have in place. And then technology is managed as a strategic asset, not overhead. So what the importance I want you to take away today is investing in a strategic tech plan will move the organization from really reactive to a missionaligned investment. And I think if we can start to move the needle um you know from eight out of 10 nonprofits just keeping the systems on and seeing where technology can take them. I think we would be you know much better as a sector. So I didn't create any polls for this webinar. Sorry, I did a lot of last minute updates today, but I would really like you to put in the chat like where you fall on the on the spectrum of technology today. Are you one reactive, two operational, three strategic, and four transformational? I think that there's no it's a judgment-free zone as well. So, um be interested to hear where everybody is. Four. Oh, we got a four in the house. That's awesome. Two moving towards three. Strategic. Great. So, I'm going to know reactive moving the two. I think then this will help me um really understand where I need to spend the most time then as we we go through this deck. But I'm seeing a lot of twos to threes which is actually actually really critical in a time of creating a tech roadmap because we all want to be fours right um and if we can find the money and and put the energy around four um definitely would excel your impact. All right I'm great to see that. Um all right let's move to the next slide. So then why create a strategic plan right? Um, we have plans for everything else. We have marketing plans, we have fundraising plans, and I think most nonprofits don't have a technology plan. Um, but again, you have a strategic plan that should tie along with all those other plans and technology needs to be added to the the mix. I think what we need to do is focus on assessing what we have, aligning that, prioritizing it, where we're going to do the investment, and then measure that return on investment. Um, so I guess I could read the bullet points I have on here, but I think some of the core things that that jump out to me uh with talking to nonprofits is again cyber security. Security is always at top of mind with nonprofits and that's where we're really trying to move the sector to say it's great that you know you might have computers, you might be using a cloud platform such as Google or Microsoft, but have you really evaluated are those secure and have you deployed security best practices? And then if you're a HIPPA organization or you have more sensitive clientele, do we need to take you to a higher level in terms of your cyber security? Also, with the, you know, inflection of AI, cyber security is getting harder and harder to manage and I think we're only at the cusp of it and and it's something that we continuously have to stay on top of and then helping our nonprofit clients. I you know we want to get the most of out our of our staff. So by having clean systems you're going to help productivity. Again we you know modernize infrastructure and systems. I still talk to nonprofits that have onremise servers that really haven't fully adopted cloud systems and you want to prepare for growth and future needs. So, you know, and then I think the biggest thing that I hear from nonprofits at all is we're all still kind of playing with AI, but you know, evaluating your AI readiness, and there's a lot more to it than just playing a little bit on chat, GPT, Copilot, or Gemini. So, when I look at a strategic tech plan, this is the vision that kind of comes into my head. You have the overall governance and then you're kind of breaking it up. Is our infrastructure sound? Do we have the right productivity and collaboration tools? Our data systems, digital strategy, again, AI support, and then cyber security. Um, that's how my brain kind of looks at it. But it's important that especially for nonprofits because you want to tie your investments directly to support your mission. We have limited resources. I know that, right? And but you also want to get the most out of those investments to help with your impact. Again, there's also tactical versus strategic. And so, as we go, some of the tactical might fall in the strategic depending where you are in terms of your road map. But, you know, think of tactical tech focuses on short-term operational needs. Printer goes, you replace a printer. Um, we need to update a software. That's just a little tactical thing. Just your strategic tech should align with your long-term organizational goals and vision. Um, you know, tactical AI, we talked about it a couple times. Is it a tool someone tried or are you really thinking about strategically how AI is cap, you know, what if it's capable of and how can you tie AI and automation maybe together to automate and and use AI? Um, and feel free to ask any questions as I'm presenting. Um, I do have it open and we'll respond as I can or we I'll answer them live. So you don't have to wait for a question slide or or something else to as we progress. So this is a sample of maybe organization A, you know, they're they're challenged. They are reactive, you know, decisions. Um they're not really uh they got aging infrastructure, inconsistent replacement cycle for hardware. They have disconnected system and information lives in silos. They have li limited you know leadership has limited visibility into tech spending. Uh growing cyber security and risk and then unclear ownership of who actually owns it. I think this happens at a lot of smaller nonprofits I talked to. You know they just don't have the expertise on staff that someone really has clear ownership of it. So as you know every nonprofit is faced with technology evolving and if you don't have clear ownership or where you're headed you're going to have some issues. So again the su success metrics is you go into um you know strategic road map and I'll tell you how we can kind of see where we need to dive deeper in as you do your strategic tech plan but no tech planning they got a tech plan you know their target was an approved three-year roadmap put that in place hardware life cycle you know you get a funded replacement cycle or at least I should say a budgeted replacement cycle Um, you want a technology bud budget right now? You have a a a security budget. I mean, a technology budget you can you can plan a budget for for the next 3 years. Um, and then again, it's all about measurable outcomes, right? 20 to 40% might be an example. 20 40% of the spend now staff you like think about all that time staff are searching for what they need to find, right? Where is it living? would of that so you're improving you know productivity. Again you can create the plan but it's always good on a quarterly basis review it and make sure that you're progressing against whatever plan you put in place. Now most of you are saying you're kind of in between a a two and a three. So really you can go from strategy being you know really from operations to transformational impact and you have a different vision when it comes to your IT tech is working well and now you want to say you know data is valuable but distributed across systems big pain point of nonprofits manual processes still limit staff capacity how can we you know leverage automation to do that um reporting is effort inensive and backwardlooking right like let's get some live dashboards let's get some real time reporting AI is experimental and in you know lack formal governance maybe look at and have a focus session on AI and how how you see AI fitting within your organization a lot of times AI and automation kind of go hand in hand what do we you know get leadership together and say, "What are we spending a lot of time on? Where could we make some improvements in our day-to-day work?" And then come out, you know, with three to four things where you're going to tackle and we're going to, you know, really embrace AI and automation to get this done. And then innovation and technology are are consistent. They're not consistently measured and you want to do it. So um this is you know 2020 to you know the measurable outcomes would be target reduction and manual administration effort adoption of collaboration and knowledge standards and then real time executive dashboards and performance visibility like I think that's where every nonprofit dreams to be um and it's just it it's a struggle to get there. Uh John has a question. What is your opinion of the new AI website building agents? We deployed one and it totally rebuilt our website in minutes based upon our URL. Later it was just a matter of setting up from our integrations. It's insane, right? I mean for I what I feel bad for and I'm just going to say this is how AI is going to replace some stuff. I think it's a real advantage to nonprofits that you can have AI build you a website. I think there's still expertise that's needed um with any tech project overview, maybe some additional input, but it's insane. Like we have this new system internally and most of the reporting is SQL based. I don't know how to write SQL. Um, but I tell you what, AI does. And it's really insane how I'm not a coder, but I can kind of interpret the code and make my own reports based off that. So, I think my only advice is if you're using any AI tool, just make sure that it's paid and private and and in your own environment and their security best practices. Everybody wants to know about this website AI builder. Now, everyone's going to have these really fancy AIs. I mean, I'm telling you, from the beginning of co-pilot till now, I've seen a difference in in four to six months. So, I think anything like an AI website builder and all that, it's going to continuously learn and continuously to improve. In my opinion, this is the big thing. Are you including everybody who should be included in that strategic pet plan? I know my previous org, we would go through strategic planning as an organization and I think when you're going through strategic planning, having somebody who has well-versed knowledge and everywhere that tech can help aid move your organization forward should have a seat at the table. Um, but if you're looking for, you know, every who's going to work on your strategic tech plan, who should be involved, who you should be getting input from within the organization, you're going to want to make sure you include representatives from all organizational departments, whether that's marketing, finance, programs. Um, but make sure that the more you have at the table, the better it is going to be for you in the long run. again IT staff, someone with technical expertise, leadership if you can get them at the table and then end users I think are the most critical and then external adviserss or consultants with specialized you know expertise if you need it. I think the most important part of any strategic plan when I sat on the side of it, all I heard was complaints, complaints, complaints, but nobody was ever happy with our systems and all that. And I think when you're running it for it, for a staff, you kind of like put up a little bit of a wall cuz you're you're tired, right? You're exhausted. And you know, we have different end users. Some of those that em embrace change and some of those that fight change. Um, so if I could look back at my 20 years at that organization, I would have formed a tech committee because I didn't have a tech committee. I kind of lived in a silo and I would get all the viewpoints and have them at the table so they understood the constraints, the budgetary constraints and were involved in helping get to a better a better state and I would have kept them informed and and involved. So that way when I wanted to facilitate change or I wanted to do something there was not so much resistance on the other end and no one could see the true value or the or what I was trying to solve on that end. I'm trying to keep up with uh we have a lot of working groups regarding our tech decision. So our staff guides a lot of the decision- making. It creates a lot of buy in. Exactly. If someone buys in, they help change the mindset of other employees. And once you get that buy in, everybody helps facilitate the change versus fighting the change cuz they can see the end result uh you know and what we're trying to achieve. Um my chat section is so small. So Molly, you can really use Claw to help you build a website. I kind of want to play with it and test it. Um, I'm sorry. I can't um my display is really bad and I can't see all the chat. So, if you have questions, I can see the questions and answers really good. So, if you have questions, make sure you're putting them over in the question section. Hopefully most of you uh on here have a strong infrastructure or you're on the path to getting a strong infrastructure. If you do not, do not be ashamed because probably 10 out of my 25 calls a week in, you know, organizations are falling a little bit behind with infrastructure. So again, you want to keep hardware up to date and have a solid replacement cycle. Maintain regular updates and patch management for all infrastructure. Um, establish clear disaster recovery and business continuity plans and ensure scalability and accommodate organizational growth and challenge and needs. So what that means is make sure your computers that you are giving to staff are up to date that you have patch management on or some type of remote tool that can keep that management you know those patches up to date. Make sure you have anti virus web protection tools on those device that you don't let them fall behind and operating systems right um keep on top of when Microsoft might be ending support. Um I'm not sure if there's anything else anyone would add to that. Um if you have servers, do you need the servers, right? Um there's so many functions that Microsoft and Google can do now in terms of replacing hard infrastructure. You would think, you know, that we are beyond that, but organizations are still purchasing servers and still investing in hardware at that level. um a great way to rate your infrastructure. There's going to be a couple of these checklists through um it just starts help kick off you know as you form this tech committee and you start evaluating where you are. This is an easy checklist to go through and say you know it's effective don't really need to address it. we can check the box off whether it needs work. And then also it if it's creating big issues and it becomes a priority, you're going to want to move that to the top of your your fix. So is everyone pretty secure on their infrastructure? Like my assessment is yes. And I and probably people who are no don't want to admit it. Um, but you know, if if you need help, TechUp has a bunch of incredible resources to purchase hardware. Oh, that's a good question. Um, Justin, are you here? Can you talk about Teu Cloud support? I can talk about our support for hardware and devices and managed it. Um, hopefully he's still here. Justin from TechUp. >> Yes, Melanie, I'm here. [laughter] So, the uh the the difference between cloud support and devices is really um simplified as licensing for your hardware versus the physical devices you're using. You can source, of course, both of those through um Tech Soup. And if you need any help or guidance um to get to get to the appropriate resources, please uh feel free to drop me an email. John, I will put my email in the chat for you. >> And you can pick up Tech Impact as we come in. We put our remote management tools are it's more of a all-encompassing managed IT support. So we would use our agents. We would deploy our virus tools. We would help you manage um your 365 Google tenant adding and removing onboarding users and really kind of get really get a deep knowledge of you and then kind of help you evolve your tech stack. So it's a it comes at a a monthly fee. Um but it's where I think we serve over 400 nonprofits with managed IT support. Um so we support their day-to-day IT functions and we do a lot of cloud adoption projects. A lot of organizations like to move from Google to Microsoft or they have been in split system. So we combine them in one system or they want to enhance their security in their cloud environment and we'll kind of assess where they are and help tighten the back end of those solutions. So, let's talk about productivity and collaboration. And I think a lot of us nonprofits now there's so many resources and there's so many ways to help staff adopt technology. Um, I go back 20 years ago. it was a struggle, you know, to get people to to do and put together those trainings and get staff together to do it. Um, so I think training is always going to be an issue. You need to allow your staff time to train. You need to point them in the right direction for training. And then, you know, I would add that to any road map. Training is absolutely essential. whether or not you're putting in new new data systems, whether or not you're, you know, you have some staff that struggle with day-to-day Word and PowerPoint and all that is that you're giving them the time and the resources for training. Um, something I did um long time ago, but I think it would still work, is that staff did want did not want to do training. They didn't want to take the time. So, I started putting incentive in gift cards like who could do the most training um or I'd have different staff present to at staff meetings on training. So, um I think the most important thing is allowing the time and having the right resources. Um again, you want to help staff work smarter. So, can the staff easily find information? Are your files organized? Are your security security groups, you know, clean? Are teams collaborating in one system? Do we have silos everywhere? Does someone have a a Google workspace with some documents, a Slack channel? Um, it can get really hard. Again, strong policies. We save everything here. It's done. But a lot of organizations I find are using um staff go where they're comfortable. There's, you know, it's so funny because it's like Windows versus Mac, um, Microsoft versus Google. Staff get a preference and they kind of stick with that preference. Um, now I think it's going to be the different AI tools like, oh my gosh, there's Claude, there's Chat GPT, and then there's going to be strong adherence to to either one. Um, but it is interesting to listen to nonprofits and see where they struggle. But if you own it, if you need processes in that, everything has to live in one unified system. Doesn't matter where that unified system is because you're going to secure that unified system, right? You're going to continuously improve and invest in that system. So get it right. Choose a Microsoft, choose a Google, and and go there. Um then once you really truly adopt one of those systems, you can work on automation. You can look at evolving those systems around security automation and adoption. And then again ongoing training is is always an issue. Uh something else I think too like if you ever need help in terms of understanding the licensing um talked to a lot of nonprofits that Microsoft and Google really keep us on our toes toes. I don't know how I said that but our toes in terms of licensing. So again reach out to TechUp cloud services if you want to learn more about Microsoft licensing and do you have the right licensing for your organization. Um feel free to reach out to Tech Impact. we'll, you know, we'll see if you have the right licensing and help provide guidance around there. So, I think you could take is your staff, you know, you want to rate your productivity and collaboration. Again, same boring checklist. I can't believe I'm still doing checklist, but um you want to see, you know, you want to rate what you're using. Is is it good for the organization? Um the one thing I will say out of here too is conference video calls also as part of your infrastructure and your productivity and collaboration really ask yourself about your phone system. Is your current phone system working for you? Um we're seeing a lot of organizations go to teams voice which we're doing u much much more of those projects. There's zoom voice and all that. So you know replacing that antiquated hardware or moving from you know a voice over IP system to um you know to moving to one of these things that are built in your unified system. When you say write licensing what do you mean by that? Uh for example Microsoft licensing there are three levels available to nonprofits. Well there's business and then there's enterprise. Any organization over 300 staff should be on Microsoft Enterprise licensing. Any organization under 300 should be on Microsoft Business. Under Microsoft Business, where most nonprofits fall under the 300, there is a business basic license, there is a business standard license, and there is a business premium license. So, in terms of your end users need, Microsoft is really good about mixing. You can mix and match like mix and match licensing. So what we recommend for a lot of organizations is to be at that business premium license because it's the most robust license used by nonprofits. It allows us to not only give you email, um you get all the office productivity suites such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, but there's also other licensing that is in there that helps us manage the workstations, right? To entra join them, Entra Azure, but basically do identity management with Microsoft and join those workstations. We can also configure enhanced security policies for device management and all that. So that is understanding you wouldn't necessarily give that $5.50 license to a volunteer who just checks email. We would put them on a business basic license. So understanding the tier of licensing and making sure that it is that you're applying them right to the type of staff or type of emails that you have. Same with Google. Google has your free for nonprofit. They have the business standard which is like I think $616 a month and then they have the endpoint protection. We will say whatever security features you want to deploy be by Google then we'll recommend the right licensing for that. The only thing is is Google as of right now you cannot mix and match licensing. So if you want to use some of the advanced security features of Google, all users have to be moved up to a paid license. So that was a lot. Hopefully that helped some of you understand the the licensing. And yes, Microsoft did get rid of the 10 free business premiums they used to give to nonprofits. But when you really look at it, uh we have some nonprofits. They're nonprofits, but they're not Microsoft eligible. And when you look at the pain point of how much they have to pay for licensing, I think it's like $25 per user per month. That $5.50 looks way more attractive. Um, but it is rough when you get a nonprofit that's not eligible that does have to pay the higher cost. All right, we're halfway through. Any questions? I'm sorry. I'm going to take a sip of water. So now we're going to go in the AI and advanced data. Again, data ties. Incredible. You know, like AI, you're going to be it goes back to the same thing. I've been in this tech space too long. Everything always goes back to clean data. Everything. Um if you look at everything, it's cleaning your data, scrubbing your data. um what goes in comes out. It's still going to apply here even as you want to use AI. So again, you're going to want to evaluate your data and strategic systems effectively. So I think this is the biggest point for organizations but it's the thing I've seen move the most especially with the API and integrations you know old school was everything needs to live in one system and this is the only system we use and then you know to see that evolution of data go from one system everything goes to then okay we have siloed systems systems and then hey now there are tools where we can integrate systems and tie things in via integration and then you have platform developers that are actually building out these integrations to kind of you know they see the importance of it but maybe I'm really dating myself but I go back as old when I knew there were really only two you know development or or fundraising solutions now there's probably thousands on the market um So, I think it's gotten easier, but also I think it can get a lot messier with all the different systems of choice. I used to we I mean I'm so old I go back to an access database um and I used to manage that and then it would be built in different stuff. So I think you need to always assess your systems against your needs regularly. Um this is sometimes where I would pull in an outside consultant and maybe this is their dayto-day and they know the entire architecture of data systems and can really help you. You're going to want to evaluate your data accur, you know, your accuracy. Is it right? Can you use it? Um, I know that was a exhausting part of my job was getting people to enter information correctly in the systems. And then the chief executive would come and they're like, I want to go to this funer. Can you pull me this report? And I'd have to be honest and I'm like, I think it's about 40% accurate based on what we've put in. Um, so again, you're going to want to review your systems integrations, talk to your users, where are they having issues, what can we improve, and then identify gaps for improve improvement and upgrades. Then again, are you taking advantage of automation? Um, this will probably date me, but I had built I had a someone build a SQL system and I called them push notifications. Basically what I was doing was automation but at that time that was my term. Um but look at your repetitive tasks. Is there anything that you can automate? Improve operational efficiency. I know that we've seen a lot of organizations do it in notifications. Um I know we use it on our project teams for for client data transfer. Right? if you're always doing the same repetitive task is looking how to automate it. Again, it increases data accuracy. If you force someone to put something in a system and then it automates something, your accuracy is going to get improved. Make sure anything you put in place is scalable. And obviously, our goal overall is to reduce any organizational cost over time. Um, you know what? This is a question. Is your organization ready for AI? Maybe on a scale from one to three. We'll do a a quick put it in the comments. So, like one, we're just playing with AI. No one really using it. two, you know, we've talked about it at a at a b, you know, at a leadership level and we're looking how it can do to where you three as you fully embraced AI and it's embedded in your day-to-day work. So, everyone kind of put that in the chat. Oh, look at all these new one. I do know something about Dothandria getting old and again accounting and finance I agree gain um we do a a Microsoft um a automation project um which hiring especially if you have a lot of staff coming on and on and that's really huge a one with AI one. Oh, game. Maybe we might have to talk. You can uh share how you're a three and you've actually fully embraced all AI. Three. Three. One. Three. Wow. Haven't even talked about it. Damn. One to two. Um, yeah. So, if you're at a one, you're probably where most nonprofits are. Um, you know, I think the biggest thing is nonprofits are like what AI tool and learning the differences. I know we have formed an AI committee and everybody wants to have something built out like custom agents and that and that committee really weighs those AI initiatives and what is going to get built out and what's going to come down to fruition. Um, because who doesn't want to do less manual work? if AI and automation could help us add my name to the list. This is what I want to do. But I think it's important to actually have a committee with leadership and somebody who's helping evolve that. You want to know who owns AI, who owns it, who owns the decisions. Um I think the biggest decision is what do you want to use it for and what AI tool is best for that. Um I also heard from uh did everybody see that Claude? um not that they're giving their tool away for nonprofits, but they actually have a fellows program attached to it where you can get a Claude fellows to help you incorporate AI in your nonprofit. So, you might want to Google that and check that out and see if that's right for your nonprofit. AI tools aren't free, right? You have the if you want to really use it, you're going to have to budget for them. Uh, another thing is if you're doing any custom agent builds or if you're I guess maybe I should explain that. So AI is AI, right? We use it all in our dayto-day. I know it helps me with writing. One of the worst things that like I dread having to start something from draft and start to write an email or a letter. Love AI can start it for me. I can tweak it and send it out and I look so much smarter. And I think we're all kind of putting information. Can you find information on this example of a custom agent? We have a customer um that we built an agent for and it's a closed agent, but basically it tell the agent tells what AI is going to pull from. So it's controlled sources. So like if you have a data system that would be your controlled source. So we say take these five or six data sources. This is how we want the output of anything we run through this agent. And theirs was built to automate surveys. So it takes the surveys from multiple constituents, feeds it through the AI agent, and then gives them a report that's formatted the same as every other report. and it basically summarizes the key points of that along with any other, you know, data points they might need. Um, so they had a custom agent built so that they can control what that agent was putting out. It's probably a really horrible explanation and I'm probably our AI people would yell at me like why are you doing that? Um, but really you have to think about how, right? like what it is it that you want it to do and then define how you implement it, what it's going to cost. Every time that organization runs that agent, it takes tokens or credits to run that agent. So, anytime you're budgeting, you have to budget for that. One thing I did learn while doing that that thing is that nonprofits get I think it's $2,000 a year in Azure credits from Microsoft. I have now learned that if you're going to build an agent in Microsoft and you need those tokens or credits that you can use that Microsoft grant for that AI, you know what I mean? For the pull of those agents. So, if anybody is paying for that, definitely go and get the Azure $2,000 credit so you can run it in the background. Hold on. I'm looking. You can see every time I look over here, I'm looking to see if there's questions. Every like nonprofits, you run your computers under the ground. I think like business, they're like they replace them every 3 years. There's not profits. I just expect it's going to be every five. Did somebody tell me I'm not that old? Or did you say, "Yeah, you're old." [laughter] Um, all right. Great. Well, we'll get to questions at the end. Biggest thing about AI, always have a human reviewer. Someone always have to has to review what goes out before it goes out. So here you want to rate your AI and data readiness. Um do we know what we collect? Who's responsible for it? Um is it accurate, current? Um are we I mean I think this is where sometimes most organizations unless they have the expertise in house this is usually where they outsource the assessment of this or the the strategic planning of this. I also want to say as we go through here like every strategic tech plan is different. You might not need to focus on your infrastructure. You might not need to focus on your productivity and collaboration tools. Maybe you just need to look at your data and your AI and your outcome and measurement and reporting and maybe just focus on there. As long as the other things are good, running well, I'm going to put my focus into really our data and strategic systems because these are really the ones that run the organization. They do your day-to-day function. Productivity needs to be solid. But really these data systems are key. You make a change in any kind of data or strategic system, the pain is felt throughout the entire organization because it revolves around everything that you do. And then I'm going to preach about governance and security. Somebody needs to own it. I I mean some like you got to know somebody's got to have overall ownership whether that is outsourced whether it's internal but you need somebody to you know as you do anything in technology security is going to protect the plan governance is going to direct it and training makes it stick so strategy is going to need all three of those considered I think that one quote makes me sound so smart but that was AI and I'm not going to lie. I put the slide together and I'm like, can you give me a quote and it did it. Um, but again, security, anytime you put anything into the environment, anytime anything changes, security is always a core component. You also can't implement a data system without having somebody own it and continue to nurture it, continue to make sure it's, you know, the training is there for all staff. I know it's hard, especially a lot of us are one person managing all of that for an organization. Time constraints. Um, but if maybe you're more successful than I was when I first started out, maybe I was too young for anybody to listen to me at that time. Um, no, I'm complaining, but I really did take that organization, you know, further. And I'll have to say a lot of that goes back to Tech Soup being an incredible resource as you're someone who's navigating technology like uh you know Tech Soup was my best friend back in the day. Maybe I'll age myself too. I don't know if Tech Soup started doing this again but I used to get uh what was it? Cup the soup. It actually was a soup recipe. I can't remember how often they used to send those. Does anybody remember that when you would get the soup recipe? Um, so as we we finalize, you're going to want to align your tech with organizational mission for for the maximum impact. Look at your mission obviously and then how can you use technology. You're going to want to balance the tactical infrastructure needs with long-term strategic goals. Maybe outsourcing the tactical infrastructure, the help desk, the workstation upgrades, the planning. Maybe that's something you want to outsource and you just don't, you know, maybe look at the return on investment in there. If I leave this to someone else and I can focus over here, is that a viable solution. You again leadership has to have buyin like you have to involve leadership in all technology priorit. know that we had some weaknesses. I was kind of the one person. So, I was able to form a board committee that really helped me with marketing, communications, and technology. And it was great to have those board members kind of be contributors to that. Again, you're going to want to prioritize infrastructure and pro productivity because those have to be solid before you move on to anything else. Continuously update the plan every three years. Phase your approach. Try to get funding for it. Try to work it into some already existing grants. I think that's the question organizations ask me enough. Do I know a funer? If I knew a funer, I'd probably be the most popular person. Um, everybody would be coming to me. You want to keep everybody, you know, up to date on your progress. And again, security, governance, and training, they're they're just absolute essentials. So, you need to make time for them for them and have the right staffing for it. Some great resources. Uh there's a Tech Soup digital assessment tool for nonprofits. We have a technology budgeting worksheet. Um probably getting close to absolute with AI because I think you just say, "Give me a sample budget." Um, we have a free nonprofit policy builder. Um, cyber security consultation. We can kind of go over your security. I do recommend that every organization, even if you have a managed service provider, that you do an annual security risk assessment. Hold on, I'm all caught up here. Uh it is the one thing with the emerging technologies with cyber security um having somebody come in and and do that assessment um probably will help guide a lot of what you need to do under strategy because if you're failing in cyber security um you have some gaps and then there's a link to tech soup for computers and discounted hardware and then managed IT services support from tech soup if if you're interested in learning more about managed IT support and then my email address if you want to email me. Um, all right, John. Oh, John, that's a great question. There are many different types of AI. I mean there's claude chat GPT co-pilot Gemini and really organizations are kind of looking at the pricing of all those and saying what is it that we want to accomplish and what AI tool is best to embed in our organization. Um, I know Co-Pilot, I'm lucky enough to have it. Um, actually uses CL like it's such a a big thing. I would not say that I'm an expert in it, but right now we're doing some like open AI workshops. Um, so yeah, each there's there's multiple AI tools you can use and work within your organization. Um Kat, do capacity building or technology grants typically cover managed IT service and other funders you see doing that consistently for organizations under 250K? So I'm taking your annual budgets under 250. Um, so for a very small nonprofit, I think Justin, are we is there uh still anything in the DRP? Do you have a link on that or is that us? >> I don't I don't have a direct link, but what were were you thinking of DRP or or or CTO for the sector? >> Yeah. Yeah, something like that. We do there are some programs that Techup and US are doing together to for organizations to help assess where you are. Um, and then you're you're a very small nonprofit where one volunteer holds the admin credentials, right? There's always that with when the volunteer holds the information. But Cat, if you want to email me, I'll give you I'll give you some resources. Um but typically capacity building grants are to make you know they'll be like big transformational projects but we don't see a lot of funders funding managed IT support services. They might fund the first year we'll get you to standards and then um usually managed IT support is on the organization to to pay. Um well it looks like we have six minutes left. Are there any other questions? Anything I missed that you uh you want to discuss or I'm really good on the fly. Do you have a question? All right. Well, if no one has any questions, we can leave a little early. you can get back to doing your email if you haven't been doing it during this webinar was great. Thank you for listening and everybody have a wonderful day.