Your AI Journey: A Nonprofit’s Guide to Getting Started

I would normally start off by saying, you know, good afternoon, good morning, but I think we also have to say good evening. We have someone joining in from Nairobi. >> I love it. All right, Mimi, we've the out seems to have stabilized. You want to go ahead and get started? >> Yeah, let's do it. Hi everybody. Thank you for taking time in your day to join us. Um, this is our webinar for you on helping you start your AI journey. Um, I am happy to start off with quick introductions. So, we're going to start from the left right side of [laughter] your screen. Um, I'm Mimi Yay from PTKO. Uh, here at PTKO, we specialize in helping nonprofits to navigate the kind of technology and strategy challenges that happen with looking at new capabilities and features like AI and really trying to figure out how to embed it into both the day-to-day work that they do as well as the broader strategic aspirations and plans that they have in the future. Um, we're so happy that all of you are able to join us today in this webinar. And our goal today is really simple. We'd love to take some of the noise and anxiety and some of the questions that we've seen you submit and some of the issues and concerns you have as well as the hopes that you have for AI and take all of that and really turn it into something that is clear and structured and genuinely manageable. So, we want to take out the hype that seems to surround AI these days and just come at this with a couple of practical starting points and recommendations. I'm going to pass it over to George. >> Hi, and my name is George Danalovix. I've been an IT leader uh in the nonprofit and association sector and I've been living that that life of dealing with the immense pressures that all of us are facing that need to do something with AI. Um, and glad to have Mimi uh joining me this afternoon. Uh, as you all see, kind of a from a housekeeping standpoint, we do have um, uh, audio and cameras turned off, but the chat is turned on. So, uh, if you could do a quick introduction and introduce yourselves to everybody else in the chat. And while you're doing that, uh, we're going to pull up our our first poll. It'll be an interactive poll. U, we'll be using a platform called Slidos. So, grab your phones, get them handy. There'll be a QR code for you to scan. Um, and if you can't uh scan the QR code, there will be a web address that you can put uh into your browser and then there's a little uh code for slidos. So, um introduce yourselves into chat. And without further ado, the first question of the day. So, where are you in your AI journey? So, if you can scan the QR code um and select where you're at um and again, if you can't scan the QR code, there's a web address at slido.com and then you just put in the uh access code there. All right, we've got some people already in production. >> That's pretty impressive. >> So far, everybody's using AI. We have nobody who's not using it yet. I I have a feeling if we would have done this a few months ago, that bar would have been a little bit higher. uh and nobody's really got it fully deployed. And I don't think that's that's too surprising from, you know, a lot of the events I've been at lately and talking to folks. It seems that everybody's kind of, you know, what we're seeing here um either using it personally or or just starting to see how it fits in the organization. Yeah, I think if we looked at this question as a spectrum, it looks like the majority of our responses are not at either of the extreme ends, but kind of in that meaty middle part of the bell curve, which is not surprising. Um, it's great to see. And we love seeing that there are several folks who have put some AI pilots into production and are running them hopefully successfully and productively in their organizations and it's a great starting point for our time together today. >> Yeah. And I think that's going to lead very nicely into our next poll. So thanks everybody for filling uh the first one out. On the second one, this is going to be a multi select. So, particularly for those of you that have already rolled out AI in your organization, how are you using it? What are some of those use cases that um you found value um this was one of the questions that a lot of you asked um in the registration flow of how are folks using AI today? So, I'll be curious to see uh what the responses are from the group we have with us this morning, this afternoon. And again, this is a multi select, so you can check all the boxes. All right. meeting summaries uh and personal productivity, drafting documents seems to be pretty high on the list. Not surprising. That's typically one of the lower risk uses of AI. So, so not too surprised to see that leading the way. Um, also marketing uh marketing copy images coming in at a close or or coming in in second place. Not too surprising there. Mimi, anything you're seeing from the results? Oh, I was looking for the scroll down. So, at [laughter] excited to see what was at the bottom of the screen here. Um, looks like there's still a good number of people who again are at the extreme ends. So, some groups that are just starting to explore the potential and the power that comes with AI really excited to see that there are folks who are using it in a fairly advanced way, right? like looking at predictive analytics and applying artificial intelligence and large language models and learning into ways that may think help them think through decisions that they make on how they want to invest their time, invest the resources that they have and think about, you know, where they want to place their bets for the future. So, it truly is a situation where AI can help to be that buddy. Hopefully, not the one that's going to make all the decisions for you, but sit side by side and ride shotgun with you as you're thinking through ways to improve many aspects of your work. >> Yeah, I'm actually surprised nobody's using AI yet for fundraising, for, you know, creating uh helping create grant proposals um and doing donor outreach. I think that's a a big opportunity for efficiency and being able to connect uh an organization's mission to uh the the focus areas for donors and what they're interested in. >> Yeah, I agree. And I think also I am [clears throat] a little bit um happy to see that automated decisionmaking is also an area that organizations have not really used AI for. I think that again AI can be a great buddy for you. AI can do some of the number crunching and the activities and analyses that can happen on the fringes, but it can help to advise maybe don't want to have it make those decisions for you uh without some kind of check in there. >> Great. And I'll scroll to the top just so folks can get one last look. Um, and our next slide and our last poll for for the morning is kind of the focus of of this presentation. What's holding you back? So, for those of you that are are are still at the beginning of that AI journey, what are your barriers? What what's keeping you from moving forward full steam ahead? Um, >> yeah. And while people are completing Oh, sorry, George. I was just going to >> No, I was going to say this is a multi select, so you can select all the barriers that might be in your way. >> Absolutely. This is not a oneanddone thing, right? There's multiple factors at play here. While folks are answering this question, we know that there are some comments and additional content pieces that are coming in in our chat window. We're gonna I think a lot of the upfront questions will get addressed through our webinar and the content of the upcoming slides. So I will ask for people's patience to hold your questions until we get through the body of our materials here. But we did also make sure to save time towards the end so that if we didn't answer your question either in today's chat window or in the questions and answers that you provided up front when you registered for the webinar, we we are going to work real hard to make sure that we preserve some time to get those discussed if not completely answered. >> So So number one, what's holding people back is risk and data privacy concerns. not surprised to see that one towards the top. Um, and I'm I'm actually in a way glad to see that and glad to see that that's something that people are paying attention to uh before they just go ahead and roll out AI within the organization. So, so not surprised and also happy to see that that's a top priority. >> Yeah, absolutely. And if we scroll down a little bit more in the responses, >> oh, that's it. Pool list. >> Okay, that's it. all the character. [laughter] I'm glad also to see that leadership buyin is not a top concern. Um, sometimes that's a good thing and then sometimes that's that makes things harder. I've heard several clients come and ask or express a scenario where their supervisors are coming to them and saying, "What's our AI point of view? What are we doing about AI? It's everywhere. We should have a unique point of view or we should be the leaders in our particular area of the nonprofit field or in the area of philanthropy or you know the corner of the world that they operate in. And the interest is completely understandable. The desire to be a leader is very strong. It's really a question about how to make that happen and how to do it relative to everything else that's going on. Most top of mind being data privacy and security concerns. >> So, we'll get into that in more detail as well. >> Well, I think that's actually a good setup and a great transition to our first slide of the presentation itself, which is that AI pressure cooker. Um, you know, as IT leaders, you know, as Mimi said, sometimes we're getting that pressure from the seauite saying, "What are we doing with AI? What is our AI strategy? Why aren't we doing it yet?" Um, we also have, you know, vendors who promise the world it slices and dices and makes Julian fries. It can do everything. Um, and it it can be overwhelming when you have AI coming at you from every direction. And it's easy to feel overwhelmed and you don't even know where to start. >> Yeah, George is absolutely right. You know, it's that volume and the buzz around AI is loud and particularly for people like me and many of us who do not work within it on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes I feel like everybody else knows some kind of secret that I don't know about AI and I am missing the boat here. Um but I do know that this is a common theme. Um in addition to what I just expressed earlier about clients having some guidance from their leadership saying that they want a a unique point of view about AI. There's also a lot of clients who come to us and say they're curious about AI, but they're also really scared that they're going to break something. And that's where it's a moment where it's an inflection point and there's a danger that things can go sideways because people might start to retreat instead of leaning in. So, a big part of what we're going to talk about today and something that we're going to provide later on to everybody is an AI adoption guide or a guide for really creating your AI journey where adoption is a big part of making that journey successful. Um, so when AI adoption fails, it's not because people don't care and it's not because they don't understand the strength and the power of AI. Typically, it's because no one has helped to make it feel safe and purposeful within their organization. >> And and this guide is here to help to reframe that challenge. It's not a technology project. Even though it's AI and it's tech, this isn't a technology project. And you know, I want to give people some comfort that this is a change initiative. It's a change initiative built around your people. And if you've been in the the technology industry for a while, you've done this before. You've done this many times before. Um, so AI is a an approachable initiative. Um, and our guide will help frame that up for you so that it will be something that is still familiar even though AI might be something that's new. >> Absolutely. Yeah. So, how do we make it something familiar and something approachable? >> This is one of the most important parts of our guide that we really feel is important. um we start by doing something that we're calling the AI listening tour. So before you even mention AI or new technologies, we strongly recommend that you go talk to your functional teams and ask some questions for your marketing staff, your events team, fundraising, membership. Ask them things like, "What are the things that slow you down today?" or "What's the work that drains your energy the most?" really trying to get at those actual pain points and typically when people hear those questions they provide honest answers that reveal opportunities where AI can help. So it's our strong belief that if you start with empathy rather than starting with the technology, you'll start to form a foundation that creates that safe space and it helps people connect the technology to the mission to their work and it really creates that starting point for making lasting change. Mhm. >> And from some of these conversations, you'll get to uncover those true opportunities and and you might even hear some overlapping challenges. Uh perhaps multiple departments are struggling with creating targeted content, you know, targeted content for marketing, targeted content for fundraising. And this is a perfect opportunity to explore an AI initiative and bring those two groups together around a shared project, a shared initiative. >> Yeah. So now that you understand the organization's real needs, both individual and shared, like George mentioned, you'll want to find partners who can help you translate those needs into action using AI. And like we talked about from the start, this team should not be solely IT staff. You really want to have people who are naturally curious, who are knowledgeable about different parts of your organization and typically serve as kind of that organic hub where people naturally gravitate to and go to for help. And these are people who we are calling AI navigators. So again, AI navigators do not have to be AI experts. These navigators really serve as your informal network for a lot of things. They help to normalize experimenting and make it okay to try new things even if it doesn't always work out as a success. They do partner that with modeling safe behavior. coming back to that primary concern that people have regarding data privacy and risk of exposing information. But they also encourage knowledge sharing and sometimes that is something new and novel in organizations where teams tend to kind of hoard or not freely share their data and their knowledge. But by sharing it, that's what helps to build cultural adoption of new capabilities from the inside out. >> And this team, your AI navigators or whatever you're going to call them internally, this is your engine for adoption. Um, and and I'm an IT guy. That's my background. I'm going to, you know, double down on what Mimi said and what's on the slide is your group of AI navigators is not just your IT team. Um, you need to recruit those curious, respected people from across the organization. Find somebody in marketing, membership, education, your fundraising, whatever the key departments are for your organization. And these are the people that you're going to rely on to help identify and vet new tools to figure out what is the best fit for the organization. And then they in turn are going to serve as your advocates and peer re peer resources in your home departments. So this is the part for the IT folks uh on the webinar. This is the IT decision that you've got to make which is and the first one you have to make is what technology you're going to use to provide that single secure and I call it a a chatty assistant for the entire organization and you know the ones that come to mind are you know Microsoft copilot uh Google gemini for workspace and and even uh chatgpt enterprise and you know the most important uh criteria here is not the features, it's security. It's what you guys rated as number one, you know, on your concerns about moving forward. So, yeah, Google Gemini, Copilot, and Chatbt, they have free versions, public versions, but these free versions are not the ones you should be using for organizational data. You want to make sure you have the subscription versions that come with that enterprisegrade uh security and contractual guarantees that your data remains private. This is a non-negotiable. So, as you're looking at these different products, go through the terms and conditions and see who owns and who has the right to access and use your data that you're putting into them. If it's for free, you're likely not getting those protections. >> That's right, George. Um, we really think about that first enterprisegrade chat tool as that space that provides safe, secure settings for your staff to try out those new capabilities without being concerned about data leakage or exposure of um, personally identifiable information. Whether it's about your staff, your constituencies, your members, your clients, whoever they might be. While that's also happening, the IT team can be doing a lot of other work too. They can start looking under the hood of the current systems that you have in your tech stack today. So your AMS, your marketing automation, your finance platforms, a lot of these different tools are starting to embed AI features. And I think several people on this call are aware of that because it came up in one of the comments in our registration set of questions. So your IT team in partnership with your AI navigators, they can start to take a closer look at those embedded AI features and decide which of those are valuable for your organization and your needs and which ones are just hype. And again, if if you're not sure where to start, uh Andrea in the chat, you know, mentioned that they're testing C-Pilot um because they already have Microsoft 365 and it's a license add-on for them. So, if you're a Microsoft shop, uh C-Pilot could be a natural first step to start exploring. Likewise, if you're a Google uh workspace environment and you use Google for most of your enterprise applications, Gemini could be a natural add-on for you to begin, you know, exploring its functionality. So, you can get your chatty assistant by looking at the ecosystem that you have today. Okay, this is literally the part where a lot of organizations might freeze and they'll say things like, "We can't start using AI until we have clear, comprehensive, very thorough policies and guidelines." Basically, they're trying to find the perfect answer. And that's exactly the problem. the perfect answers don't exist and they never will because as soon as we put together one set of policies the world shifts and technology shifts from under us and then we have to adjust and align again. So our advice is to start with a few foundational rules. Let's not start with writing a 20page policy book that covers every possible scenario that let's face it not many people are going to read cover to cover. Instead, let's start with hitting the critical rules of the road. What are those high-risk areas, the highest risk areas that particularly expose data security and data confidentiality issues? Also, try to be clear about what data is off limits to include in your AI tools. things like member data, financial reports, employee data, as well as thinking through which tools are approved and when people ought to fact check or attribute information. And I will take one second to give a personal anecdote. Um, I was using AI and chat GPT to think through um some new concepts for a framework that a client asked for. And I asked chat GPT to find references or spaces where this type of framework and these types of concepts had been used in the past. And boy oh boy, hallucination is a real thing, folks. AI will still identify and assert that something has actually happened when in fact it may not have. And if I had not gone back and fact checked or asked for a specific citation, I would not have known that that was the case. So, we're still in this world where it's a good idea to just do a double check. Yeah, it's very important to make sure we keep humans in the loop uh when it comes to AI and you know this early first iteration of your policy needs to to capture you know what are some of those those rules of the road and what use cases we might be deferring to decide till later. So, for example, saying for now, we're not going to use AI for things like scoring award submissions or screening job applicants. We don't the the platforms aren't trusted enough yet. We're worried about bias that might be in the platforms. And these are tasks that as an organization, we're more comfortable with humans doing the work for the time being. Now policies and you might be concerned about where do I start with putting these policies together. Um and I would refer you to look at uh the framework that Jeff Dagna at foresight first put together um about how to begin those conversations and how to bucket some of your AI risks. He uses a human first framework with three different rails to guide your planning and he refers to them as guard rails, guid rails and guide rails. Um so the guard rails are your must not do. These are the hard limits such as protecting member data or protecting financial information that you as an organization will not cross. The next set are good rails and these are the shouldd dos. These are the things that you know we want AI to do to strengthen the staff, strengthen uh the organization, bring about more mission impact. And then lastly are guide rails and these are how AI gets done. It's the procedures to ensure that there's decisions transparency and a little bit of human friction in the process so that AI doesn't run, you know, completely handsoff throughout the organization. And you know, we don't have time to go into the details of what this looks like in practice. There's a few examples up on the the slide. Um, but the point is there is a way to tackle the thorny issues around AI use within associations and nonprofits. And by incorporating these rails into your policy planning, you can ensure that humans remain in control of AI initiatives. Um, there was a quick question from Lauren and the gentleman is Jeff Dagna and we do have a link to him in the resources section of the guide. So once you've got your your framework together, the next step is putting together your road map. And we believe in a now next later framework. And this is probably different for a lot of folks. This isn't the fixed project plan that that some of you see with, you know, Gant charts and, you know, arrows connecting phases together. This is more of a strategic tool for categorizing your ideas based on impact and readiness. The key is to focus on what are the outcomes, not the technology. The now items are your quick wins like using a new chat tool to summarize transcripts. Next are the items that require a bit more planning such as you know launching a chatbot on your website. And then later, these are the items that are those big transformative goals like, you know, maybe we'll get to using AI to predict member risk or member renewal risk or using AI to screen job applicants, but we're not doing that now. We're not going to do it next. It's it's something we're going to tackle later. >> Great. And just to do a quick time check for everybody, we are about half an hour into our webinar. And spoiler alert, we have just a couple slides left. Just two slides left. So what we would love to do is once we finish up the formal structured part of our presentation, we would love to open it up to all of you to hear your comments, your feedback, any questions that you have that we were not able to address um during the formal part of this presentation. So this is your five minute warning to get your questions written down and ready to share. Uh in the meantime, let's come back to our next steps. This is the part that really energizes me. It comes back to that idea that AI adoption is more than technology. And for me, as somebody who has studied change management and human behavior for a long time, for me, AI adoption is about forming habits. You know people change and create new habits not all at once but in increments. If you think about any other part of your life where you are trying to create a new habit whether it is eating healthy or starting a new fitness regimen or I don't know you know looking for ways to balance your budget and maintain a certain budget. Um it's done through small wins that are repeated and reinforced over time. So, how do you do that with AI in your organization? We suggest starting with the creation of what we'll call a central AI knowledge hub. This is not anything fancy. It can just be a team's channel. It can be a SharePoint site, a Slack group, but it's where you can post updates about AI, and where it can reveal some true value in fostering a community of practice where those AI navigators of yours and other colleagues can come together. They can share their tips. They can talk about successes or lessons learned that they've had, any cautionary tales. The thing that is important about that knowledge hub is a couple of things. One is actively feeding that hub, right? It's like a plant. You cannot just put it in a pot and stick it in a corner. You got to give it some sunlight. You got to give it some water, some TLC. It's the same thing with creating a new habit and instilling a new capability. It requires a little bit of upfront attention and support. Um and then you know it really starts to foster and create um a life of its own. Um next our guide goes into details about how to apply some neuroscience principles behind change management and behind creating new habits. And I know there are some folks on our call today who think a lot about these principles. So I don't think that they will find them particularly surprising but might be helpful. Neuroscience in change management tells us that people learn best in bite-sized chunks. So, let's move away from those long training lectures that have scored assessments at the end of them and a passing grade. Um, they learn best when they adopt tools that give them quick wins. So, immediate feedback that tells them that they're moving in the right direction. And lastly, they really understand and remember when the new AI habit is connected to the work that they're doing. So maybe instead of something like, "Let's go learn this new AI tool," we could say something like, you know, the next time you're drafting board minutes or the next time you're creating a large email message with instructions to people, let's try using AI to create the first version of that document. And we believe that if you design your roll out using techniques like this, adoption in your organization becomes more organic. It becomes collective and it becomes something that's joyful and not scary. >> All right. And so what you know, Mimi and I have have done for the last few minutes is we've given you a high-level overview of what's in the the toolkit that we put together. On your screen, you you see a QR code. Um that's the full toolkit and it's designed to be a practical stepbystep guide. Um it includes an AI journey checklist um to help you to start, sustain uh and scale your AI adoption. It will allow you to turn concepts into a concrete plan and you know starting with that that first listening tour to drafting your first policy and to building your roadmap. It's your guide to leading this change initiative. Yep. And we um have the link to the full toolkit just added into the chat as well, so people can access it that way. So our goal today was really to take that first step and start to demystify the AI journey, make it a little less daunting, and hopefully create a clear people first path forward. Like George mentioned and like I've said a little bit throughout, the guide has a lot more detail and it's got a great list of additional resources to get you started. We recognize that there's a lot of talk around AI and there are some good materials and references out there. So, we're not going to claim that we're the only ones who've thought about this. Um, but I think that we've got some good, thoughtful, and unique perspectives that we can bring to this situation. Um, we will also send a link to the guide along with a recording to this presentation to all of our registrants tomorrow. I know people have been asking for either closed caption or a recording of this. So, we are happy to share that. And then lastly, I would say, you know, if you're still feeling a little bit overwhelmed or you're not overwhelmed, you just want to talk through your AI program and some of the next steps you'd like to take, we're here to help. Uh, as I mentioned before, PTKO partners with nonprofits and associations on really everything from AI roadmap development and policy creation to hands-on coaching and really taking those next first steps. So, please do reach out to us. we would love to talk with you. >> And again, thank you. I think we've got about 101 15 minutes, so we can do some Q&A. Um, so if you have any questions, feel free to put them into the chat. And again, I'll I'll I'll mirror what Mimi said earlier. Um, you can reach out to us. Our our LinkedIn information is right there on the screen, so you can scan the QR code um or or type our names in and search for us. Also the guide is there with an extensive amount of resources that we found because um the AI landscape is changing. So you know the the best tool today might not be the best tool in a few months. Um but these resources will help you get plugged into the right information and uh be able to ask others. Um while we wait and see uh any questions from the group, one of the questions that came in from uh the registrations was you know what are the the the tools or what are the best tools or use cases um that associations and nonprofits you know should be using. Um, and I hear this question quite a bit and you know I'm asked it directly and and I actually turn the question around and I say you're asking the wrong question. The first thing you shouldn't be asking what AI should I be doing. The question again is what problem are we trying to solve? Sometimes the solution to that problem isn't AI at all. It could be using an existing tool that you already have within the organization. It might be just getting staff trained better on on an existing application or business process. But, you know, AI might be an opportunity for you. Um, and so, you know, one of the things I'll encourage everyone is, you know, build out your your peer network. You know, look to associations like ASAE. look for AI groups uh on LinkedIn um and see what others are doing. Um you know, you might be doing your, you know, grant applications very specific within your field, but other organizations might already be using AI to help with grant applications. And so you can learn what tools they found success with and see if that tool is adaptable for your specific case. I don't see any questions coming into chat. Oh, hold on. We just got one from Carolyn. and share examples of good learning sharing learning programs that are helping nonprofit staff learn the tools they do have or that their organization has invested in. I'm sensing that even when an organization makes a decision, they sometimes don't have a lot of support for staff to learn the tool. Yeah, that's a good question. >> Yeah, go ahead. >> That's a good one, Carolyn. Um I I know personally when I was looking for AI training um a few months ago, it it was surprisingly hard to find. Everybody has the AI solution, but nobody had the the training to back it up. Um I do know recently um the folks over at OpenAI as well uh chat GPT as well as uh the the organizations behind Claude Anthropic have started to put together training free training uh for users on those platforms. So that would be one place to to look for training as you roll out these tools. Uh, another example that you might want to consider that's included in our resource guide is an organization called Sidecar. Um, and they focus specifically on AI and digital training for associations and nonprofits. So, you might find uh their training to be more applicable to your use cases. Um, hope that helps, Caroline. And Valerie just commented that she's had similar experiences in searching. This is a truly this is truly an emerging learning space for practitioners. And I think you're both absolutely right. I think some of it has to do with the fact that AI is a bit different from a CRM or a um tool that is a bit more specific in its intent and in its use. AI's strength of being usable and applicable in so many different ways for so many different parts of an organization can also sometimes make it difficult to provide practical usable guidance that is relevant to not just an organization but even within our nonprofit or philanthropic field. Uh there's a lot of different types that are starting to really come at this. [clears throat] >> And Carolyn, the the brown bag example is is a great one. It's a great way to share how people are using AI. Um one of the adoption strategies that I found success with, particularly when you're starting to roll out that chatty assistant. You know, you can give somebody a tool and say, "Okay, we're rolling out Copilot or we're rolling out Gemini. it can do everything, but you don't actually show people what everything is. So although the tool can do everything, it ends up doing nothing. Um, and so your adoption's low and nobody's sure really how to use this tools. So I like to ground these tools in people's everyday realities. So show people how they can use that chat tool in their daily life. you know, give them examples of how you can use it to plan your vacation. Um, an example, right before this meeting, um, on my kitchen counter, there are two bananas that I unfortunately did not eat. They've made it to a ripe stage, but I could use those for baking, but it's only two bananas. So, what can I do with only two ripe bananas? Uh, and Gemini gave me uh a couple recipes so that I can put together something quickly with those bananas. Um, has nothing to do with work. Um, but I'm seeing how I can engage with this AI to solve any random problem that happens to come my way. And today it was bananas. I think another element of using AI that we touched on in our presentation um and maybe could benefit from a circling back is ways to prompt AI. And I've heard a lot of clients say that or and I've said it myself too that when I use AI sometimes the responses and the information that comes back is not optimal or it's not satisfactory or it doesn't quite get to what I wanted out of the exchange with AI. Some of that is definitely around the fact that I I believe that, you know, AI and and that generative AI and the learning element of it takes some time. It takes time for the tool to understand your preferences, the way that you might use certain terminology, the way that you would like to see responses back. Do you like bullet points? Do you like fully written out paragraphs? Do you like visuals instead? So, the prompting part makes a big difference as well because that makes a it really helps the AI understand what it is that you're seeking. Um, I try to think of it as the first date when you are meeting someone for the first time or a first client interaction where you're still sussing out, right, and feeling out how is it that this person likes to operate? What is it that they are looking for? What will what is their definition of success? And then how might I make my tweaks and adjustments? And if you're at a roadblock on how do I come up with these prompts so I can share them with the rest of the organization kind of as as Patty was saying that you know informal show and tell. Ask your chat agent ask it for example prompts on how you can engage with it to solve you know give it a problem. Um and it will give you example prompts back that you can share. So, here's you using AI to help plan an AI roll out. Um, so, you know, again, you know, use the tools that are available to you and use them for what they're good at. >> Yeah, Carolyn, that that your your point about, you know, AI getting it wrong. Um, and that's a very valid point. Um, which is why in our guide the first thing we start with is that chatty assistant. It's something that your staff are engaging with. It's not memberfacing. It's not customerf facing. It's not automated. It is human engaging with an AI service and getting an answer back. And that's an important first step to first build comfort with AI and understand what it can do and what it can't do. So understand the limits. Um but then it also starts to get those creative juices flowing about okay well I used it for this I wonder if I can now use it for that. Um and then folks naturally and you know that curiosity of your AI navigators starts to build out some of those other use cases. >> Yeah. And I love that Stefan added in his favorite tip of how to use AI or how to optimize and continuously improve the type of prompts that could be provided in order for AI to give you the output that you're looking for. I would love to open it up to the rest of the group and hear from you all if you have certain tips that you can share with the rest of us on ways that you have been successfully using AI whether it's from a prompting standpoint whether it's from um ways that you have asked AI to assist you or be a thinking buddy with you on different tasks and c projects that are out It does not all have to be workrelated either. >> Well, I can share while folks are are thinking about something to put into the chat. I can share you know what Mimi and I used AI for for this presentation. Um, we had the guide completely created which human created in disclosure. AI did assist with some of the verbiage and formatting. So it you know it fixes my typos and grammatical errors. Um but for the presentation we asked AI to look at the guide so a report and come back with a a presentation a brief presentation with bullet points and it came back with you know about 95% of what you saw uh this afternoon. um very good first if not second draft if you will. Um we then had to go through and you know apply the style guide and you know add graphics and and jazz it up a little bit. But from going from having a report to having a pretty darn close to final presentation was less than two minutes. Um so you know I think those are some of the use cases when you know you're working with your internal stakeholders. You know every organization has reports and they all have to do presentations. So, if your chatty AI assistant can shave a few minutes uh off that process, that's going to make somebody be able to, you know, make them more efficient and help them get their work done better and faster. >> Yeah, there's a good um one quick thing I would note about that. when I use AI in the past to help me come up with presentation materials or even the talk track that accompanies different slides, I think George is 100% right that it helps to create that first draft. And then I always think that there's nothing that can replace your authentic voice. And most of the time, people can tell when you're reading off of a script or you are speaking genuinely, using your words, using frames and references and things that are unique to you. That's the type of stuff that I have found that AI doesn't 100% capture, at least for me, and at least not yet. It might as if I use it more often and if I give it specific prompts or feedback. One thing that I have done is I will take something that started in AI. I will finish it to for myself adding in my own language and thoughts and then I will feed it back to AI and say this is what I did with what you gave me. I'd love for you to learn and think about and note the changes that I made so that you can apply them in the future. Uh, in the meantime, I see a couple of comments in our chat box about some questions about how peers are using AI to help with donor outreach and with fundraising. And I think that links back again to one of the quick slido polls that we did at the start where there's not as much use and application of AI in that realm just yet, but I see some good conversations and responses getting added in. And I would go back to the presentation where you know whatever system you're using for your donor management and donor outreach see what AI functionality they have planned. Um it may not be live yet but I I think it's relatively safe to say it should be on their road map. Um and you might be able to get something uh in the near future. Lauren, I like the notes that you've been adding about using AI as a thinking buddy. I I do the same thing. You know, it's something that helps me to bounce ideas off. Sometimes, at least in the beginning, I think I found AI to be a little too accommodating for me. So, when I would give it ideas, it wouldn't come back and challenge me. Instead, it would say, "That's great. Let's go ahead and do that." And I'm going, "No, no, no, no. I This isn't a final answer. This is a challenge me. Tell me if my thought process is off base. Tell me if my flow of information and the way that I'm structuring my ideas for a presentation are making sense or if I'm just going off in a stray direction. So, that's another area where I shift my tone to AI, to my chatty assistant, and say, "I want you to challenge me on this." And it does. >> And and Kim, I I I use your example on a on a regular basis. So, I routinely ask Gemini, which the the assistant I use, to help me draft an email that and I tell it like four things that I want to accomplish. And I always include the prompt, please be brief. Um because chatty assistants today are very chatty and very verbose. Um and even when I get the the the draft back, um I usually end up, you know, reducing the word count in half. Um but it but it is a good way to, you know, I've got ideas about what I want to be in that email. Help me put them together into a cohesive thought. >> Yeah. Valerie mentioned she's used it successfully to summarize notes at a board meeting. It's good at parsing out action steps and identifying who's responsible. I agree with you and I I like that because many times I've seen board meeting minutes that are it's more a regurgitation of the content rather than a here's the content and here's what needs to come out of it or here are the next steps that people have committed to the timeline that they have to get it done by and how everything fits together. So, I really appreciate that element of artificial intelligence, particularly if you're parsing through a lot of data and you're trying to cull and come at very top level insights, themes, and decisions to make from there. >> Yeah. and and Norine to to your question on you know fundraising um and responding to proposals I think the first one's going to the answer is going to come down to it depends on who's issuing the grant that you're applying to um some funders um could take a stance that they only want human generated uh applications and they may have uh language that says you know AI generated applications may be disqualified. Um, so you definitely want to pay attention to the funer and what their requirements are or what their disqualifications are for applications that are submitted. Um, and you know, I can see funders going both ways on this. Um, you know, AI makes it a lot e lot faster to put together a grant application. So, are they going to get overwhelmed and are they going to uh require that applications be purely human generated? And would they put in uh tools to block applications or disqualify applications that, you know, hit a a certain threshold on an AI analysis? All right, I think we are just about at time. So, I hope that this has been helpful. We I have found it extremely helpful. I know George has as well. Love the conversation that's happening in the chat. um we are happy to continue the conversation one-on-one or you know in other venues um and we really hope that the materials that we've provided and the conversations that have started here are things that can continue forward on your AI journey. >> Great. Thank you all. >> Thank you so so much. Have a great day.