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AI in Practice for Nonprofits with Carolyn Woodard and Erik Solce pt 2

· 26 min · S7 E66

Episode AI in Practice for Nonprofits with Carolyn Woodard and Erik Solce pt 2

0:00 26:28

In Part 2 of the AI in Practice for Nonprofits webinar, Carolyn Woodard and Erik Solce, IT Business Manager at Community IT, dig into the part of the project that matters most once an AI workflow is up and running: how do you know it is actually working, and how do you keep yourself in the loop instead of just trusting the output?

Carolyn walks through her verify but trust framework using a real example from her own marketing data lake. An AI-generated report flagged that YouTube Shorts were quietly pulling down watch time on the long-form webinar videos her organization actually wants people to find, a counterintuitive finding. She confirmed independently before acting on it, then tracked month over month to see engagement recover. She and Erik also share what a few months of working with AI day to day has taught them: it does not remember context the way a human assistant would, a trusted coach makes the learning curve much shorter, and a simple Friday check-in on what is still outstanding keeps a project from sprawling. The second half turns to audience questions, from how to pick the right process to automate to how to keep sensitive documents out of an AI tool's reach.

Haven't listened to Part 1 yet? Find it in your podcast feed.

This episode covers:

• The verify but trust framework: spot-checking numbers against your dashboards, following a metric after you make a change, and cross-checking independent sources against each other. • The YouTube Shorts case study: how an AI-flagged, counterintuitive finding about engagement led to a policy change and measurable results. • Working with AI as a collaborator rather than a tool: session memory limits, the value of a human coach, and a weekly outstanding items check-in. • How to choose what to automate: talk to the people doing the work, map the real process rather than the documented one, and look for high volume, rule-based, repetitive tasks, using a SIPOC diagram as one way to do it. • Security Q&A: reviewing SharePoint and Drive permissions before granting AI tools access, applying sensitivity labels to off-limits folders, and why using free AI tools is not recommended and is not secure.

Resources Mentioned:

• Verify Then Trust: How to Check AI Outputs, Community IT • Growing IT Management Capacity at Nonprofits webinar, Community IT • AI Use Case Library, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation • SIPOC Diagram, ASQ • Nonprofit IT Management Reddit Community

_______________________________ 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.

Links in the notes 9

Transcript

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