Podcasts · Community IT Innovators Nonprofit Technology Topics

Nonprofit AI Management Advice with Mimi Yeh

22 May 2026 · 26 min · S7 E39

Carolyn Woodard explores the gap between AI ambition and organizational readiness with Mimi Yeh, Engagement Director at PTKO, a strategy and change management consulting firm that works exclusively with nonprofits and mission-driven organizations. Mimi focuses on the people side of technology adoption — and when it comes to AI, she sees a consistent pattern: leadership is excited, staff are uncertain, and the gap between those two realities is where AI initiatives stall.

The conversation reframes AI adoption not as a tools problem but as an alignment and change management challenge. Mimi and Carolyn discuss how nonprofits can build the internal structure — governance, policy, shared understanding — that makes AI adoption sustainable rather than chaotic, and what funders can do to support that work more effectively.

Mimi and Carolyn discuss:

• Why the biggest obstacle to AI adoption in nonprofits is not the technology itself, but the gap between leadership ambition and staff readiness — and how governance can close it. • How to use your organization's existing skepticism about AI (around climate impact, job displacement, or data risk) as a productive starting point for building policy rather than a reason to stall. • Why acceptable use guidelines for AI should not look very different from governance frameworks nonprofits already use for other tools and technologies. • How funders can shift from pressuring nonprofits to adopt AI quickly to supporting the capacity building and literacy that makes adoption meaningful and lasting. • What it actually takes to build an AI tool for internal nonprofit use — and why the human input, voice, and values behind that tool matter as much as the data fed into it.

Resources Mentioned:

• PTKO — ptko.io/who-we-are/ • AI Acceptable Use Policy Template — Community IT Innovators — communityit.com/template-acceptable-use-of-ai-tools-in-the-nonprofit-workplace/ • AI Resource Library — Community IT Innovators — communityit.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/

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Thanks for listening.

Links in the notes 4

• https://communityit.com/webinars/
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/community-it-innovators/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/NonprofitITManagement/
• https://communityit.com