# Nonprofit AI: Policy Creation Tips

An episode of [Community IT Innovators Nonprofit Technology Topics](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1536843269), 29 Sep 2026, 32 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1029925/episodes/19878220-nonprofit-ai-policy-creation-tips.mp3

Carolyn Woodard covers a question many nonprofits keep putting off: how do you create an AI policy when you are short on time? Whether your organization is embracing AI or has decided not to use it at all, you need a written policy, because AI is already arriving inside the tools you pay for. First, two news items with nonprofit connections. The Gates Foundation has committed $1 billion to AI for health workers, farmers, and teachers, including work to make AI tools function in languages that are poorly represented today. Carolyn looks at why some tribal and small language communities see AI as a way to preserve their languages, while others are rightly skeptical about who owns their data and culture. Common Sense Media also named former Google trust and safety leader Tom Siegel as executive director of its Youth AI Safety Institute, funded in part by Anthropic and the OpenAI Foundation. Then Carolyn walks through practical steps for building a policy, and explains where Community IT stands: we support nonprofits that choose AI and nonprofits that choose not to, and we want any use to be secure. This episode covers: • Why every nonprofit needs an AI policy, even if that policy is that you do not use AI. Microsoft, Google, Zoom, your CRM, and nearly every other tool keeps adding AI, and staff need to know what to do when an update arrives. • Tips to build a policy: designate an AI owner, a person or small team with an executive champion and a board connection, and hold listening sessions with staff, leadership, and the board to surface opinions, skill levels, ideas, and mission-specific concerns before you write anything. • What a policy outline should cover: principles, examples of what you will and will not use AI for, approved uses and tools, a process for resolving questions and revising the policy, and standards for disclosing AI use. • How AI connects to cybersecurity through two risks and one benefit: better scams and deeper fakes coming in, oversharing through free AI tools going out, and AI that can help a small team find security gaps when used carefully. • Why training and review matter as much as the document: common scenarios, a light quiz that confirms staff know who to ask, a culture with no dumb questions, and a revisit at least twice a year. Resources Mentioned: • SNL Weekend Update, Dario Amodei sketch • Gates Foundation $1 Billion Equitable AI Commitment • Tom Siegel Joins the Youth AI Safety Institute, Common Sense Media • Template, Acceptable Use of AI Tools in the Nonprofit Workplace, Community IT • Mission Aligned AI Adoption Model for Nonprofits, Community IT • Blog: Three Filters for Mission-Aligned AI Decision Making, 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 podcast check-in.
[0:28] Carolyn Woodard: I'm Carolyn Woodard, your host, and I'm really happy that you're joining me today.
[0:34] Carolyn Woodard: I am not an AI expert.
[0:36] Carolyn Woodard: I'm really fascinated by this intersection of AI and nonprofits and our environment right now.
[0:44] Carolyn Woodard: So hoping to give you a little bit of news every week, a couple of tips, and let's jump right in.
[0:51] Carolyn Woodard: So I don't know if uh anyone saw the Saturday Night Live sketch over the weekend for uh weekend update um where they did a kind of mock interview with Dario Amodai.
[1:03] Carolyn Woodard: Uh it was really funny.
[1:04] Carolyn Woodard: I'll include the the link here if you need a little laugh, but it kind of encapsulated what's going on right now with the big main story still is is AI gonna kill us all.
[1:13] Carolyn Woodard: Um so if you haven't been following that, uh it's out there and I've covered it a couple of times.
[1:18] Carolyn Woodard: Still wait and see.
[1:20] Carolyn Woodard: But there were a couple of other stories in the news um the last couple of weeks that have a relationship with nonprofits.
[1:28] Carolyn Woodard: One was uh the Gates Foundation has pledged a billion um to language data collection and tools for health workers, farmers, and teachers.
[1:40] Carolyn Woodard: And one of the big issues is um having the large language models that work in other languages.
[1:47] Carolyn Woodard: So trying to get uh some of those smaller languages um into AI models that then can help with health education and farming.
[1:57] Carolyn Woodard: So very interesting idea.
[1:59] Carolyn Woodard: There's lots of you know controversy and questions around it because, as I've said many times on this podcast, who owns your data, who owns your language, your culture, and if you don't want that to be to help create a large language model that can answer questions and you know put together, as we described, how it works, those little packets of what would come next.
[2:25] Carolyn Woodard: Um it's interesting.
[2:27] Carolyn Woodard: There are some tribal communities that are embracing AI tools as a way to save their language when there are um you know smaller and smaller numbers of elders who speak it as a first language, and very few ways for young people to practice using that language because it isn't you know in full use.
[2:47] Carolyn Woodard: Um, you know, there are grocery stores that run in that language or you know, signs or websites built in that language.
[2:53] Carolyn Woodard: So in there are some um, you know, tribes and and communities that are embracing the um opportunities in AI for that to work, but there are others that are very, very skeptical and you know, probably rightfully so.
[3:08] Carolyn Woodard: So it'll be interesting to see what happens with that.
[3:12] Carolyn Woodard: And there are going to be some um uses in the United States and uh in education.
[3:17] Carolyn Woodard: So if you work in education or with tribal communities or small language communities, um, that is something to keep an eye on.
[3:26] Carolyn Woodard: It is uh Open AI and Anthropic, so yeah, neither one of them are you know controversy free, especially right now, um, but just something to keep an eye on that uh how they're gonna how that's gonna evolve and how the Gates Foundation is going to lead it.
[3:42] Carolyn Woodard: A second quick story that I just found fascinating.
[3:46] Carolyn Woodard: Um a lot of what's been going on right now with the kind of doomsday scenarios uh have kind of gone to these, you know, worldwide, there could be a bioweapon, there could be a new pandemic, there could be a worldwide, you know, um outage because of, you know, environment or um data centers or rogue AI or what have you.
[4:07] Carolyn Woodard: And um
[4:07] Carolyn Woodard: I think that that has really drawn a lot of attention away from kind of what you might think of as like everyday problems with AI.
[4:15] Carolyn Woodard: And um, one of those problems is uh youth safety, uh, which has been in the news a lot previous to the is AI gonna kill us all conversation.
[4:26] Carolyn Woodard: So uh
[4:27] Carolyn Woodard: Common Sense Media, which you may know of, they uh um kind of long-standing organization that um provides you know reviews and information to parents uh and children about you know websites and movies and apps and um you know all kinds of media that young people could be uh interacting with.
[4:50] Carolyn Woodard: And I think cool if you haven't checked out their um their website and their their programs, one of the cool things that they do is they have, you know, parents say and you know, young people say, kids say about the different, you know, movies or apps or whatever it is.
[5:05] Carolyn Woodard: So um, you know, they're an industry standard in looking out for youth safety online and interacting with social media.
[5:13] Carolyn Woodard: So they just um added a uh executive director to their uh youth AI Safety Institute.
[5:21] Carolyn Woodard: Um so his name is Tom Siegel, and he uh came from Google where he was an architect of their trust and community standards um, you know, internal safety uh issues for uh quite a while.
[5:36] Carolyn Woodard: Um, and he is uh was being brought over to Common Sense Media, I think last week or the week before they announced it.
[5:45] Carolyn Woodard: The institute is funded partly by Anthropic and partly by OpenAI Foundation.
[5:50] Carolyn Woodard: So again, with uh big players uh putting some, you know, in good ways, they're putting their money into this kind of uh endeavor.
[5:59] Carolyn Woodard: Um, you know, you can talk amongst yourselves about whether you think this is AI washing.
[6:05] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, but they definitely have a lot of money to be spending.
[6:08] Carolyn Woodard: So it's nice that they're spending it on something like this with, you know, a trusted nonprofit leader in this space.
[6:15] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so I think that'll be interesting to see how that evolves and if Common Sense Media is able to create um a reputation uh, you know, in some of these ongoing cases, but going forward around regulations around uh youth safety.
[6:32] Carolyn Woodard: So that'll be interesting to see as well.
[6:36] Carolyn Woodard: And then I wanted to just um talk a little bit more about some best practices around policy making.
[6:46] Carolyn Woodard: So we get questions a lot about um policy, AI policy.
[6:52] Carolyn Woodard: And uh I talked a couple of weeks ago about best practices for AI kind of in general that have come out through doing this podcast and through our work with clients and through, you know, everything that's coming out online uh now that you can find.
[7:08] Carolyn Woodard: So I just wanted to delve a little bit into kind of this niche of policy making.
[7:14] Carolyn Woodard: I think a lot of nonprofits feel that they don't have time or don't know how to create an AI policy.
[7:20] Carolyn Woodard: Um, I think there's, you know, there's statistics out there, varying statistics of the number of nonprofits that are using AI, which I'd imagine is kind of close to 100%.
[7:28] Carolyn Woodard: Uh if you have just, you know, one person going to chat GPT to ask one question.
[7:34] Carolyn Woodard: Um, and then the number of nonprofits that are implementing AI in more thoughtful and intentional ways and uh have funding for it, have policies around it is very small.
[7:46] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, usually under the couple of polls that I've seen have put that under 10%.
[7:50] Carolyn Woodard: So uh something that nonprofits are struggling with, it may be a time issue, maybe you know, kind of like an AI literacy issue of thinking that you know enough to be able to create the policy.
[8:03] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, but we definitely uh
[8:05] Carolyn Woodard: Our best practice would be to create that policy sooner rather than later.
[8:09] Carolyn Woodard: And we have some you know tips on how to do that and some advice.
[8:13] Carolyn Woodard: So I'm gonna go through that.
[8:15] Carolyn Woodard: But uh before going really into that, I wanted to just take a step back and kind of talk about community IT's philosophy uh around supporting AI.
[8:25] Carolyn Woodard: So we are an IT support company.
[8:27] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, we have been working with nonprofits exclusively for 25 years now to enable them to achieve their missions through well-managed IT.
[8:35] Carolyn Woodard: So, over those 25 years, we have dealt with a lot of new technology and helping clients and the sector figure out if it's a right fit.
[8:47] Carolyn Woodard: And so that can range from you know, helping uh nonprofits go into the cloud and use cloud-based um apps and uh tools.
[8:57] Carolyn Woodard: And uh maybe it's you know, databases and building your data and having data policy and data retention policy, all those sorts of things.
[9:05] Carolyn Woodard: Um and um, you know, keeping a device in a license inventory.
[9:10] Carolyn Woodard: Those are all really good things to do.
[9:12] Carolyn Woodard: And so we we advise on you know the landscape, the tools that are out there as we get to know you and partner with you as a client.
[9:21] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, we learn more about what your business needs are, what you're trying to do, what your nonprofit is trying to do, and how you do it.
[9:27] Carolyn Woodard: And then, you know, over time we're able to work with you to figure out what technology fits with that, with what you're trying to achieve, your culture, your budget, you know, your uh technology, who's in charge of technology at your nonprofit, and um, how how we can work together with you as partners on that.
[9:45] Carolyn Woodard: So when AI came onto the scene, you know, of course, we're also gonna advise on AI for clients uh and people in the sector, like listeners to this podcast who are interested and want to use it and want to learn about it.
[9:58] Carolyn Woodard: And uh, we love sharing our expertise.
[10:00] Carolyn Woodard: This is an area where I feel like with moving to the cloud, like our technicians we like knew a lot about how to do it.
[10:07] Carolyn Woodard: Um, and the sector was kind of, you know, we could help the sector a lot because we had that expertise.
[10:12] Carolyn Woodard: With AI, it's a lot more like we're all learning at the same time because you know, we all had access to these tools pretty much at the same time.
[10:20] Carolyn Woodard: So we're learning along with you, but with the technology background and thinking through these different aspects that nonprofits need, like the security policy, like implementation, logins, licenses, um, all those sorts of things where we can get discounted licenses, uh, all those sorts of things that we do for the sector and for our clients.
[10:41] Carolyn Woodard: So I don't want to give the impression that we are always, you know, the cheerleaders in gung-ho about um, you know, making everyone use AI, because it's not true even of our clients.
[10:51] Carolyn Woodard: It's a you know a small fraction, like a quarter, maybe to a third of them that are even interested in doing this.
[10:57] Carolyn Woodard: So I think that's pretty representative of the sector in general.
[11:01] Carolyn Woodard: Um as I said, there probably are a lot of people who are using AI at the other two-thirds our clients, but in terms of having a formal implementation and um, you know, working with us uh to do that, that's um a smaller section.
[11:16] Carolyn Woodard: And I, you know, for nonprofits that decide they don't want to have anything to do with AI, we absolutely support that.
[11:23] Carolyn Woodard: You know, um that's you know, those are legit questions and legitimate decisions to make.
[11:29] Carolyn Woodard: So I want to make sure that that is clear because I think sometimes since this podcast is all about AI, it can sound like, you know, we want everyone to use AI all the time for everything, and that is absolutely not the case.
[11:41] Carolyn Woodard: In fact, we don't want nonprofits to use AI in insecure ways or in ways that are a risk to their reputation, their budget, their um, you know, the work that they're doing and um, you know, the communities that they work in.
[11:58] Carolyn Woodard: So we're definitely very cognizant of that.
[12:01] Carolyn Woodard: So uh after all of that preamble, you're still interested.
[12:05] Carolyn Woodard: Uh in fact,
[12:06] Carolyn Woodard: I think our advice is whether or not you are using AI or planning to embrace AI as an organization, you need an AI policy.
[12:17] Carolyn Woodard: Because if your policy is we don't use AI, that needs to be written down and all of your staff need to know it.
[12:22] Carolyn Woodard: It needs to be in your employee handbook.
[12:24] Carolyn Woodard: And it's really tricky.
[12:26] Carolyn Woodard: Like it can seem like just a black and white decision, but as you know, every tool that you already use, from Microsoft to Google to Zoom to, you know, Teams to, you know, anything else, Monday, Asana, anything that you're using, your CRM, uh, Salesforce, pretty much every tool that you are using is introducing AI as either part of the back end or AI assistance that can help you use the tool better.
[12:54] Carolyn Woodard: Um, and you're also there are vendors that are pure AI that are going to be approaching you as well.
[13:00] Carolyn Woodard: So you need to have one of our first number one on our best practices for AI policy is to designate a person or a team that quote unquote owns AI.
[13:11] Carolyn Woodard: This is in their bailiwick, but they can't do it alone.
[13:15] Carolyn Woodard: This may be somebody that's obvious, like they are, you know, already an evangelist or an early adopter, they're really excited about it.
[13:22] Carolyn Woodard: It should be somebody that has some decision-making capacity.
[13:25] Carolyn Woodard: So, you know, you might want to designate that as the person that's the early adopter, but someone on your executive team needs to be their liaison to the executive team.
[13:35] Carolyn Woodard: And then we also would recommend someone on the board also.
[13:38] Carolyn Woodard: These are some of these are board level discussions and conversations that you need to have.
[13:44] Carolyn Woodard: So as I said, this person can't do it alone.
[13:48] Carolyn Woodard: They're gonna need a team and they're gonna need people backing them up because this is policy, right?
[13:52] Carolyn Woodard: So this is something you're gonna adopt as an organization, everyone is gonna get trained on it, new staff are gonna get trained on it, existing staff are gonna get trained on it, and it's gonna, you're gonna hold them accountable to it.
[14:03] Carolyn Woodard: So that means that it just can't, it can't just be like one person.
[14:07] Carolyn Woodard: It has to be staff-wide and uh they need to have an executive champion.
[14:12] Carolyn Woodard: So if you had one in 2024, good for you.
[14:17] Carolyn Woodard: Um, but that AI policy is definitely out of date.
[14:20] Carolyn Woodard: We've come such a long way since Chat GPT burst on the scene.
[14:24] Carolyn Woodard: Um, AI, as I said, is built into the tools that you already pay for.
[14:28] Carolyn Woodard: So every time you do an update on uh Microsoft or Google or Macs, you're getting new AI.
[14:35] Carolyn Woodard: If your policy is we don't use AI, you're gonna have to incorporate that.
[14:39] Carolyn Woodard: What do you do when there is an update and it has AI in it?
[14:43] Carolyn Woodard: Um, how do you turn it off if that's what your policy is?
[14:46] Carolyn Woodard: So just thinking about all of the different ways that AI creeps in if your policy is new AI.
[14:54] Carolyn Woodard: There's meeting note takers, uh, you have privacy issues with that, and also convenience and also data retention, right?
[15:01] Carolyn Woodard: So I've talked about that on this podcast in the past.
[15:04] Carolyn Woodard: But um, if you were ever subject to a subpoena, if you're if a board member was subject to a subpoena and uh had this note taker that they had been using in board meetings, those would all be discoverable.
[15:17] Carolyn Woodard: So really thinking through how far back do you want to be keeping those types of notes and um what do you do when they are too old, or are there certain apps that you do not retain?
[15:30] Carolyn Woodard: That sort of thing.
[15:31] Carolyn Woodard: So that should all be part of, sorry, that's a separate policy, your data retention policy, but that comes into play with AI, especially with the note takers.
[15:39] Carolyn Woodard: Data connectors is a new piece also, so they can prompt you to allow them access to what?
[15:46] Carolyn Woodard: What should they have access to?
[15:48] Carolyn Woodard: All everything in your SharePoint, just your uh OneDrive.
[15:52] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, you know, you need to think through all of these pieces.
[15:55] Carolyn Woodard: And if you aren't thinking through them, you know, your staff aren't going to be thinking through them, and then everyone is just gonna be doing their own thing.
[16:01] Carolyn Woodard: Uh
[16:01] Carolyn Woodard: AI does lend itself to very individualistic implementation.
[16:06] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, so that is another reason to be um talking about this as an organization.
[16:13] Carolyn Woodard: So you can put in place some restrictive policies on the back end.
[16:17] Carolyn Woodard: They also that that can, I think it's easy for that to go too far.
[16:21] Carolyn Woodard: So, especially if you don't have a full inventory of what staff are using which tools to do their work, you may have staff that are doing, like using some AI tool daily to do something.
[16:32] Carolyn Woodard: And if you cut it off at the IT level, they're gonna be upset and want to know why, right?
[16:38] Carolyn Woodard: So um, so you need to get in there.
[16:41] Carolyn Woodard: And even if you do have those kind of restrictive policies on the back end that you don't allow certain websites or certain tools, um, that uh is gonna take training as well.
[16:52] Carolyn Woodard: So you need to know that your staff know when and how they're supposed to be using AI.
[16:58] Carolyn Woodard: And that just makes that feel more comfortable and it helps morale and it keeps people from feeling like they did the wrong thing or they might do the wrong thing.
[17:06] Carolyn Woodard: So another best practice that we recommend is to have listening conversations uh staff-wide and small groups at the executive level, at the board level, right?
[17:16] Carolyn Woodard: Get opinions, you're gonna have strong opinions, uh, get a gauge for skill level, AI literacy level at your organization, gather ideas and suggestions for what AI could be used for.
[17:27] Carolyn Woodard: You're also gonna hear about what people are afraid of using AI for or afraid your organization will use AI for in the context of your mission, the communities you care about, your values, right?
[17:39] Carolyn Woodard: An instant example of that that comes to mind is if you're an arts organization, you deal with artists of any kind, you know already that the um that artists are really up in arms about AI stealing their work.
[17:53] Carolyn Woodard: And so, you know, you may have staff who aren't as aware of that.
[17:58] Carolyn Woodard: Maybe it's part of one of many community communities that you work with.
[18:03] Carolyn Woodard: Um so you might have staff on the kind of the other side of the organization that don't understand how strongly they feel about it and might use an AI image uh in something on social media, and then you you would get the backlash for that.
[18:15] Carolyn Woodard: So having these open conversations helps surface those issues that you know some of your staff may not be aware of and just helps you share uh the that context of uh what's going on in the communities that you work with.
[18:29] Carolyn Woodard: As I said, your board members, you know your board.
[18:32] Carolyn Woodard: Uh hopefully you know your board.
[18:33] Carolyn Woodard: So this is a board level discussion, and a board member might be able to help, um, but it may be more of a disclosure type of a discussion with them.
[18:41] Carolyn Woodard: They may not be able to take the lead on it, or you might not want them to take the lead on it.
[18:46] Carolyn Woodard: So every nonprofit board is different.
[18:48] Carolyn Woodard: You need to think about that, but definitely I would not keep them in the dark about this because as I said, these are really high-level implementation questions and values questions.
[18:58] Carolyn Woodard: So making sure that they're aware of what you're doing and you know, knowing what the policy is.
[19:04] Carolyn Woodard: And you may need to have a policy for your board as well around those note-taking and that sort of thing.
[19:09] Carolyn Woodard: So after you have had these listening sessions, you have a person who's in charge, or a person who's, you know, like they're the guru of AI at your organization.
[19:19] Carolyn Woodard: You had these listening conversations, you have executive support for them, you want to draw up a simple outline.
[19:27] Carolyn Woodard: So you need to cover certain things.
[19:28] Carolyn Woodard: You want to cover your principles, you know, your philosophy, like all of the things that have come up and are important to you.
[19:35] Carolyn Woodard: And those you may have things that are intention.
[19:38] Carolyn Woodard: Um, you know, that's where you're gonna have to have decision makers step in and figure out how to reconcile those tensions.
[19:46] Carolyn Woodard: Um and you need to, you know, make clear that there is ownership over AI.
[19:51] Carolyn Woodard: It isn't something that's just done to you, it's something that your organization is doing intentionally.
[19:57] Carolyn Woodard: You want to include in that outline uh examples of what you want to use AI for, examples of what you don't want to use AI for, examples of how you use AI.
[20:07] Carolyn Woodard: This goes back to our principles of you log in with your work email, you have a paid account, and you have a human in the loop, always.
[20:15] Carolyn Woodard: Um, you might want to cover approved uses in that document, that outline that's gonna lead to your policy.
[20:22] Carolyn Woodard: You may want to cover approved tools.
[20:25] Carolyn Woodard: Um, you that is a question that's gonna be all of these questions are gonna be case by case for your organization.
[20:31] Carolyn Woodard: Um, approved tools is if you have a list of that, you're gonna need to update it often.
[20:36] Carolyn Woodard: So just make sure you keep that in mind.
[20:38] Carolyn Woodard: But it's definitely something if you're on Microsoft and you're like, we're going with Copilot, and that's the only one that we're gonna go with that can be in your policy.
[20:46] Carolyn Woodard: That's as again, just said that is individual to your organization and make sure you're choosing what's gonna work for you and that you have some flexibility and revisions so that you can see is this working?
[20:58] Carolyn Woodard: And if it isn't, you can you can switch it out.
[21:01] Carolyn Woodard: You're gonna want to have a process for resolving questions.
[21:04] Carolyn Woodard: This is so important.
[21:06] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, you're gonna want to have a process for revising the policy, of course.
[21:11] Carolyn Woodard: You're gonna want to have standards for disclosure.
[21:14] Carolyn Woodard: So this is something that is coming up kind of more over in the legal side of things, uh, but definitely uh, as I said again, executive level discussion.
[21:24] Carolyn Woodard: When you use AI, uh, how transparent are you planning to be about that?
[21:29] Carolyn Woodard: Are you gonna have a little disclaimer this content was drafted with AI but approved by human?
[21:35] Carolyn Woodard: Are you not going to disclose it?
[21:37] Carolyn Woodard: Again, it's individual.
[21:39] Carolyn Woodard: We're not making a suggestion, you must always disclose it.
[21:42] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, it's up to you and your community values and what's gonna work for you.
[21:46] Carolyn Woodard: So choosing the policy that works for you is really important.
[21:49] Carolyn Woodard: And then that values alignment.
[21:52] Carolyn Woodard: So once you have these kind of policy outline in place, there's an article on our website with a couple of further filters that you can use around environmental impact if that is something that's important to you, and also making sure that you're including the benefits that you're getting out of the AI.
[22:09] Carolyn Woodard: So there's a lot of costs, there are a lot of opportunities and benefits as well.
[22:13] Carolyn Woodard: So making sure that your staff understand kind of the why, the why you would be using it at all.
[22:18] Carolyn Woodard: Our template can serve as a guide.
[22:20] Carolyn Woodard: I'm going to include the download link to that in the show notes.
[22:24] Carolyn Woodard: You have to adapt it.
[22:26] Carolyn Woodard: It's not something, unfortunately, where you can just download the template and stick your name of your organization in there and you're done.
[22:33] Carolyn Woodard: But it does give you some ideas of how to structure it.
[22:36] Carolyn Woodard: And but really, you know, choose the structure that works for you.
[22:39] Carolyn Woodard: You might just stick with that outline.
[22:40] Carolyn Woodard: Be like, here it is.
[22:41] Carolyn Woodard: It's vague and we're happy with that.
[22:43] Carolyn Woodard: That's good enough.
[22:45] Carolyn Woodard: Or that really suits us.
[22:47] Carolyn Woodard: Or, you know, like the we started with this outline and now we're gonna, you know, make a 10-page document out of it because that's how we roll.
[22:54] Carolyn Woodard: And that, you know, reflects our culture, and we need to have this really laid out and spelled out.
[22:59] Carolyn Woodard: So again, every nonprofit is a special flower.
[23:02] Carolyn Woodard: So make sure you're doing what works for you.
[23:05] Carolyn Woodard: Again, have this conversation openly and transparently with your staff.
[23:11] Carolyn Woodard: So you don't want to be surprised by people's opinions or misconceptions or misunderstandings later.
[23:17] Carolyn Woodard: Um, make sure that you're getting everything.
[23:19] Carolyn Woodard: You might feel like you're opening a big can of worms, but getting everything out in the open helps you, you know, reconcile where you can reconcile, um, see where there are issues that maybe you weren't aware of, um, feed that all up the chain and come out with a policy like any other policy that you would have to create as an organization.
[23:36] Carolyn Woodard: It's hard.
[23:37] Carolyn Woodard: It's hard when you have a group of people who work together and are different individual people and they're gonna have different ideas and opinions.
[23:45] Carolyn Woodard: So, especially around something that's moving this fast and is this consequential.
[23:49] Carolyn Woodard: So make sure that you are doing that.
[23:51] Carolyn Woodard: Put a timeline in when you're gonna have that policy and what that policy is gonna look like.
[23:56] Carolyn Woodard: It's gonna be simple, a one page, a multiple page, like what level of detail.
[24:01] Carolyn Woodard: You're gonna finalize that policy and roll it out.
[24:04] Carolyn Woodard: And you wanna make sure you have a mechanism in there to get feedback because guarantee you will have forgotten something.
[24:11] Carolyn Woodard: So once you get the feedback back, you can have the final, final uh version of the policy.
[24:16] Carolyn Woodard: Um, and then you wanna do some meetings around it, training around it.
[24:19] Carolyn Woodard: You wanna make sure this isn't just a "read the policy," like I emailed it to you.
[24:23] Carolyn Woodard: Did you not read it?
[24:26] Carolyn Woodard: Maybe include some common scenarios, you know, do small group work, uh, make it a living document.
[24:32] Carolyn Woodard: Um, we would always recommend at the end of any training to have a quiz.
[24:36] Carolyn Woodard: It can be a light quiz, it can be lighthearted as well, use humor.
[24:40] Carolyn Woodard: But um the biggest, most important thing to make sure you are asking staff is do they know who to ask when they have questions about AI?
[24:49] Carolyn Woodard: And I, in my opinion, this should be as rigorous as cybersecurity training.
[24:53] Carolyn Woodard: I mean, the AI is really, really important, creates a lot of risks right now.
[24:58] Carolyn Woodard: Um, and you know, kind of together with this AI policy conversation, you may want to have this AI and cybersecurity conversation if you aren't already having it.
[25:08] Carolyn Woodard: We are identifying - Community IT is putting out there, you know, two big risks and a benefit as we see it to AI.
[25:16] Carolyn Woodard: So, big risk is that you have better scams targeting you, and your staff need to be trained to spot deeper fakes and better phishing emails.
[25:25] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so that's it's very sobering if you've looked online recently at any of the spot the fake quizzes.
[25:32] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, the AI is getting just so, so good.
[25:35] Carolyn Woodard: So um, having that training is really important with your staff.
[25:39] Carolyn Woodard: You can't just look for things that are misspelled or you know, have the wrong link or anything like that because the AI makes it so polished.
[25:48] Carolyn Woodard: So um that's one big risk from coming in from the outside.
[25:52] Carolyn Woodard: The hackers have AI and it's making them a lot better at scamming you.
[25:56] Carolyn Woodard: Aa risk from your staff going out is oversharing.
[25:59] Carolyn Woodard: So using tools that can take sensitive info and share it on the other end.
[26:05] Carolyn Woodard: Um, that is something for your staff to be really aware of.
[26:09] Carolyn Woodard: It's in your terms and conditions of the tools that you're using.
[26:12] Carolyn Woodard: It's one of our main reasons why we are telling everyone do not use a freemium tool.
[26:17] Carolyn Woodard: Do not use a freemium tool.
[26:19] Carolyn Woodard: Uh if you can possibly help it.
[26:21] Carolyn Woodard: I know it's a budget issue and there are some nonprofits that are using freemium.
[26:26] Carolyn Woodard: You know, it's just you go to the website and maybe you make a personal account, but you are not covered by any kind of uh enterprise terms and terms and conditions.
[26:36] Carolyn Woodard: And um that means that they're using your data, basically.
[26:39] Carolyn Woodard: So be really, really careful about making sure your staff understand those vulnerabilities and what they are not and should not be sharing with a free AI tool, chatbot.
[26:53] Carolyn Woodard: But then I said there were three things.
[26:55] Carolyn Woodard: There's two risks and a benefit.
[26:56] Carolyn Woodard: Um, AI tools are also uh able to help you better protect your organization if they're used appropriately to identify those security gaps and solutions.
[27:06] Carolyn Woodard: And use judiciously, they can aid and augment a small team.
[27:11] Carolyn Woodard: So definitely, you know, like as I said, we're not against using AI, uh, we're not for using AI.
[27:17] Carolyn Woodard: We want people to be using AI securely if they are deciding to use AI, um, and be very careful about what you're feeding into.
[27:24] Carolyn Woodard: You know, like you don't want to put a list of here's the vulnerabilities that I found on some, you know, public website or a uh chatbot, a freemium AI tool, you know, a chat online, uh Reddit conversation, like just be aware, have situational awareness about where you're sharing uh when you find gaps in your security, uh, if that is using an AI tool or not.
[27:49] Carolyn Woodard: To go back to your AI policy, it's after you've incorporated all this training and your staff know what they're doing and you have this great policy, you got to revisit it often.
[27:59] Carolyn Woodard: I'm sorry.
[27:59] Carolyn Woodard: It's not a set it and forget it policy that's just not feasible.
[28:03] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so make sure you have that, you know, just a calendar item so that it comes back up quarterly.
[28:08] Carolyn Woodard: It's probably what I would recommend at least twice a year.
[28:11] Carolyn Woodard: Um, have that conversation.
[28:12] Carolyn Woodard: You know, I think it's a good practice.
[28:15] Carolyn Woodard: If you can fit it into your all-staff meetings, if you have monthly all-staff meetings, make sure you have a five-minute, here's what's up with AI right now.
[28:22] Carolyn Woodard: You can have somebody share something that they're doing.
[28:25] Carolyn Woodard: Um, you could have a security person talk about like how to be safe using AI, all of those different things.
[28:31] Carolyn Woodard: It's really just moving so fast right now.
[28:34] Carolyn Woodard: And even if you're just coming online and starting to use it, that's when you need even more transparency and open conversations around it.
[28:41] Carolyn Woodard: So make sure you're planning to revisit that policy open often and include it in your acceptable use policy and your onboarding employee handbook.
[28:51] Carolyn Woodard: But again, best practices would be a conversation with the manager, a mentor, experienced staff.
[28:58] Carolyn Woodard: How are they using AI?
[29:00] Carolyn Woodard: How do we use AI at this organization?
[29:02] Carolyn Woodard: How are you expected to use AI at this organization?
[29:05] Carolyn Woodard: Some scenarios, and then you know, conclude with a like quiz on who to ask when your questions come up.
[29:12] Carolyn Woodard: We've talked about this before.
[29:13] Carolyn Woodard: Make sure that you're creating and nourishing an environment at your organization in which there are no dumb questions, people feel confident and supported asking what might feel like dumb questions because it's really important that people feel supported and there's just a lot more risk and a lot more vulnerability if people are afraid to ask or don't know who to ask.
[29:37] Carolyn Woodard: And so they just do it and they're like, oh, I'll get forgiveness later.
[29:40] Carolyn Woodard: And it's like, oh, you just shared a major donor's private address with someone, right?
[29:45] Carolyn Woodard: So you want to make sure you're um heading off those types of scenarios and um yeah, you're getting the policy in place.
[29:52] Carolyn Woodard: I gave some tips last week about carving out the time to build your own AI literacy and figure out what tasks you could experiment with AI on.
[30:01] Carolyn Woodard: I think you can use some of those tips for getting some time to create a policy.
[30:05] Carolyn Woodard: Uh definitely the most important thing is just get it on the calendar, make sure you're having meetings about having the meetings about doing the AI policy.
[30:14] Carolyn Woodard: Um, but yeah, if you haven't started yet, you are not alone.
[30:18] Carolyn Woodard: It is a majority of nonprofits and um, you know, philanthropic organizations too.
[30:25] Carolyn Woodard: I imagine there are a ton of foundations out there too that are just kind of struggling with what is our policy going to be and how do we make the time to do it.
[30:33] Carolyn Woodard: And oh, in the meantime, a bunch of people are using AI tools and we don't know how and we don't have a policy around it.
[30:41] Carolyn Woodard: Just carve out that time on your calendar is the number one step, number one tip that we can give you.
[30:46] Carolyn Woodard: And it is so hard.
[30:48] Carolyn Woodard: So don't beat yourself out up about not having started yet.
[30:51] Carolyn Woodard: Like the old saying is the best time to have started was yesterday, and the second best time is today.
[30:57] Carolyn Woodard: So I hope these tips can help you get going on that.
[31:00] Carolyn Woodard: As always, if you have questions, uh ideas for future podcasts, um, other tech topics you want to talk about, you can always get a hold of me through our website, through this podcast, on LinkedIn, on uh Reddit.
[31:13] Carolyn Woodard: We're there um, you know, a couple times a week just checking for questions and answering what we can.
[31:18] Carolyn Woodard: So I hope this is helpful and thank you again for being with us.
[31:22] Carolyn Woodard: On Friday, we'll have another Tech Topics, uh, part two of our webinar on growing IT management capacity at nonprofits.
[31:30] Carolyn Woodard: It was a great conversation.
[31:31] Carolyn Woodard: So I hope you'll join us again for that and next Tuesday for some more nonprofit AI.
[31:36] Carolyn Woodard: And until then, take care.

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