# Nonprofit AI: Workforce Issues

An episode of [Community IT Innovators Nonprofit Technology Topics](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1536843269), 13 Oct 2026, 24 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1029925/episodes/19955416-nonprofit-ai-workforce-issues.mp3

Carolyn Woodard covers a question on many nonprofit minds right now: is AI coming for our jobs? Headlines are full of tech layoffs, and recent graduates are finding entry-level work harder to land. For nonprofits the picture is more complicated, both for workforce development organizations training people for jobs that are changing and for the rest of the sector, where funding cuts seem more responsible for reshaping who gets hired than AI. Carolyn starts with recent layoffs at HubSpot, Salesforce, and Microsoft. These are three companies telling three different stories about AI's role, and their restructuring could change the support your nonprofit gets from the tools it pays for. She then looks at how workforce nonprofits are responding. Per Scholas has shifted its training from coding toward AI skills. Coalitions including the National Skills Coalition, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP, and the ACLU are pressing for worker protections, bias testing, and fair access to reskilling. States are stepping in to regulate AI in workforce decision making. This episode covers: • Why for-profit companies tend to see AI as a way to do five people's jobs with one agent, while nonprofits more often see AI as help for one person already doing five jobs in an understaffed/under-resourced nonprofit. • Why you should watch your support experience and talk to your account rep when a tech vendor restructures customer support. • Why administrative and clerical roles, held mostly by women, are among the most exposed to generative AI, in a sector where about 70% of staff are women. • What the CEP State of Nonprofits 2026 report shows: 30% of nonprofits have cut staff since January 2025, 73% of CEOs report rising demand, and 57% say foundation grants are harder to get. • Why nonprofits and funders still have agency. Leaders choose how to respond to funding shifts, and funders can pay for AI training, pilots, and the workforce development organizations that will need support most. Resources Mentioned: • AI for Workers and Learners 2026 Survey, Jobs for the Future • Generative AI, Occupational Segregation and Gender Equality in the World of Work, ILO • State of Nonprofits 2026, Center for Effective Philanthropy • Challenger Report, September 2026, Challenger, Gray & Christmas • Per Scholas • Artificial Intelligence, National Skills Coalition • Civil Rights Letter to the House Democratic AI Commission, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights • Ensuring Representation and Eliminating Bias in AI, NAACP • AI Literacy Training and Employment Notice, U.S. Department of Labor • Newsom Signs Slate of AI Workplace Laws, KQED • How Worried Should We Be About AI Coming for Our Jobs? PBS 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.
[0:27] Carolyn Woodard: My name is Carolyn Woodard.
[0:29] Carolyn Woodard: I'm your host, and I'm fascinated by this intersection of AI and nonprofits and philanthropy in this moment.
[0:40] Carolyn Woodard: So we've talked before about some of the bigger policy issues around the environment, around the ethics, around the power and balance, around who owns the data that was originally scraped for the LLMs.
[0:55] Carolyn Woodard: We've talked about how the LLMs work, what is AI in general.
[1:00] Carolyn Woodard: We've talked about making policy and tips for integrating training and experimentation into your nonprofit.
[1:09] Carolyn Woodard: So I wanted to take a moment today to talk about a couple of recent news stories and dig in a little bit on the issues facing workforce and workforce development organizations and jobs in the United States particularly.
[1:25] Carolyn Woodard: So what are the issues?
[1:27] Carolyn Woodard: How is AI impacting jobs and job security and changing jobs, changing the work, changing what we are doing?
[1:37] Carolyn Woodard: And there's a lot of headlines around AI taking jobs and people being afraid that, you know, trying to find a job that is AI proof, especially everyone who uh graduated uh from college recently, you know, I see you, my heart goes out to you.
[1:53] Carolyn Woodard: There's it's really concerning uh for a lot of new workers uh looking for those entry-level jobs.
[2:00] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so there have been a bunch of stories about it, the headlines about AI taking jobs.
[2:05] Carolyn Woodard: For nonprofits, I wanted to dig in a little bit on it's a little bit more complicated, both how are nonprofits that work on workforce development responding to this moment and you know what policy is going in place.
[2:21] Carolyn Woodard: I talked last week about these new bills in California that limit how you can use AI in hiring and firing, and when you have to disclose that AI was used in layoffs, for example.
[2:33] Carolyn Woodard: So today I wanted to get in a little bit more on is this impacting you?
[2:39] Carolyn Woodard: Like, is this impacting your nonprofit?
[2:42] Carolyn Woodard: Are you hiring more?
[2:43] Carolyn Woodard: Are you hiring fewer people?
[2:44] Carolyn Woodard: Are you using AI for more?
[2:46] Carolyn Woodard: Uh,
[2:47] Carolyn Woodard: And also there have been a bunch of layoffs just recently in the tech sector.
[2:51] Carolyn Woodard: Last week, HubSpot announced a bunch of layoffs.
[2:54] Carolyn Woodard: There's been layoffs at Microsoft.
[2:56] Carolyn Woodard: So I wanted to also kind of probe a little bit with tech tools that we use at nonprofits.
[3:04] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, what is AI, what impact is AI having on that as well?
[3:09] Carolyn Woodard: So is AI coming for our jobs?
[3:13] Carolyn Woodard: Last Tuesday, HubSpot announced it is laying off nearly 660 people, about 7% of its workforce.
[3:20] Carolyn Woodard: The CEO stressed that AI efficiencies weren't the driver.
[3:25] Carolyn Woodard: The goal is a flatter organization with fewer management layers, but the company is also reorganizing around a new strategy built on delivering outcomes for customers with AI.
[3:37] Carolyn Woodard: As every tech platform and tech tool seems to be doing nowadays, every time they release an update, they are adding more AI features.
[3:47] Carolyn Woodard: And those features don't come from nowhere, right?
[3:50] Carolyn Woodard: They have to pay for the development.
[3:51] Carolyn Woodard: They're paying vendors to help them update their tools.
[3:56] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, and they are updating their tools internally, and then they're turning around and releasing these to try and you know have market share or keep customers uh updated with new features so that they can retain their customers that they have.
[4:11] Carolyn Woodard: Salesforce in August last year, they said that AI agents had let them shrink their customer support from about 9,000 people to about 5,000 people.
[4:24] Carolyn Woodard: Salesforce also said it moved hundreds of those employees into other roles rather than filling support jobs because they are using AI for customer support.
[4:35] Carolyn Woodard: You know, Salesforce, a lot of nonprofits use Salesforce as their CRM, so that has an impact on us as we're trying to get customer support for the tools that we're using.
[4:47] Carolyn Woodard: And then Microsoft in July cut about 4,800 jobs.
[4:53] Carolyn Woodard: Its chief people officer wrote that the roles are not being replaced by AI, but acknowledged that AI is changing how work gets done at Microsoft.
[5:05] Carolyn Woodard: And so these are three different companies, three different stories, three different stories that they are telling.
[5:11] Carolyn Woodard: You know, different, all politics is local, I guess you could say.
[5:15] Carolyn Woodard: Their reasons for AI impacting how they make decisions about layoffs like these, you know, is are different.
[5:23] Carolyn Woodard: They're going to be individual to the different companies.
[5:26] Carolyn Woodard: But, you know, their analysts are saying, particularly about Microsoft, that they are managing down their workforce.
[5:35] Carolyn Woodard: They want to have fewer salaries to pay and fewer benefits in order to pay for their AI investments.
[5:42] Carolyn Woodard: So they are seeing, you know, the CFO is seeing money go out to their AI development, and they have to, that money has to come from somewhere.
[5:51] Carolyn Woodard: So, and of course, AI does help you automate certain people's jobs or certain tasks.
[5:57] Carolyn Woodard: So it makes sense that those dovetail together.
[6:00] Carolyn Woodard: As I have said for a while now, I think for-profit companies, when they see AI and what it can do, are thinking, you know, I can do five people's jobs with this one AI agent, I can fire five people.
[6:12] Carolyn Woodard: Whereas on the nonprofit side, we tend to be, we tend to look at it from the opposite direction of we are we're have one person doing five people's jobs.
[6:21] Carolyn Woodard: Now they can do five people's jobs more efficiently by using AI.
[6:25] Carolyn Woodard: So um it wasn't that we were gonna hire and now we're not going to.
[6:28] Carolyn Woodard: It's that we weren't gonna hire and we were under-resourced, and had undercapacity.
[6:34] Carolyn Woodard: So um the AI is helping our existing staff do their jobs better, hopefully, we hope.
[6:41] Carolyn Woodard: But at all of these for-profit companies, tech companies, it's a combination, right?
[6:46] Carolyn Woodard: Of AI is replacing people, uh, they are not hiring new people, and the AI spending is replacing people's salaries and benefits.
[6:55] Carolyn Woodard: And this ties back directly to last week when I talked about California's new law, which requires employees to just employers to disclose when AI causes mass layoff.
[7:05] Carolyn Woodard: Um, of course, they get to tell.
[7:08] Carolyn Woodard: I'm not sure exactly how that law is gonna work, because of course the company is gonna find lots of ways to spin the story about why they did the layoffs and not attribute it directly to AI.
[7:18] Carolyn Woodard: But it seems reasonable, as with everything in work to these days, um, AI is in there somewhere.
[7:25] Carolyn Woodard: It has some impact, whether it's a direct impact or indirect.
[7:28] Carolyn Woodard: When your vendor restructures an A tech tool that you're using, especially around customer support, you're gonna want to watch your support experience and um talk to your account team, right?
[7:42] Carolyn Woodard: Are they are you paying more for a license and like getting worse for support response times?
[7:48] Carolyn Woodard: Something you want to know.
[7:49] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, you can talk to your rep directly about what's changing.
[7:53] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so you know, get the low down if your rep is still employed.
[7:57] Carolyn Woodard: But just reach out and uh, you know, if they heard about the layoffs, what's what's the update?
[8:02] Carolyn Woodard: Can you give me information?
[8:03] Carolyn Woodard: So that's how tech companies are handling this.
[8:06] Carolyn Woodard: But at nonprofits.
[8:09] Carolyn Woodard: So I painted a rosy picture of we're excited about AI because one person can do five people's jobs.
[8:15] Carolyn Woodard: But I was quite curious uh when I was researching this episode to see are nonprofits also restructuring and are they not hiring new people?
[8:26] Carolyn Woodard: Are they maybe also laying people off because uh AI can do that job?
[8:31] Carolyn Woodard: We do have we have done some case studies about you know intake and how having an AI handle some of the routine questions that come in at intake for a shelter, for example, can help your staff spend time on the more difficult questions, more complicated, challenging questions, uh, have time to call people back when they left a message, a voicemail.
[8:53] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so it's interesting to see how are workforce development nonprofits responding and how are nonprofits, is this also impacting nonprofits?
[9:03] Carolyn Woodard: So, in terms of workforce development, um, I looked at one nonprofit Per Scholas.
[9:09] Carolyn Woodard: They do workforce development, uh, getting people into jobs.
[9:14] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, they launched an AI solutions developer course for alumni this year, and last fall they saw the writing on the wall and said that they were slowing down software development training for coding jobs because those jobs had dried up or were drying up.
[9:30] Carolyn Woodard: They were very vulnerable to AI.
[9:32] Carolyn Woodard: And if you know anyone who's been in college or training or retraining for a coding job, which used to be, you know, for decades they said, oh, get a computer technology job, though their you know, recession, there's always going to be jobs there, but not anymore.
[9:50] Carolyn Woodard: Another organization that works with uh workforce development is Jobs for the Future.
[9:56] Carolyn Woodard: And they did a survey uh recently in which 66% of workers they surveyed said AI is already affecting their jobs, but only a third reported having the training to use it at work.
[10:08] Carolyn Woodard: And this gap in their survey was wider for workers without four-year degrees and for women.
[10:15] Carolyn Woodard: That was interesting to me because you would think coding jobs are the most exposed to AI right now, and stereotypically those there are more men in those jobs than women, but um, not just coding jobs are vulnerable and exposed to AI automation.
[10:32] Carolyn Woodard: Administrative and clerical roles are as well, and women hold far more of those than men.
[10:38] Carolyn Woodard: The ILO, the International Labor Organization, found that female-dominated jobs are almost twice as likely to be exposed to generative AI as male-dominated ones, at 29% to 16%.
[10:50] Carolyn Woodard: About 70% of nonprofit staff are women.
[10:55] Carolyn Woodard: So that is something to think about in your organization who does the you know management and administrative work.
[11:03] Carolyn Woodard: Um, exposed to AI doesn't mean they are being replaced right now, but it means that in these surveys and in this analysis, they are finding, you know, the jobs like you know, in the in the olden days uh when secretaries were replaced by word processors and and people doing their own quote-unquote secretarial work.
[11:24] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so that I think is again is is coming through at this time as well.
[11:29] Carolyn Woodard: So there's also issues that the people in some of these administrative roles have very um job-specific skills, and that as if that job is replaced by AI, uh then they are they would have to be retrained to do a different job.
[11:47] Carolyn Woodard: And of course, if other administrative jobs are also being replaced, that puts a lot of stress and pressure on workforce redevelopment training.
[11:56] Carolyn Woodard: There are coalitions that are advocating for stronger policies to protect workers in an AI age.
[12:04] Carolyn Woodard: There is the National Skills Coalition.
[12:07] Carolyn Woodard: Um, they are pushing for policies that expand access to AI skills.
[12:11] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, they want to ensure that there's investment in training, uh redevelopment training, and they want to close the digital divide.
[12:19] Carolyn Woodard: This is something that, you know, I last heard about the digital divide, I don't know, back in um COVID, I guess, when there I mean it used to be this huge thing that people talked about a lot, and then it had kind of gone away for a little while.
[12:31] Carolyn Woodard: But yeah, the access that people have to um high-speed internet and the kind of access and comfort and confidence that people have in working with some of these tools, you probably know in your own life, people who are very uncomfortable trying these tools or very skeptical or very afraid of the impact that these tools are going to have on their job.
[12:58] Carolyn Woodard: So trying to work on programs that will increase AI literacy among people that are entering the workforce or need to be retrained, that is something that National Skills Coalition is focused on.
[13:12] Carolyn Woodard: And I also shared previously a really good download from the Labor Department in the United States about AI literacy and how important it's going to be to future workforce.
[13:24] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, last April there were 40 organizations that formed a coalition as well asking Congress for federal AI legislation that centers worker protections.
[13:36] Carolyn Woodard: And that also is what the most of the California laws that were just passed are around the workers and protecting them.
[13:45] Carolyn Woodard: There's also a civil rights aspect to this about who, where bias is introduced and when an AI is used in hiring and firing, where those biases are having an impact on the people who are losing their jobs or not being able to be hired.
[14:05] Carolyn Woodard: So the Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights has called for mandatory bias testing in AI, uh disparate impact liability requirements.
[14:15] Carolyn Woodard: So the company would have to demonstrate that they were that their actions were not having uh unequal impacts on their workforce based on, you know, if they're a certain class, if they have a disability, if uh gender or race-based.
[14:34] Carolyn Woodard: That the federal uh laws could not preempt state laws.
[14:40] Carolyn Woodard: So this is something that's constantly happening nowadays.
[14:43] Carolyn Woodard: But um definitely that if California and some of these other states go forward, I think Connecticut, Colorado also have some, uh Texas, I believe, is uh looking at AI workforce laws and regulation so that those would be locally enforceable depending on what happens at the federal level.
[15:04] Carolyn Woodard: And that people need to have fair access to reskilling for workers who are impacted by AI changes in their jobs.
[15:13] Carolyn Woodard: Um the NAACP is uh in that coalition as well, and the ACLU also sits on the board.
[15:22] Carolyn Woodard: The NAACP has a resolution calling for an improved safety net, including unemployment insurance and retraining for any workers who are displaced by AI.
[15:32] Carolyn Woodard: The ACLU has more of a focus in AI in hiring and trying to kind of root out bias that may be playing out when AI alone is used for hiring.
[15:44] Carolyn Woodard: Um, and it's working on discrimination cases that are involving AI hiring tools, which I talked about in a previous episode.
[15:51] Carolyn Woodard: I'll link to that and to all of these resources in the show notes.
[15:55] Carolyn Woodard: You definitely, if you've applied for a job recently, um I have a teenager who is applying, and there's lots of, it's clear that AI is being used on those application submissions because you know you just don't you don't hear anything back, basically.
[16:12] Carolyn Woodard: It goes into the application, or it's clear uh the types of questions that you have to respond to that there's an AI tool being used on the other end.
[16:21] Carolyn Woodard: So interesting to see what's going to happen with that.
[16:25] Carolyn Woodard: A lot of workforce nonprofits are taking this to the policy front and trying to get regulation that way.
[16:31] Carolyn Woodard: Of course, they work with large corporations to hire the people that they train, so they are usually pretty careful to keep that uh partnership going.
[16:42] Carolyn Woodard: But certainly they are observing a lot of what is happening with their own alumni who they're trying to place with these corporations and seeing what happens to them over time as the most recently hired.
[16:54] Carolyn Woodard: Are they then the first to be fired when AI changes what the work is?
[17:00] Carolyn Woodard: I wanted to delve a little bit into nonprofit layoffs.
[17:04] Carolyn Woodard: So there was just a stat released that in September nonprofit layoffs hit over 4,000, actually a little bit closer to 5,000, which is the sector's highest month of layoffs in 2026.
[17:17] Carolyn Woodard: Um, year to date, they're still down.
[17:21] Carolyn Woodard: Uh 2025 was a worse year for layoffs in nonprofits, I should say.
[17:25] Carolyn Woodard: And it's very hard to find reasons uh for these layoffs.
[17:30] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, but the Center for Effective Philanthropy State of Nonprofits report in 2026 said that about 30% of nonprofits have cut staff since January 2025, most of them by more than 10%.
[17:43] Carolyn Woodard: And you can see there have been several nonprofits that have just shut down entirely.
[17:48] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, there were all of the disruption and chaos after USAID funding was stopped.
[17:54] Carolyn Woodard: So that is has been happening and continues to happen.
[17:58] Carolyn Woodard: So there's a lot of, I guess, uh indirect evidence that a lot of the layoffs in nonprofits come from funding issues and not from AI specifically.
[18:10] Carolyn Woodard: But as I said, it was hard to find any information directly about that.
[18:13] Carolyn Woodard: Um, in that same CEP State of Nonprofits 2026 report, 73% of CEOs reported increased demand for their services.
[18:25] Carolyn Woodard: Not surprising.
[18:27] Carolyn Woodard: And 57% said that foundation grants were harder to get.
[18:31] Carolyn Woodard: Can foundations fill that gap?
[18:33] Carolyn Woodard: This is a question we've been asking for almost two years now.
[18:37] Carolyn Woodard: And um I would have to say in 2023, foundations gave about 103 billion, while federal support to nonprofits was 303 billion, so three times more than what the kind of private philanthropic sector gives.
[18:53] Carolyn Woodard: So it's not really feasible for nonprofit uh for foundations to replace federal funding entirely.
[19:02] Carolyn Woodard: And in addition to that, most foundations have not, in fact, increased their payout.
[19:07] Carolyn Woodard: Uh only 12% of foundation CEOs rate their own response to this funding crisis over the past two years as very effective.
[19:16] Carolyn Woodard: So no one is directly measuring AI's role in nonprofit staffing yet.
[19:21] Carolyn Woodard: Uh but if AI hasn't caused these cuts due to this funding, uh, it's definitely going to shape the kinds of cuts that are made.
[19:30] Carolyn Woodard: Are there jobs at nonprofits that could be done by AI instead?
[19:35] Carolyn Woodard: And also who gets rehired or who gets hired.
[19:38] Carolyn Woodard: Like if the funding continues to fall and salaries have to stay flat, then you could see a case for investing in AI tools.
[19:48] Carolyn Woodard: And of course, as I said at the top, when your tech tool gets an update, you're going to get new AI, whether you want it or not.
[19:54] Carolyn Woodard: So being able to use that is a matter of doing the training and doing the change management.
[20:01] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so it may look very attractive to nonprofits who are really concerned about their funding.
[20:07] Carolyn Woodard: I want to come back to, as I often do, the idea that we have agency in this.
[20:12] Carolyn Woodard: So we are nonprofit professionals.
[20:14] Carolyn Woodard: Uh, we have a lot of connections and ties to a lot of nonprofit staff have been in their jobs for a long time.
[20:22] Carolyn Woodard: So it's us, like right, we're deciding to make the layoffs or to not hire someone or to try for a grant or to deal with how our funding has shifted and changed.
[20:32] Carolyn Woodard: Um, so that is those are choices that we make.
[20:35] Carolyn Woodard: And we can make choices to try to keep full staff and see what else can be cut or where something can be automated, and that could be a cost savings.
[20:43] Carolyn Woodard: Of course, lots of nonprofits are using AI to help them with the uh research into new grants and funding that they could find given some of these hardships and challenges that we are facing from the federal funding environment.
[21:00] Carolyn Woodard: If you are a workforce nonprofit, of course, you're already deep, deep in this, and I would love to hear from you because you have a lot more experience uh than I do.
[21:08] Carolyn Woodard: Though I just read an article that was about how worried we should be about AI and jobs in general, not just in the nonprofit sector, and uh the idea that no one is really ready for what AI is gonna do to jobs, and just three, four, five years from now, the job landscape is gonna be very different.
[21:29] Carolyn Woodard: Economics are gonna be very different, and um, economists are kind of not on the same page about what is what they're predicting is gonna happen with AI changes to the workforce.
[21:43] Carolyn Woodard: If you are a funder, of course, you have a lot of agency and you have a lot of ability to step up those nonprofits and grantees that you were supporting before.
[21:54] Carolyn Woodard: If you thought that they were important enough to fund previously, then definitely they are worth your support and maybe some additional funding for AI training, for experimenting and piloting AI projects that could make them more impactful, uh, could further their mission, could help them retain staff themselves.
[22:15] Carolyn Woodard: And for those uh workforce development nonprofits, they definitely are gonna need a lot of support in the next few years.
[22:22] Carolyn Woodard: So if that is something that you fund, definitely please have a look at that and um step up.
[22:30] Carolyn Woodard: So uh thank you for joining me.
[22:31] Carolyn Woodard: As always on Tuesdays, I like to try and uh just pick a topic, uh, pick some news and help make sense of this fire hose of not just AI that is rushing over us, but a lot of the news around AI that is rushing over us too.
[22:45] Carolyn Woodard: On Friday, we will be back in your feed with our regular technology topics podcast.
[22:50] Carolyn Woodard: And I'll be back on Tuesday as well with some more nonprofit AI news.
[22:55] Carolyn Woodard: So until then, take care.

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