# Nonprofit AI: Anthropic IPO News, Morality for AI

An episode of [Community IT Innovators Nonprofit Technology Topics](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1536843269), 27 Oct 2026, 42 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1029925/episodes/20029124-nonprofit-ai-anthropic-ipo-news-morality-for-ai.mp3

Carolyn Woodard covers three questions running through this week’s AI news: who owns AI, who shapes its values, and who answers for it. Anthropic filed for its IPO the same day it expanded its nonprofit programs, and Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to about a quarter of its workforce. For nonprofits that depend on these tools, both raise practical questions about pricing, support, and lock-in. On ownership, Carolyn looks at the new Claude for Nonprofits plugin, a planned Taproot Foundation partnership for shorter pro bono projects, and the critique that IPO-day nonprofit news doubles as good PR. She also discusses Samuel Peters’ Nonprofit Quarterly argument that public ownership of AI companies could leave the public defending AI rather than regulating it. On values, she explores AI companies turning to faith traditions for morality that AI can "learn." This episode covers: • Why paid licenses matter for small nonprofits, which Anthropic says make up most of the 25,000+ organizations using Claude for Nonprofits. Paid plans offer stronger data protections and contract terms. • Why faith-based organizations and nonprofits serving communities of faith have a stake in how AI companies define moral behavior. • Moving from human in the loop to human at the helm: name an AI owner with real authority and time, and a responsible person for every AI use, including any agent you build. Language matters in these terms. • Donor research showing 70% worry about AI bots posing as humans, and why to talk with donors before rolling out AI that touches them. • Making room for open conversations about AI, so 20 people aren’t using it 20 different ways. Choosing not to use AI is also legitimate. • Q&A: What changes when your AI vendor goes public, or your tech provider cuts staff? More disclosure and warning, earnings pressure on pricing and discounts, and possible support shifts. Protect yourself: know your terms, keep vendor contacts current, and keep your data and prompts exportable. Corrections: Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust appoints board directors; the charitable fund described is the separate Public Benefit Fund, an LLC that still needs shareholder approval. Claude Corps fellows are paid, not volunteers. Resources Mentioned: • Expanding Claude for Nonprofits, Anthropic • Anthropic IPO filing, Associated Press • Microsoft Voluntary Buyouts, Associated Press • Claude Corps, Anthropic • AI Nationalization Is a Bailout Wearing a Populist Costume, Nonprofit Quarterly • To Make AI Morally Good, Tech Companies Are Turning to Religion, Associated Press • Donors Are Wary of AI, Chronicle of Philanthropy (paywalled) • Donor Perceptions of AI 2026, Chappell and Koshy • AI and Human Rights Resolution, UN Human Rights Council • AI Acceptable Use Policy Template, 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

[0:23] Carolyn Woodard: Hello and welcome to the Community IT Innovators Nonprofit AI Podcast, Midweek Check-in.
[0:29] Carolyn Woodard: I'm Carolyn Woodard, your host.
[0:31] Carolyn Woodard: I've been using AI tools for over a year now, about a year and a half.
[0:37] Carolyn Woodard: I've used the three big ones, Gemini, Copilot, and Claude.
[0:42] Carolyn Woodard: And I like to bring this midweek podcast to the nonprofit audience once a week, just check in on some news.
[0:51] Carolyn Woodard: We uh talk about any news that has a nonprofit angle, something that's happening in nonprofits that relates to AI, and you know, try to help manage the fire hose of news about AI that's coming out uh daily.
[1:07] Carolyn Woodard: And just try to get something that you can use in your own nonprofit as you're thinking about it in your own work.
[1:14] Carolyn Woodard: And more and more as we are thinking about it in the communities that we care about and the sectors where we work, whether it's environment, education, workforce development, AI is changing a lot of things.
[1:25] Carolyn Woodard: The next couple of years are gonna see big, big changes.
[1:28] Carolyn Woodard: And I think that's going to involve a lot of opportunities for nonprofits or you know, segments of our society that are gonna turn to nonprofits to help with, you know, for example, retraining workforces.
[1:41] Carolyn Woodard: There are some nonprofits that are gonna be able to be very agile and pivot.
[1:45] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, last week I talked about this story of uh Per Scholas that discovered a couple of years ago that had an early warning that coding jobs were kind of going away as more and more coders were using AI to code.
[2:00] Carolyn Woodard: And so in their workforce development, they had emphasized that for young people who needed to be retrained or trained into jobs, uh, higher-paying jobs.
[2:10] Carolyn Woodard: And so they have pivoted away from that and are now training young people to do work with AI and AI programming.
[2:17] Carolyn Woodard: So nonprofits on the front lines, we are used to thinking systemically about what's going on in our communities and long histories of you know, different um impacts and you know, history of different society, communities, you know, issues, challenges, and working to find those levers that can have an impact in the communities that we care about and help make a better world and a more livable world for everyone.
[2:48] Carolyn Woodard: So this week we had some big news stories, uh, and there was kind of a theme going through it about who owns AI, uh who shapes its values, and who is answering for it, who's held accountable for it.
[3:03] Carolyn Woodard: Uh so we want to cover those layers today.
[3:06] Carolyn Woodard: I want to do um a little disclosure.
[3:08] Carolyn Woodard: I do use, well, as I said, I've used all of the big three.
[3:12] Carolyn Woodard: Um I also dabbled around with Perplexity and uh Change Agent.
[3:16] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so I have used, and of course, all of us are using AI within the tools that we work in when they're like, here's an update, oh, here's your AI assistant.
[3:24] Carolyn Woodard: So I do use Claude a lot from Anthropic in my own work.
[3:29] Carolyn Woodard: Um that's the one that I've found that is really valuable to me as a time saver, and I use it to bounce ideas off of.
[3:36] Carolyn Woodard: I use it to prepare these outlines about what's going on.
[3:39] Carolyn Woodard: I feed it some news stories, and um, it helps me build the uh coherent, hopefully, segments.
[3:46] Carolyn Woodard: And um, so today I'm gonna talk a little bit about Anthropic's IPO announcement.
[3:51] Carolyn Woodard: So just want to be disclosing that I do use Claude.
[3:57] Carolyn Woodard: Anthropic filed for its IPO and it expanded its nonprofit programs on the same day, um, Monday, yesterday.
[4:06] Carolyn Woodard: So um, if you're you know involved in the stock market um or following this story, you can there's a bazillion stories about it, um, how they're going to be listed.
[4:15] Carolyn Woodard: Their debut is planned for next month.
[4:18] Carolyn Woodard: It's expected to be one of the largest IPOs ever.
[4:21] Carolyn Woodard: And um, you know, you can read all about that.
[4:25] Carolyn Woodard: Um, it's interesting.
[4:27] Carolyn Woodard: The seven co-founders are going to keep 50.1% of the shareholder votes.
[4:32] Carolyn Woodard: Um, they have created a long-term benefit trust within the company, which I talked about either last week or the week before, which is a wholly owned LLC that is meant to, it will take some of the profits of the company and do charitable work with it.
[4:48] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, it's not clear yet what they're going to work on.
[4:51] Carolyn Woodard: One of the ideas they said is workforce development because this is expected to be so disruptive to workers and jobs.
[4:57] Carolyn Woodard: Um, but again, that's all controlled within the company.
[5:01] Carolyn Woodard: So, public shareholders, you know, if you own stocks in other companies, uh, you get money, but not control over the company.
[5:09] Carolyn Woodard: They also announced the same day that there is a new Claude for Nonprofits plug-in.
[5:14] Carolyn Woodard: It was built with the input of about 30 nonprofits.
[5:18] Carolyn Woodard: You can read all about it.
[5:20] Carolyn Woodard: I will share this in the show notes.
[5:22] Carolyn Woodard: They are also expecting to expand their shorter-term consultant projects through Claude Corps, which I've talked about several times on this uh podcast.
[5:32] Carolyn Woodard: If you aren't aware of Claude Corps, they will place a volunteer Claude expert.
[5:39] Carolyn Woodard: They get embedded in your organization.
[5:41] Carolyn Woodard: You apply to have this fellow uh with you for a year, I believe.
[5:47] Carolyn Woodard: And so one of the things they've changed is there may be shorter-term commitments and shorter-term volunteers.
[5:53] Carolyn Woodard: So you can apply to be a volunteer and you can apply to have a volunteer at your organization.
[5:58] Carolyn Woodard: The Taproot Foundation, which does a lot of pro bono tech consulting and matches up volunteers with nonprofits, is providing some of the, I guess, mechanisms for placing these volunteers, uh, the Claude Corps volunteers, and with the organizations that want them.
[6:19] Carolyn Woodard: Uh they report,
[6:21] Carolyn Woodard: Anthropic reports, that 25,000 nonprofits are already using Claude for Nonprofits, uh, and that most of those nonprofits have fewer than 10 staff.
[6:30] Carolyn Woodard: So these are numbers from the company.
[6:33] Carolyn Woodard: But it's an interesting take.
[6:35] Carolyn Woodard: One of the things we've been seeing in our clients is that it tends to be the larger clients that are uh regarding uh AI implementation the most formally and creating, you know, a committee perhaps for it, or appointing someone as the owner, quote unquote, of AI, and um, you know, making a deliberative decision like they would with any software, which AI tool are they gonna use?
[7:02] Carolyn Woodard: How are they gonna train staff on it?
[7:04] Carolyn Woodard: What are they gonna use it for?
[7:05] Carolyn Woodard: What's the policy?
[7:06] Carolyn Woodard: All of those things.
[7:07] Carolyn Woodard: In our experience, the smaller nonprofits tend to be a lot more ad hoc about AI.
[7:13] Carolyn Woodard: And um, you know, many don't have a policy, they just have staff who are using them.
[7:18] Carolyn Woodard: I'm gonna put in my plug as always.
[7:20] Carolyn Woodard: Please don't be using the Freemium version where you just go online and create an account for free.
[7:26] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, if you can possibly swing it in your budget, make sure you're buying those licenses, uh, even at the lowest level of license, um, which are pretty affordable depending on how many people you have at your nonprofit.
[7:39] Carolyn Woodard: You get a lot more enterprise protections, a lot more copyright protections.
[7:43] Carolyn Woodard: You just have a lot more, you know, what they're using your data for, what they can use your data for.
[7:50] Carolyn Woodard: All of those pieces are a lot more secure if you're paying for a license.
[7:56] Carolyn Woodard: So please do that if you can.
[7:59] Carolyn Woodard: So it's interesting that Claude is finding, or Anthropic is finding that small nonprofits are in general their highest users of Claude for Nonprofits.
[8:09] Carolyn Woodard: Um, and I again would theorize that this is small nonprofits augmenting what their staff do, not finding ways to either fire staff or not hire new staff, but um taking those productivity tools and helping, you know, Claude can help you with your Asana or Monday so that you are really, really productive.
[8:29] Carolyn Woodard: It can help you with drafting grant applications or researching, and it can do just a lot of these things that you know you can't hire a junior assistant or entry-level staff to do.
[8:42] Carolyn Woodard: So there is a critique of this, um, which no surprise, that they announced that they're doing a lot of stuff for nonprofits on the same day they announced their IPO, which is gonna make them all bazillions of dollars.
[8:56] Carolyn Woodard: So they are trying to get that good PR of being a good player and being supportive of both nonprofits and kind of understanding and talking about the disruption that they are creating and what that's gonna do to society that is gonna need more nonprofit support.
[9:14] Carolyn Woodard: So um there are critiques of, you know, they're announcing it at this timing, is, you know, kind of AI washing or I don't know, charity washing, greenwashing, that um they are still trying to be a good company, which you know has PR benefit for them as people are suspicious of them making the gajillions of dollars and maybe thinking about, well, do I want to buy that Claude license or should I buy a different AI tool or use a different AI tool?
[9:43] Carolyn Woodard: They also have set up this LLC public benefit corporation within the company.
[9:49] Carolyn Woodard: So they control it completely.
[9:50] Carolyn Woodard: It's uh you know, I think it's very favorable tax-wise to them.
[9:55] Carolyn Woodard: So surprise, surprise, a big company is making uh decisions in its own interests.
[10:00] Carolyn Woodard: But that's not to say that nonprofits can't really benefit from these tools.
[10:04] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so just something more you gotta weigh when you're thinking about it and thinking about their advertising and marketing.
[10:12] Carolyn Woodard: Another company to watch that had a big announcement just a day or two ago is that Microsoft has announced it is offering voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees worldwide, which is about a quarter of its workforce.
[10:29] Carolyn Woodard: Of course, Microsoft runs Copilot as their AI, um, and a lot of nonprofits are on the Microsoft stack with you know all the products, uh Office and Teams and Excel, SharePoint for file sharing, all of those things.
[10:46] Carolyn Woodard: So uh if you are on that stack, uh we're not really sure what this is gonna mean, how many of those uh employees are gonna take that buyout, if there will be layoffs to follow.
[10:57] Carolyn Woodard: Microsoft just laid off about almost 5,000 employees last summer.
[11:03] Carolyn Woodard: And basically the analysts think that this is to do with the amount of their budget that they want to invest in improving their AI tools and usage within the company.
[11:16] Carolyn Woodard: And that money has to come from somewhere.
[11:18] Carolyn Woodard: So they and it's related to uh the jobs that people are doing.
[11:23] Carolyn Woodard: So in that case, it does seem like um they are wanting to use AI in some of these jobs that they'll be um either letting people go or hoping for these buyouts.
[11:35] Carolyn Woodard: And they also, if you've used Copilot, okay, this is my opinion, but Copilot really needs some upgrades.
[11:42] Carolyn Woodard: So I assume that is also what they are are looking at, their workforce salaries and investment opportunities in their AI tools and realizing that they have to do something.
[11:55] Carolyn Woodard: There's an article in the Nonprofit Quarterly that I read for this podcast on um by Samuel Peters.
[12:04] Carolyn Woodard: "AI nationalization is a bail out bailout wearing a populist costume." So this goes back to over the summer, this big story about Bernie Sanders, um, some AI CEOs, and um Steve Bannon was at an event with Bernie Sanders, which is just like the oddest odd couple.
[12:25] Carolyn Woodard: And um, people in the United States, and I'm sure there are people in Europe too, arguing that AI companies are too big, too influential, and too disruptive to be private companies, that a part of those companies needs to be owned by the public.
[12:45] Carolyn Woodard: And there are various mechanisms that one could use to do this, uh, similar to the way when railroads were expanding in the United States and they would offer bonds that ordinary people could buy.
[12:58] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, you know, of course, a lot of those railroads went bust and people ended up with nothing.
[13:03] Carolyn Woodard: One of the ideas is that Sanders, Bernie Sanders created a bill that would create a sovereign wealth fund.
[13:09] Carolyn Woodard: So this is similar to what Alaska used to have for their oil.
[13:12] Carolyn Woodard: I think several Mideast company uh countries have these sovereign wealth funds that help the public own these very important industries and it redistributes the profits from those industries to you know public services.
[13:29] Carolyn Woodard: Um in the case of Alaska, you know, people who lived in Alaska just received a check from the oil fields every year they would get these dividends, basically.
[13:40] Carolyn Woodard: So that's one of the options.
[13:42] Carolyn Woodard: But this article from Peters makes the point that if uh AI companies, so yes, it's um certainly disturbing that the you know CEO of an AI company can make unilateral decisions about either the services, who gets to use the services, those services being used for military, for example.
[14:04] Carolyn Woodard: So from that standpoint, you might think, oh, well, the public having a stake in this company, then you know, elected officials will have more of an ability to, you know, make sure that the railroads go where we need them to, or the national highway system goes where we want it to, or that you know, banks are transparent and have to um have standards that they have to meet, those sorts of things.
[14:26] Carolyn Woodard: It could help with data center citing that there are certain rules of where they can be located and um you know holding them accountable for public good, basically.
[14:37] Carolyn Woodard: But Peter's point is that the opposite also happens, is that where the government or the public have a stake in an industry, there are kind of counterincentives to really regulating it or um you know making it less profitable because then you have stock owners who want it to be profitable and to answer to the stockholders, not to public good.
[15:03] Carolyn Woodard: So there's a real tension there, push-pull.
[15:05] Carolyn Woodard: Um it's a great article, so I will share that with you in the uh show notes.
[15:10] Carolyn Woodard: And um, it as I said, it kind of crosses ideological lines, but there is this movement that you may be involved in, or your organization may you know be thinking about or putting your or in the water around, for example, I know the ACLU is very interested in this um issue, and the NAACP also has weighed in on who owns AI, especially I think in the AI industry when the large language models were basically created with you know stolen data.
[15:40] Carolyn Woodard: Like it was all of our stuff that we put online, our knowledge, and uh and now the AI companies have these tools that know what we knew.
[15:49] Carolyn Woodard: So interesting debate and really interesting article.
[15:54] Carolyn Woodard: So, second theme is who shapes AI values?
[15:58] Carolyn Woodard: So that was who owns AI.
[15:59] Carolyn Woodard: Let's talk a little bit about who shapes the values.
[16:02] Carolyn Woodard: I read this just fascinating story about religion and AI companies.
[16:08] Carolyn Woodard: And this idea, the the title of the story is "To Make AI Morally Good Tech Companies Are Turning to Religion, but some say it isn't that simple." And man, it is not that simple.
[16:20] Carolyn Woodard: So I urge you to read this article, and there, you know, there's several other articles kind of covering the same story that's emerging.
[16:28] Carolyn Woodard: We covered back at the beginning of the summer the Papal Encyclical about the position of AI with respect to humanity and the guidelines that the Catholic Church would like to see around preserving human dignity, human knowledge, and not creating these tools that would take that human dignity away.
[16:53] Carolyn Woodard: And I believe the Papal Encyclical also speaks to the power imbalance when a single owner has this much ownership over something that could be a public good and came from a public good.
[17:09] Carolyn Woodard: So this story is kind of covering an evolution as different faith traditions have weighed in on their position on AI and its potential, also its um uh worrisome, you know, issues around AI that go against counter to that faith tradition.
[17:31] Carolyn Woodard: Um, this is industry-wide.
[17:33] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, they are, you know, there are people at Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft both involved with faith leaders and things like the Papal Encyclical, but also there are working groups within those companies looking at how AI tools could be quote unquote moral.
[17:55] Carolyn Woodard: And are there ways to build into these tools maybe a different morality than what they have learned from what people posted online that created that they use, they scraped to use for these large language models.
[18:10] Carolyn Woodard: One of the things that's happened with these AI agents that have escaped is that they lie, they cheat, they try to get ahead, they learned all that behavior from us.
[18:21] Carolyn Woodard: So there's this sense that could at the top level, could the AI companies build into their public models for release some morality?
[18:32] Carolyn Woodard: And of course, it makes sense that they would look to religion to kind of understand what that would look like.
[18:40] Carolyn Woodard: Um, but it's just so fraught with difficulties.
[18:44] Carolyn Woodard: If you are a person of faith, if you have know people of faith, uh if you are a nonprofit organization that you know is faith-based, um it's just such an interesting, I guess, tension for these organizations too.
[19:03] Carolyn Woodard: And in this article, it kind of pointed out that they're approaching it in this what I would call a very tech bro approach.
[19:10] Carolyn Woodard: So one of the ideas is that you could use AI to assemble like a meta-religion from all the different major religions around the world, and that that would give you like this universally acceptable morality.
[19:24] Carolyn Woodard: And it ignores the fact that, you know, there are tensions and differences between even between the major faith uh groups and traditions, and that if you distill, try to distill everything down into a single morality that negates and flattens out what's different about these different faith traditions, which is exactly what the Papal Encyclical talked about, is this trying to trying to flatten out what makes individuals different and unique and valuable and you know worthy of, I don't know, life.
[20:03] Carolyn Woodard: So such an interesting story.
[20:07] Carolyn Woodard: They also in this article point out that um these types of approaches tend to favor um religions that are based on writing.
[20:20] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, in fact, it gives really heavy uh priority to the Abrahamic faith, so the people of the book, uh, Judaism, Christianity, and um Islam, and that that is losing, you know, so many, such a large percentage of other faith traditions, non-Western ways of looking at the world, our relationship to nature, our relationship to reality.
[20:46] Carolyn Woodard: What is a good person?
[20:47] Carolyn Woodard: How would a good AI tool operate?
[20:50] Carolyn Woodard: What would it choose to do?
[20:51] Carolyn Woodard: What would it never do?
[20:53] Carolyn Woodard: So you don't want to lose all of those other traditions that also have a lot to contribute.
[20:59] Carolyn Woodard: And I know, you know, people listening to this, lots of nonprofits work with some of those communities, and um, you know, a lot of them are a lot smaller, but just have so much to teach us.
[21:11] Carolyn Woodard: So um blending those traditions until it's just like a big soup doesn't really make sense either.
[21:20] Carolyn Woodard: So just so interesting that there is this reaching out for something to guide us at this juncture and this time of such an upheaval and such a change, and some of these tools that have the potential to be, you know, very not just disruptive, but maybe um catastrophic for the human race.
[21:47] Carolyn Woodard: So uh I this I think is going to be a trending topic that we will see a lot more articles and books about, um, hopefully not too late.
[21:57] Carolyn Woodard: But again, as I said, if you're a faith-based organization, if you're serving communities that are communities of faith, whether you're inside the Western tradition in these Abrahamic faiths or outside, uh, this is a really interesting way to think about your community and your values and you know how these AI companies also are kind of struggling with defining their values and how those values will influence their tools.
[22:27] Carolyn Woodard: So it gives you another piece for the filters that you are using for values alignment with the tools that you choose to use and just an ongoing story.
[22:36] Carolyn Woodard: So we'll keep an eye on that.
[22:38] Carolyn Woodard: Okay, very quickly, the last point is who's accountable for AI?
[22:43] Carolyn Woodard: And so this is kind of a question both at the top, like these six, seven companies and their ownership structures, and if they do an A IPO, and who are those co-founders, co-creators, or just owners.
[22:59] Carolyn Woodard: And um, and then within your own organization, who is the quote unquote owner?
[23:04] Carolyn Woodard: This is something that we suggest as our best practices is that you designate someone.
[23:10] Carolyn Woodard: It could be, you know, a person on your executive team, it could be a board member if they're involved in your organization, it could be a small committee, a small team, it could be, you know, an early adopter, it could be someone in the IT team, but make sure that they have authority and connection to your executive team so that they, you know, are able to make decisions or have help making decisions, but you need an owner for AI at your organization.
[23:36] Carolyn Woodard: At least that's a best practice, so that it's gonna be, even if you're, well, especially if you're an ad hoc implementer or if you are being more intentional about it, um, it is something that you're just even just gonna need someone that people can turn to to ask their questions so that they know who to ask.
[23:55] Carolyn Woodard: Um, it it's just we we see it as this very beneficial um way to handle this big change.
[24:03] Carolyn Woodard: Of course, if you're designating someone as the owner, make sure you're taking something else off of their plate or you know, giving them time and space to prioritize this as these big changes roll through.
[24:15] Carolyn Woodard: But the Chronicle Philanthropy had an article uh just last week uh titled "Donors Are Wary of AI and a human at the helm policy can help." And this draws on the donor perceptions of AI report that they also have in this article.
[24:32] Carolyn Woodard: I will link to that also.
[24:33] Carolyn Woodard: That survey went out to over a thousand donors, and 70% of those donors worried about AI bots posing as humans and asking for a donation, and 64% fear losing that human connection to the causes that they care about and the people at the organizations where they make these donations.
[24:55] Carolyn Woodard: And the article drew this interesting distinction between having a human in the loop, which is something we've been talking about, is another best practice.
[25:03] Carolyn Woodard: So if you use AI to draft something, make sure the final editor is the human at your organization who owns that content and is can be responsible for it.
[25:13] Carolyn Woodard: Same thing if you are using AI to write a grant application, make sure that the last editor is your human grant, you know, officer who is applying and is responsible for it.
[25:27] Carolyn Woodard: So putting the human in the loop.
[25:29] Carolyn Woodard: But this article talks about having a human at the helm, which is what I just talked about, the specific person who's accountable for the AI use.
[25:38] Carolyn Woodard: And so that is kind of more far-reaching than just a single person at your organization who's your AI guru or you know, you know, management level person.
[25:48] Carolyn Woodard: But for every thing that you use AI for, there's a human who is at the helm, who is responsible, who is managing it, who is, you know, approving the things that go out, approving what it's doing, following the policy.
[26:02] Carolyn Woodard: Um, I would say, especially if you're creating agents, all of those agents need to be accountable to the person who you know created them.
[26:10] Carolyn Woodard: And this is a way that we have agency within our organizations.
[26:15] Carolyn Woodard: And I just thought it was interesting to talk about the language.
[26:19] Carolyn Woodard: So in the article, also, there is there was this point that using "in the loop" language can leave people feeling powerless in this kind of counterintuitive way, in that you're like asking people or people are finding that they can use AI to do these other things, uh, to do things that they need to be able to do.
[26:43] Carolyn Woodard: And then human at the helm is just a more a term that has more agency within it.
[26:50] Carolyn Woodard: So it's not that you're you know powerless within this AI loop, but it's that you are the boss.
[26:58] Carolyn Woodard: The AI reports to you, basically.
[27:01] Carolyn Woodard: And this also uh reflects the um the UN Human Rights Council's uh first AI resolutions, which also emphasize principles such as transparency, accountability, human oversight, and every AI tool and process needs to have a remedy.
[27:21] Carolyn Woodard: So it can't just be something that you have no recourse if it does something that is not okay.
[27:28] Carolyn Woodard: So this policy that they, or resolution, I guess, uh, that they released this was the beginning of October, uh, it has some vocabulary you can borrow if you're working on your policy checklist.
[27:38] Carolyn Woodard: It was written for governments, but it is, it's definitely, I found the the vocabulary was very useful.
[27:45] Carolyn Woodard: Going back to that survey about donors being afraid that they'll be talking to a bot when they are donating, um, make sure that you are talking to your donors if you are rolling out something that is AI.
[27:58] Carolyn Woodard: Um, you know, we emphasize that you need to be figuring out what your business need is before you see if an AI tool is a match to it.
[28:08] Carolyn Woodard: So not just choose an AI tool that lets you automate donation and then apply it, but is this something that you want?
[28:16] Carolyn Woodard: Is this a problem?
[28:17] Carolyn Woodard: And would it make the experience better, faster, you know, more personalized and um more wonderful and more how would a donor feel when they interact with you?
[28:28] Carolyn Woodard: Right?
[28:29] Carolyn Woodard: That should be at the center of your um thinking about what tools you use.
[28:34] Carolyn Woodard: And so, yeah, again, we say maybe talk to your donors about how AI, an AI tool is helping you process their donation, make sure it goes to where it's supposed to go.
[28:45] Carolyn Woodard: Um, you know, just be doing that due diligence because of course they're your donors, they care about you.
[28:52] Carolyn Woodard: If you don't have an AI policy yet, you want to use some of this vocabulary in that policy, uh, or if you're you haven't looked at your policy lately, you wrote it a couple of years ago when AI was first starting.
[29:04] Carolyn Woodard: We do have a free template.
[29:06] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, it's on our uh it's on our website, and you can download it.
[29:10] Carolyn Woodard: Um and I will link that in the show notes with this uh link to the Human Rights Council's uh AI resolution, which has this other vocabulary in it that you could also use.
[29:23] Carolyn Woodard: The Chronicle of Philanthropy does have a paywall, so uh just keep that in mind.
[29:28] Carolyn Woodard: I believe there's a couple of free articles a month.
[29:30] Carolyn Woodard: You can also subscribe and they will send you selected articles, you know, in their newsletter, I believe, weekly.
[29:36] Carolyn Woodard: So that's another ways that way that you can read the articles there.
[29:41] Carolyn Woodard: So then just to wrap up, you may have questions uh if your AI tool is going public, uh, because both OpenAI and uh Anthropic are, you know, Anthropic has announced their IPO, um, OpenAI is still talking about it.
[29:57] Carolyn Woodard: Um what happens when your AI tool goes public?
[30:00] Carolyn Woodard: How should you be thinking about that?
[30:02] Carolyn Woodard: Or if your tech provider like Microsoft is cutting staff, what does that change for you?
[30:08] Carolyn Woodard: So one thing that it changes is for public companies have a lot more disclosure.
[30:13] Carolyn Woodard: So if you are you know thinking about the values of the company uh and you know how profitable they are and kind of what the what they do, um, you can get you know these full disclosure for publicly traded companies like Amazon, for example.
[30:29] Carolyn Woodard: Um you can see in writing what their risks are, you know, what their plans for the future are, what they're planning to roll out, all of those things.
[30:38] Carolyn Woodard: Those companies do have different pressures.
[30:41] Carolyn Woodard: You know, they have quarterly earnings calls, they have to uh meet certain expectations that can affect pricing, it can affect discounts, um, products, uh, what they emphasize, what they de-emphasize.
[30:53] Carolyn Woodard: So uh stuff won't change overnight, but you know, just be aware that that is going to be a factor after the IPO.
[31:01] Carolyn Woodard: I mean, in some ways it does give you a little bit more, well, it gives you more warning when they're going to discontinue something or change a policy.
[31:07] Carolyn Woodard: One of the things we've been talking about and worrying about is if you are using a tool with a license to it and you're building it into making it an integral part of some process that you do at your organization, like process donations or write grants, what happens if that the owner of that tool changes the tool or increases the price, right?
[31:31] Carolyn Woodard: So they've got you where that you want they want you.
[31:33] Carolyn Woodard: It's built into something that you need, and now it costs more.
[31:37] Carolyn Woodard: So that's something that being a publicly traded company will make that, I guess, more transparent and you will see that um over time.
[31:45] Carolyn Woodard: And there'll be a lot more reporting on it as well because of that public disclosure.
[31:51] Carolyn Woodard: If you have staffing changes at your provider, like Microsoft, um Salesforce, I know, downsized.
[31:58] Carolyn Woodard: I mean, they got rid of a lot of their nonprofit Salesforce um staff.
[32:03] Carolyn Woodard: So uh just again, stuff to keep aware of over time.
[32:09] Carolyn Woodard: You know, the on the Microsoft uh front, you may be interacting with an AI bot when you're trying to get customer service.
[32:15] Carolyn Woodard: I assume that is a good part of what they're gonna be doing with the layoffs and buyouts.
[32:22] Carolyn Woodard: If your support experienced shifts, let them know about it.
[32:25] Carolyn Woodard: Um, be aware of it when you renew.
[32:27] Carolyn Woodard: Um, those again are, you know,
[32:29] Carolyn Woodard: You're kind of locked into some of those stacks once you make a decision of Microsoft or Google and you're beholden to how they change those products.
[32:38] Carolyn Woodard: I mean, we still consider both of those excellent tech stacks.
[32:42] Carolyn Woodard: Um, they are used by the majority of nonprofits, use one or the other.
[32:46] Carolyn Woodard: So, you know, we are very well versed in supporting both of them, and we have a lot of experience with both of their donation programs for nonprofits.
[32:54] Carolyn Woodard: So I'm not saying to move away from either of them, and it is entirely possible to migrate from one to the other.
[33:00] Carolyn Woodard: We do it quite frequently.
[33:01] Carolyn Woodard: That is something that our new clients coming to us have made a decision or do an assessment and realize that they need to.
[33:09] Carolyn Woodard: Often they're using both kind of willy-nilly and decide to move to one.
[33:14] Carolyn Woodard: So that is something that we definitely help with.
[33:17] Carolyn Woodard: So I'm not discouraging using either of these tools, but just when you, you know, it's life.
[33:22] Carolyn Woodard: There, they are large tech companies, they're going to make changes, they are looking at their bottom line, and it's just something to be aware of.
[33:30] Carolyn Woodard: So coming back to my constant theme of we have agency, you know, know your terms and conditions, know the data settings, have those paid licenses so that you have that protection, have that account contact information.
[33:44] Carolyn Woodard: I would recommend having that, you know, in a hard copy somewhere so that you can get in touch with them, have it on your phone if you need to call them on a weekend or you know, there's something that you is not working and you need to follow up.
[33:58] Carolyn Woodard: Um, make sure that you have those up-to-date contacts uh as part of your phone tree for those vendors of how you get in touch with them.
[34:07] Carolyn Woodard: Make sure that your work is exportable, like it's not easy, it can be a big pain in the butt, but um, definitely being able to get your data out of one system into another system is something that most reputable companies are gonna help you with and be that is gonna be available, but you know, make sure that's part of your terms and conditions.
[34:27] Carolyn Woodard: If you're having trouble reading a 30-page terms and conditions agreement, um, you can always have AI help tell you what's in there or where find the um the terms that you're looking for and help you understand it.
[34:40] Carolyn Woodard: Don't build workflows that can't be moved.
[34:42] Carolyn Woodard: Um, this is something that we learned way back in, I don't know, I would say like 20 years ago when I was first working in this uh field where if you build something that's too custom, you become locked in.
[34:55] Carolyn Woodard: And for example, you might have only one consultant who knows how to deal with your database, and then they can charge you anything they want, basically.
[35:03] Carolyn Woodard: Or you you just can't,
[35:04] Carolyn Woodard: If you are using a tool that there that a lot of organizations use, and if you've customized it, you've customized it in documented ways, then you should be able to find other consultants and other IT providers who can support it, and that is the best situation to be in.
[35:23] Carolyn Woodard: So you have that flexibility.
[35:24] Carolyn Woodard: It's still a pain in the butt to change vendors, but it gives you more agency than being locked into something that only one person knows how to fix.
[35:36] Carolyn Woodard: So that I think that also is gonna be a standing guideline going forward with AI built into your tools.
[35:42] Carolyn Woodard: You know, make sure that that is exportable.
[35:45] Carolyn Woodard: And, you know, you can, if you have a prompt in Claude, you can ask Claude to help you, you know, make that a prompt that a Gemini can use or Copilot can follow.
[35:55] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, that is absolutely something that is very doable and that we do a lot.
[36:00] Carolyn Woodard: So it's not, it's not hopeless.
[36:03] Carolyn Woodard: You're not locked in, locked in, but just keep it in mind as you're building things.
[36:07] Carolyn Woodard: And then yeah, just make sure that you are not becoming so dependent on a vendor that they can charge you the arm and the leg.
[36:17] Carolyn Woodard: So we talked about three themes today.
[36:20] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, who owns the AI, uh, what values the AI is operating with, and accountability, who is accountable for the AI.
[36:31] Carolyn Woodard: So the first two, you know, the ownership and the values are not in within your control.
[36:36] Carolyn Woodard: This is something that, you know, our communities and our society as a whole is wrestling with right now, and uh different models out there and something to keep an eye on.
[36:48] Carolyn Woodard: Accountability uh is something that we can hold companies and elected officials accountable, and of course, you can hold people in within your organization accountable, and just as much transparency as you can get, like know those terms of agreement and know who's in charge of AI at your organization, what the policy is.
[37:09] Carolyn Woodard: Just keep having these open, transparent conversations.
[37:12] Carolyn Woodard: I know I say that a lot, but you would be surprised.
[37:15] Carolyn Woodard: Well, maybe you won't be surprised because it's happening at your own organization, but the number of organizations where there's a real fear over having these open conversations because what will you uncover?
[37:27] Carolyn Woodard: Like what can of worms is gonna come out of somebody who is just adamantly against using AI in the first place, and what is that gonna do to your internal, you know, cohesion and uh ability to work together.
[37:40] Carolyn Woodard: And so, yeah, there is a lot of maybe trepidation about having these conversations openly, or like I'm gonna be the one designated as the AI owner, and then I'm gonna have all this more stuff on my plate that I can barely do what I have right now.
[37:53] Carolyn Woodard: So those fears are real.
[37:56] Carolyn Woodard: Try to make your organization a place where those conversations can happen in the open.
[38:01] Carolyn Woodard: The quote unquote dumb questions can get asked.
[38:04] Carolyn Woodard: Um, because if you have a dumb question, probably a lot of other people at your organization have those same questions.
[38:09] Carolyn Woodard: It can be hard when you're working remotely and you're on, you know, like a Zoom meeting for staff or a Teams meeting.
[38:15] Carolyn Woodard: And uh just make trying to make that space where you have a conversation.
[38:19] Carolyn Woodard: Just set aside 10 minutes at the end of your meetings to like talk about something in AI.
[38:25] Carolyn Woodard: It could be, you know, an article that you, you know, read.
[38:28] Carolyn Woodard: It could be something about your policy, it could be a new use case.
[38:33] Carolyn Woodard: Just having that those places, I think, is something that nonprofits can actually do really well compared to some of the for-profit companies that I worked at.
[38:43] Carolyn Woodard: So uh lean into that strength and you know, strengthen the bond between coworkers and colleagues.
[38:50] Carolyn Woodard: And really, I've said this before, but AI can lend itself to individual experimentation, individual learning, and individual use.
[39:00] Carolyn Woodard: Like you have something that you use it for that's just fantastic for you.
[39:05] Carolyn Woodard: But don't let that become the only way your organization works with AI, because then 20 different people are using AI in 20 different ways.
[39:14] Carolyn Woodard: And um you're missing out on opportunities for synchronicity, like someone else is using something, maybe for something specific in their department, but it would work.
[39:24] Carolyn Woodard: There's a use case for that same type of application in what you do, and you're missing it because you're not talking to them.
[39:30] Carolyn Woodard: Or you are, you know, struggling with um policy, or someone is using AI in a really unsecure and unsafe way, and that is a risk for everyone at your organization.
[39:42] Carolyn Woodard: So again, just try to keep having those open, open dialogue, I think is our best practice that we would uh really recommend.
[39:50] Carolyn Woodard: And it's hard, but keep working at it.
[39:52] Carolyn Woodard: Just keep asking those questions and uh getting someone to talk to you about it.
[39:56] Carolyn Woodard: So um we have agency.
[39:59] Carolyn Woodard: I hope this podcast is helpful for you in uh discovering and uh developing that agency that you have in your own AI use and at your organization.
[40:09] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, I'll say as always, like not using AI is also a legitimate choice.
[40:13] Carolyn Woodard: I don't want to imply that every nonprofit everywhere has to use AI for everything because that is not how I feel at all.
[40:19] Carolyn Woodard: In fact, I think it's really important to know your values, have that policy, and um be you know looking at really specific use cases and where it can help you because there are a lot of cases where it's not useful at all.
[40:34] Carolyn Woodard: So hope that was helpful.
[40:36] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, we'll be back next Tuesday with more nonprofit AI.
[40:39] Carolyn Woodard: Of course, we'll be in your feed on Friday with another um tech topics podcast, and uh that will be part two of our um Cybersecurity Playbook with Matt Eshelman.
[40:52] Carolyn Woodard: So just a lot of good stuff in that webinar, and you can listen to it as a podcast or read about it, watch the video on our website, the full video.
[41:02] Carolyn Woodard: So until next Tuesday, take care.

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