# Nonprofit AI: Impala MCP and Bridgespan NTEN Report

An episode of [Community IT Innovators Nonprofit Technology Topics](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1536843269), 25 Aug 2026, 30 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1029925/episodes/19701925-nonprofit-ai-impala-mcp-and-bridgespan-nten-report.mp3

Carolyn Woodard covers two pieces of nonprofit AI news worth your time this week: a new AI connector from Impala, and a report from Bridgespan and NTEN that gives nonprofits a practical way to decide where AI actually fits their work. Impala just launched an MCP connector that links its philanthropic database to the AI assistant you already use, including Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot, so you are not locked into a single vendor. The database covers more than 2 million nonprofits, 250,000 foundations, 25 million grant transactions, board and leadership profiles, and full 990 data, and setup takes about two minutes if you already have a plan. Candid and Charity Navigator have made similar moves. Carolyn digs into Choosing Your AI Path, the framework Bridgespan and NTEN built from a survey of nonprofits worldwide. It sorts nonprofit AI work into three dimensions, Augment, Advance, and Advocate. Carolyn walks through each with examples, from a nonprofit using AI on satellite imagery to spot newly cleared airstrips before illegal logging begins, to the ACLU of Massachusetts building staff AI literacy with the AI Now Institute and then pushing for federal rules limiting consequential AI decisions in realms like hiring, credit, housing, and criminal justice. This episode covers: • The three dimensions of the framework: Augment for internal capacity, Advance for mission and program expansion, and Advocate for shaping our national and international AI governance and policy. Most organizations will lead with one, but all three are worth understanding. • What the survey found: 70% of nonprofit leaders say they are not taking advantage of meaningful AI opportunities, only 8% have a formal AI roadmap, 4% report AI meaningfully embedded across the organization, and 57% have not named anyone responsible for AI oversight. • Why naming an AI owner, whether that is a formal title on your executive team, a coordinator, a small committee, or a board member, is becoming a practical necessity rather than a nice to have. • No regrets steps for limited resource organizations: set a responsible use policy and train staff on it, inventory your workflow bottlenecks, pick one or two low risk use cases to experiment with, learn from peer organizations, and stay informed on the AI risks that touch your community. • What funders can do differently: fund capacity rather than licenses, carry pilots through to sustained operations and past go live, and play a convening role so nonprofits can make their own informed choices. 69% of survey respondents reported zero AI funding of any kind. Resources Mentioned: • Choosing Your AI Path, Bridgespan and NTEN • Impala MCP • Candid MCP connector for Claude • Charity Navigator on Perplexity • AI Now Institute • Template, Acceptable Use of AI Tools in the Nonprofit Workplace, Community IT New every Tuesday. _______________________________ Start a conversation :) • Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/ • email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.com • on LinkedIn • on reddit/r/nonprofitITmanagement • on the Community IT website Thanks for listening.

## Transcript

[0:22] Carolyn Woodard: Hello and welcome to the Community IT Innovators Midweek Nonprofit AI Check-in.
[0:28] Carolyn Woodard: I'm Carolyn Woodard, your host.
[0:30] Carolyn Woodard: I am not an AI expert.
[0:32] Carolyn Woodard: I'm not even particularly techie oriented, but I do use AI.
[0:37] Carolyn Woodard: I've been learning about AI, and I'm just fascinated by the intersection of AI and nonprofits in philanthropy.
[0:45] Carolyn Woodard: So every week on this podcast, we try to bring you a little bit of news, something to think about, maybe some resources that you can use on your own AI journey at nonprofits.
[0:55] Carolyn Woodard: And you just give you a few minutes of curated AI because it's such a fire hose of information coming at all of us.
[1:05] Carolyn Woodard: So if you have questions, you can go ahead and uh ask me those, put them in through the contact information in the podcast.
[1:12] Carolyn Woodard: You can reach us on our website, communityit.com.
[1:15] Carolyn Woodard: I'm on LinkedIn, so um chat me up there and just uh let me know what you're interested in and thinking about and reading.
[1:22] Carolyn Woodard: So
[1:23] Carolyn Woodard: Today I want to start with some news about Impala.
[1:26] Carolyn Woodard: If you're using them for research into nonprofits, their nonprofit database for giving and philanthropy.
[1:34] Carolyn Woodard: Um you may already have noticed, but if you're not using them, um they just announced last week that they have a new MCP connector for AI tools.
[1:45] Carolyn Woodard: And their connector works with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.
[1:51] Carolyn Woodard: So you're not locked into one AI vendor that they work with.
[1:55] Carolyn Woodard: Um,
[1:56] Carolyn Woodard: Their database covers over 2 million nonprofit organizations, 250,000 foundations, 25 million grant transactions, uh they have board and leadership profiles, they have all the 990 data.
[2:12] Carolyn Woodard: Um, and so when you hook in your AI tool that you use, you can uh do more advanced research and you can get your AI to search for specific things you're looking for in their database.
[2:27] Carolyn Woodard: And it's uh as anytime you use AI on a specific database, it's not going to find you just random stuff online.
[2:34] Carolyn Woodard: It is limited to their database, which as I said is huge and covers so many nonprofits and philanthropy foundations.
[2:43] Carolyn Woodard: So really good information to know.
[2:46] Carolyn Woodard: And uh,
[2:47] Carolyn Woodard: If you already have a plan, I'm sure they have been messaging you about this probably nonstop, but uh it just takes two minutes to set it up, um, and then your AI can just you know go crazy in their database and and you can do a lot of research that way.
[3:03] Carolyn Woodard: So um
[3:04] Carolyn Woodard: I think Claude announced a couple months ago now that they have a similar connection to Candid.
[3:11] Carolyn Woodard: So, but Candid's connector is Claude only.
[3:16] Carolyn Woodard: So you uh actually I'm looking at this news release now, it's been uh available since December and it's free to registered Candid users.
[3:25] Carolyn Woodard: Impala is kind of new because it allows different nonprofit data connectors uh with the different AI tools, not a single tool.
[3:36] Carolyn Woodard: And then uh Charity Navigator also has an agreement and a connector to Perplexity.
[3:41] Carolyn Woodard: So if you're using Charity Navigator, same thing, 990 information, etc.
[3:46] Carolyn Woodard: Perplexity is the AI tool that can connect in uh to that database to do you know funder prospecting, organization verification, ratings, giving research, all that sort of thing.
[4:00] Carolyn Woodard: So
[4:00] Carolyn Woodard: I just wanted to let you know new news in the nonprofit AI research realm, and uh pretty exciting.
[4:09] Carolyn Woodard: So uh give let me know if you use uh Impala and uh and then this is a good tool.
[4:14] Carolyn Woodard: It's not something I use, but you know, all nonprofits out there are always doing their research into donors and funding, and uh, this seems like it could be super helpful.
[4:24] Carolyn Woodard: The second thing I wanted to talk about today is this new release from Bridge span and NTEN.
[4:33] Carolyn Woodard: They did a giant study uh over the past several months, and they released a report on it, and they kind of distilled the information from that report into a framework called Choosing Your AI Path.
[4:49] Carolyn Woodard: And I will share that link with you in the show notes.
[4:52] Carolyn Woodard: I think everyone should read this article.
[4:55] Carolyn Woodard: It's a little bit longer, but it is just full of such great information about how nonprofits are really using AI.
[5:03] Carolyn Woodard: They have a ton of very short case studies and examples that I just found fascinating and very useful.
[5:10] Carolyn Woodard: And their framework that they came up with, which I'm gonna talk about, and then they do also have some ideas for funders, for nonprofits, for AI in general going forward.
[5:22] Carolyn Woodard: So really thoughtful article and framework.
[5:26] Carolyn Woodard: And what they pulled out was three dimensions of using AI at nonprofits.
[5:32] Carolyn Woodard: So one the first dimension they call Augment.
[5:35] Carolyn Woodard: So using AI for internal efficiency.
[5:38] Carolyn Woodard: We've talked a lot about this on this podcast, um, but using all of those tools to help you under-resourced, understaffed, uh, you're probably doing five people's jobs already, or just doing your own job and thinking, oh, you know, like if I had time enough, world enough and time, I would like to do these things that would move my nonprofit further.
[6:00] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, but I only have the time to be able to do this thing, or I'm stuck in this busy work that I have to do that has to be done, and someone has to do it.
[6:08] Carolyn Woodard: So using those AI tools to augment what you do, and in those cases, it's pretty easy to keep the human in the loop, and you can set up these, you know, workflows and use AI tools, you know, to bounce ideas off of or to automate something that just takes you forever.
[6:26] Carolyn Woodard: You know, I used, I think I described this myself, but I used AI, one of my first times using AI was to uh coordinate four different CSVs into a single Excel file with four tabs.
[6:39] Carolyn Woodard: And it was just so eye-opening.
[6:41] Carolyn Woodard: You know, this is something I have to do every month.
[6:44] Carolyn Woodard: It takes me an hour or so to do it, to go through and make all the edits and make sure that all the information is there and check it.
[6:50] Carolyn Woodard: And uh it took about an hour when I first set up the AI Claude to be able to do it, going back and forth and like, oh, now this column is over too far and the headers are off.
[7:00] Carolyn Woodard: But once we got it working, I will tell you every month that we do it, um, the last couple of months that I've done it, it just works.
[7:08] Carolyn Woodard: So I stick the CSVs in there and I get an Excel like seconds later, and it's the Excel that I wanted.
[7:14] Carolyn Woodard: So those sorts of projects, uh, augmenting your own work within your workflow is um you know, first dimension that they talk about.
[7:24] Carolyn Woodard: Um,
[7:25] Carolyn Woodard: The second dimension that they pull out is Advance.
[7:28] Carolyn Woodard: So mission and program expansion.
[7:32] Carolyn Woodard: And I feel like this is something that very early on, like two or even three years ago, I saw a couple of ..
[7:38] Carolyn Woodard: this often was what you would see in terms of nonprofits using AI was these kind of innovative uses by maybe tech forward organizations that changed or made better what their nonprofit does, their mission.
[7:56] Carolyn Woodard: And
[7:56] Carolyn Woodard: One example that I heard of, like I said, two or even three years ago at a conference, was a nonprofit that was working on trying to protect the Amazon.
[8:07] Carolyn Woodard: And they knew from their on the ground and lived experience and the partners that they were working with on the ground, was that one of the ways the clear cutting happens, or one of the early signals that a clear cut was going to be underway for mining or for, you know, livestock or whatever it was gonna be for, was that these little teeny tiny airstrips would suddenly have a bunch of traffic.
[8:35] Carolyn Woodard: There'd be small Cessnas landing there.
[8:38] Carolyn Woodard: And if you went to that small location, you would find, you know, out of towners, people who were there who were scouting out where they were gonna do their illegal logging.
[8:50] Carolyn Woodard: And um,
[8:51] Carolyn Woodard: What this nonprofit was able to do was use an AI to analyze satellite imagery to find places where those airstrips were either cleared or you know, they could see the traffic that they were getting more people there.
[9:07] Carolyn Woodard: And often it was just that they cleared the airstrips or created a new airstrip in this little tiny town, and that was where they were going to do logging.
[9:15] Carolyn Woodard: And so finding that kind of leading indicator, they were able to go in with the authorities and just be in that location sometimes was enough to keep the illegal loggers from operating there.
[9:28] Carolyn Woodard: So trying to catch them before they had done the logging instead of seeing them on the satellite images after the logging had started or was complete, they had already uh done the clear cut.
[9:38] Carolyn Woodard: So that was, you know, it's an interesting case where they weren't able to look at all the satellite themselves, a human couldn't do it or wouldn't see it, but they wrote this AI program that would analyze the images for them and then you know suggest these places where they thought that the air strips had been cleared or created, and then they they had a list of places that they're with limited resources and limited contact with the authorities, they could go into a smaller list of where they thought the log logging might be about to happen.
[10:09] Carolyn Woodard: So really interesting ideas.
[10:11] Carolyn Woodard: And I feel like back in the day, you know, two years, two and a half years ago, we saw some examples like that.
[10:18] Carolyn Woodard: And it definitely isn't every nonprofit, it wasn't every nonprofit.
[10:22] Carolyn Woodard: It was nonprofits who were already working with technology, you know, had access to things like those satellite images and just needed the AI to give them a handout.
[10:33] Carolyn Woodard: Um, but then
[10:34] Carolyn Woodard: Once they had that, you know, you can see that changes how they were able to do their mission.
[10:39] Carolyn Woodard: I remember another example was an organization, I want to say it was in Boston, but don't quote me on that, that was using AI to match up census data to their information that they had in their systems of children in junior high school who were their targets to be able to go to college.
[11:02] Carolyn Woodard: And so what they what this nonprofit did was they gave supports and you know, mentoring and help to the family if they'd never had anyone go to college before that helped identify these students who maybe weren't, you know, the top of their class and getting all of the scholarship information already because they were so outstanding, but students who would do great at college.
[11:23] Carolyn Woodard: They just weren't in a family situation where college was really something they were looking at.
[11:28] Carolyn Woodard: And so by pairing up the census information, these again, understaffed nonprofit, um, they worked with the schools in these low-income areas, but the census data was able to help them be more targeted in like certain blocks where there were a lot of families that had never had someone go to college, that sort of thing.
[11:49] Carolyn Woodard: And then they could work with the school and find the children who were a good candidate for this mentoring through high school.
[11:57] Carolyn Woodard: So they're trying to find them in junior high school and mentor them through high school, so then they could end up going to college.
[12:03] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so again,
[12:04] Carolyn Woodard: That really changed how they were able to do their mission because their outreach people didn't just go to the schools and talk to the teachers and find to try to find the students that way.
[12:15] Carolyn Woodard: They were able to also go to homes and um and interview families and like kind of introduce them to this program that would give them all of these supports.
[12:24] Carolyn Woodard: So, really interesting thing that they did there.
[12:26] Carolyn Woodard: And like I said,
[12:27] Carolyn Woodard: This report from Bridgespan and NTEN is just full of these quick little snippets of ideas and examples, AI use that nonprofits have already done with the organization that's doing it, so that you can follow up if you're interested in learning more.
[12:43] Carolyn Woodard: So
[12:44] Carolyn Woodard: The first two dimensions are Augment your own capacity, Advance, which is be able to advance your mission, expand what you do, or change how you do it to reach more people or do more things that you're trying to accomplish.
[12:59] Carolyn Woodard: And the third dimension is Advocate.
[13:02] Carolyn Woodard: So shaping governance and policy.
[13:05] Carolyn Woodard: Um, and
[13:06] Carolyn Woodard: I thought this was just very eye-opening for me, and I hope that you all will read this article also, because it's not just uh advocate for uh the things that the nonprofits are doing or trying to do uh in this environment, but actually advocating for the regulation and advancement of AI and how AI is interacting with our society, our planet, the things that we want to do.
[13:39] Carolyn Woodard: And so it has a bunch of ways that you can get involved in organizations that are doing the advocacy around how we use AI.
[13:47] Carolyn Woodard: So I thought that was just fascinating - shaping the governance and shaping policy at the higher levels, um, state, national, international.
[13:57] Carolyn Woodard: So very interesting.
[13:59] Carolyn Woodard: As this report says, most organizations will pick one of those aspects, dimensions.
[14:06] Carolyn Woodard: Um, but it's important to understand all three.
[14:09] Carolyn Woodard: And this report gives you really good grounding in that, and as I said, gives you examples of organizations and ex and examples and gives you examples of organizations that are working in all of these different dimensions.
[14:22] Carolyn Woodard: Um,
[14:23] Carolyn Woodard: Some of the statistics that came out of this that are in the article, 70% of nonprofit staff and leaders say they're not taking advantage of meaningful AI opportunities.
[14:32] Carolyn Woodard: And that, you know, reflects back on the other reports that we've seen where there's a lot of nonprofits are using AI tools.
[14:42] Carolyn Woodard: You know, they have 80, 90% of their staff using AI tools, but they're not doing it very intentionally, or they don't feel that they're doing it intentionally.
[14:49] Carolyn Woodard: And so they're kind of worried about that.
[14:52] Carolyn Woodard: Another statistic from this Bridgespan report is that 8% of nonprofits have a formal roadmap for their AI use, and only 4% say AI is meaningfully embedded organization-wide.
[15:07] Carolyn Woodard: 57% haven't named anyone responsible for AI oversight.
[15:12] Carolyn Woodard: And that's uh, you know, the new title I was talking about last week or the week before, the uh chief AI officer or you know, VP for AI, but someone who's the coordinator, you know, if you're a larger organization, that may be a formal title and they may be on your executive team.
[15:29] Carolyn Woodard: If you're a smaller organization or kind of just feeling your way through your AI policy and your AI needs, that might be just a person who quote unquote owns it is the coordinator, or it might be a committee, it might be a board member.
[15:44] Carolyn Woodard: So
[15:44] Carolyn Woodard: Somebody who is got your understands your organization really well and is helping, as I said, curate this fire hose of what you could be doing with AI and helping, you know, create opportunities for AI literacy growing, uh, see opportunities, keeping an eye on that security.
[16:04] Carolyn Woodard: So are you using AI tools in the most secure way that you could be?
[16:08] Carolyn Woodard: All of those good things, and then trying to fit it into your strategic plan and your IT roadmap, right?
[16:15] Carolyn Woodard: So that you can see how does this tool fit into what we're trying to do overall, and really see those opportunities and take advantage of them and hopefully get a little less distracted going down kind of side quests with AI that maybe don't fit into where you're trying to go overall.
[16:31] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so
[16:32] Carolyn Woodard: Really interesting if you, you know, if you haven't designated someone at your organization yet that is your AI owner, uh definitely think about that and start talking about it because I think it's only gonna become more necessary as we go on.
[16:48] Carolyn Woodard: There's starting to be job descriptions around this.
[16:51] Carolyn Woodard: So I think that is a role that's gonna be more and more, I don't know, uh in use and expected.
[16:59] Carolyn Woodard: And we're gonna see the benefits of someone taking that role on at your nonprofit.
[17:04] Carolyn Woodard: So really think about that.
[17:05] Carolyn Woodard: But don't worry if you don't have one because 57% of nonprofits don't have one either.
[17:11] Carolyn Woodard: Um,
[17:11] Carolyn Woodard: I was really interested, as I said, there were several case studies in this, you know, throughout this framework.
[17:17] Carolyn Woodard: They give lots of different examples.
[17:19] Carolyn Woodard: And um, one thing that I, one that really intrigued me and really resonated was the ACLU of Massachusetts.
[17:28] Carolyn Woodard: And this was a case study under the third dimension, the advocate dimension.
[17:34] Carolyn Woodard: They partnered with AI Now Institute to do a bunch of things at the ACLU in Massachusetts.
[17:42] Carolyn Woodard: So
[17:42] Carolyn Woodard: One thing was to build technical literacy in-house.
[17:45] Carolyn Woodard: So making sure that people do that upskilling and that they really were bringing everyone in the staff along with them as we advocate for to understand if you if you don't want to use AI or you're an AI skeptic or you have serious concerns about what it's doing to your community, um, definitely building up that literacy so that you're operating from a position of understanding what AI is doing and what we expect it to do.
[18:11] Carolyn Woodard: So that was something that was important to them.
[18:13] Carolyn Woodard: They did this partnering with AI Now Institute to do professional development and literacy.
[18:19] Carolyn Woodard: And then they used that experience and their staff understanding of AI to push for federal rules requiring notice, audits, and human review before AI makes consequential decisions in employment, housing, credit, and criminal justice.
[18:39] Carolyn Woodard: Which is just so fascinating because this is an organization that is really using what they do, their deep values.
[18:49] Carolyn Woodard: So they're already know a lot about employment, housing, credit, criminal justice, and the biases that come in, you know, to those institutions.
[18:59] Carolyn Woodard: And so they already used what they already knew and were good at, and were able to realize this AI dimension.
[19:06] Carolyn Woodard: And for them, the dimension is lobbying to put regulations in on when you can use AI to make things like employment decisions, hiring decisions, firing decisions, HR decisions, you know, housing, bias in housing and uh discrimination in housing, in credit, um, and of course in the criminal justice system.
[19:30] Carolyn Woodard: So using AI to make decisions about who, you know, who gets parole, when when your trial is scheduled, when your you know, sentencing guidelines, all of those pieces.
[19:40] Carolyn Woodard: So really
[19:41] Carolyn Woodard: Just fascinating how an organization can understand all of these different dimensions where AI is going to intersect with what they do and the community, the community that they care about, and where they have this deep, deep topic knowledge and subject expertise and authority.
[20:01] Carolyn Woodard: And so combining that up with the AI, I just think that's so interesting.
[20:05] Carolyn Woodard: And it really speaks to kind of where philanthropy in the nonprofit sector is right now, and what we keep urging as well from this podcast is that sense that we have agency.
[20:17] Carolyn Woodard: And the more informed you are, the more you see those opportunities and you know risks.
[20:23] Carolyn Woodard: Like,
[20:23] Carolyn Woodard: What if the ACLU didn't have any information about how AI was intersecting with what they do?
[20:31] Carolyn Woodard: Then they wouldn't be able to do this lobbying to you know set the guidelines for when AI can make these really important decisions that can have so much bias baked into them.
[20:43] Carolyn Woodard: So interesting.
[20:45] Carolyn Woodard: So
[20:46] Carolyn Woodard: I think another really great piece of this uh report and this article about it is that if you're a limited resource organization, they have a whole boxed area saying, you know, no regrets, don't have too much FOMO, um, but don't think that there's nothing you can do because it's all beyond your budget or beyond your capacity.
[21:09] Carolyn Woodard: So they talk a lot about, like, for example, in the Augment dimension, um, ways that limited resourced organizations can set basic responsible use policy for AI, can investigate uh like inventory workflow, bottlenecks, pick a couple of low-risk use cases where you can experiment with AI.
[21:31] Carolyn Woodard: And I think that big one, just making sure you have a responsible use policy because you know that you're gonna have staff, uh, especially if you're very under-resourced, you may have staff that are tempted by those freemium AI, you know, just go out to AI in the wild.
[21:47] Carolyn Woodard: And um, and that's not what we want you to be doing insofar as possible.
[21:52] Carolyn Woodard: And just if you are, that is what your budget has allows you to do, then just knowing all of the risks that go along with that and really setting your acceptable use policy and training everyone on it so that everybody knows, you know, we don't write a thank you note to our donor using Chat GPT online, those sorts of things.
[22:12] Carolyn Woodard: Um, and then, you know,
[22:15] Carolyn Woodard: Under the Advance uh dimension, they said, you know, it's a really low cost way to do advanced.
[22:21] Carolyn Woodard: To learn from your peer organizations, explore one-to-two mission-aligned use cases, maybe write in this report itself things that you can identify with or that are adjacent or similar to what your nonprofit does, and ways that AI could enhance what your nonprofit accomplishes.
[22:40] Carolyn Woodard: And look into accelerators and capacity building programs.
[22:44] Carolyn Woodard: And as I keep saying, you know, every sector in the nonprofit world is going to be impacted by AI.
[22:51] Carolyn Woodard: So really getting to know what's going on and what you could use it for.
[22:56] Carolyn Woodard: And then under the Advocate dimension, just making sure that you stay informed on risks and that you share lessons with peers and funders.
[23:07] Carolyn Woodard: And you know, when there's something that you can do and participate in, if it's, you know, going to a planning meeting about a data center being built where you are, or lobbying your representative about using AI and hiring decisions, regulations, those sorts of things.
[23:21] Carolyn Woodard: Like those are all low-cost things that as an organization or as an individual you can do.
[23:27] Carolyn Woodard: So they have other examples too, but they don't want people who read this report to just throw up their hands and be like, well, I'm a nonprofit of one and I'm so super strapped.
[23:37] Carolyn Woodard: I have two day jobs to pay for my nonprofit work.
[23:40] Carolyn Woodard: Like, I can't do any of this.
[23:41] Carolyn Woodard: And they're like, there are things that you can do and things that you need to do, because this is you, no one is going to come out of this untouched by AI.
[23:51] Carolyn Woodard: And then the other thing I thought was so fast, fascinating in this report is that they have another boxed area that is really directed at funders.
[23:59] Carolyn Woodard: And so if you're a funder or if you're talking with your funder about how AI intersects with what your nonprofit does, some of the examples and ideas that they put in this, you know, kind of boxed area about funders is to fund capacity, not tools, which we've been saying, you know, since the dawn of time, basically for IT, but it goes doubly for AI.
[24:24] Carolyn Woodard: Um,
[24:24] Carolyn Woodard: I think it's very easy to think, well, I'll just, you know, we'll pay the licenses are uh are discounted.
[24:31] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, some of the licenses are discounted, some of them are full price, even if you're a nonprofit.
[24:35] Carolyn Woodard: But as a funder, we'll just make sure everyone in the nonprofit has licenses and then, you know, wipe our hands of it and we're done.
[24:43] Carolyn Woodard: And um really
[24:44] Carolyn Woodard: We're finding, you know, more and more that all of that upfront costs.
[24:48] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, if you're a funder, if you can pay for the training, the data infrastructure, the data hygiene that people, the organizations need to be able to implement AI securely, the cybersecurity that is needed, the policies, the giving the staff time to learn, time to experiment, and uh time to understand.
[25:09] Carolyn Woodard: Like when do I use my AI note taker?
[25:12] Carolyn Woodard: When do I not?
[25:13] Carolyn Woodard: When is it a privacy concern?
[25:14] Carolyn Woodard: All of those issues are way beyond just paying for the licenses.
[25:19] Carolyn Woodard: So making sure when you are working with your grantees and partnering with them that you're listening to what they need and also suggesting, like make sure you're building capacity and um and you know, this these AI tools are great, but you need to be having the space to learn how to use them and so that funders can really help with that.
[25:38] Carolyn Woodard: Um,
[25:39] Carolyn Woodard: Another thing funders can do is put fund pilots through to sustained operations.
[25:44] Carolyn Woodard: So, you know, it's all very nice to be like, oh, well, this is the pilot.
[25:47] Carolyn Woodard: Here's a one-off experiment.
[25:49] Carolyn Woodard: Okay, now go to some other funder to implement it organization-wide.
[25:54] Carolyn Woodard: And um, that's just not not super helpful.
[25:57] Carolyn Woodard: So um looking at that, the full life cycle of these implementations.
[26:03] Carolyn Woodard: And so, like,
[26:04] Carolyn Woodard: It's great, great, great, great to fund a pilot.
[26:07] Carolyn Woodard: That's fantastic.
[26:08] Carolyn Woodard: And I don't think enough funders do that.
[26:10] Carolyn Woodard: And you know, maybe your pilot's gonna fail.
[26:12] Carolyn Woodard: So fund a couple of pilots.
[26:13] Carolyn Woodard: That's what they're for.
[26:14] Carolyn Woodard: Like experiment and find out what works.
[26:17] Carolyn Woodard: But then when you get the um suggestions and uh strategy that comes out of that pilot, make sure that you're funding that all the way through to being implemented and even, you know, a year after implementation, making sure that you do those post-go live, um fund those interventions as well so that you can make sure it's really successful.
[26:40] Carolyn Woodard: Um,
[26:40] Carolyn Woodard: Another thing funders can do is to play a convening role in building the field.
[26:46] Carolyn Woodard: Um, they quote the James Irvine Foundation uh "help nonprofits make their own informed choices, not tell them what AI to use and how to use it." So I think that's really um, you know, goes back to that capacity building issue.
[27:02] Carolyn Woodard: And what
[27:02] Carolyn Woodard: Something I found just in my own use and in you know what I see online, what I see in our clients at community IT and stories about how they're using AI, the more you use it, the more aha moments you have where you think, well, I'm using it to do this thing, ABC.
[27:18] Carolyn Woodard: I think I could get it to do XYZ.
[27:21] Carolyn Woodard: And I'm gonna talk to somebody else and see if they've done that before.
[27:25] Carolyn Woodard: And I maybe you could even do like LMNOP.
[27:28] Carolyn Woodard: You know, like you just start to get these ideas of like, well, if I can do this with it, I bet it could do that.
[27:33] Carolyn Woodard: And um, and that's the way to find those opportunities.
[27:37] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so doing funders can play convener and help nonprofits.
[27:42] Carolyn Woodard: That's the other thing.
[27:43] Carolyn Woodard: Every nonprofit is all I'm hearing pretty much is we want case studies, we want examples, we want to hear about and see what other nonprofits are using AI for, uh, because it's so different from what for-profits are using it for and how for-profits are approaching AI.
[28:01] Carolyn Woodard: So um, I thought that was a really interesting idea.
[28:05] Carolyn Woodard: Um, and then yeah,
[28:07] Carolyn Woodard: 69% of the respondents to this survey that's in this report reported zero AI funding of any kind.
[28:15] Carolyn Woodard: So their funders, uh, foundations, donors are not specifically funding AI.
[28:21] Carolyn Woodard: So that's a real opportunity for you funders to get out there and uh help these nonprofits adopt these tools um responsibly and effectively.
[28:33] Carolyn Woodard: And um that's gonna be a real um, you know, just a support.
[28:38] Carolyn Woodard: That's a it's going to be quite a lever.
[28:41] Carolyn Woodard: I think it's so interesting to see just the differences between for-profit and nonprofit AI.
[28:47] Carolyn Woodard: So it's a real opportunity there.
[28:49] Carolyn Woodard: And so uh
[28:52] Carolyn Woodard: That is what I had for you this week.
[28:55] Carolyn Woodard: I hope that is helpful.
[28:57] Carolyn Woodard: I I just you probably can hear in my voice.
[29:00] Carolyn Woodard: I just loved this Bridgespan uh report.
[29:02] Carolyn Woodard: Uh kudos to the authors.
[29:05] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, it's got a ton of resources as well in it.
[29:07] Carolyn Woodard: So I will share that link with you in the show notes.
[29:10] Carolyn Woodard: And um I hope that this is helpful.
[29:13] Carolyn Woodard: Uh
[29:13] Carolyn Woodard: You can hear me on Friday.
[29:15] Carolyn Woodard: We're bringing you part two of the nonprofit AI in practice webinar that we just did in August.
[29:24] Carolyn Woodard: So if you missed part one, you can hear that in uh the feed if you subscribe.
[29:29] Carolyn Woodard: And then part two is coming on Friday, and then um we will be back with some more nonprofit AI specific information next Tuesday.
[29:38] Carolyn Woodard: Until then, take care.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.