🗞️ AI for Non Profits Network: Weekly Briefing 02/04

The weekly digest from a network of non-profits interested in AI. What's in this week's Briefing: Findings from our first workshop; Lessons from Net Impact CEO on launching AI in 90 days; & resources.

In The Briefing this week:

1. 👀 What’s Caught our Eye: From the Workshop Floor: 90 Days to Your First AI Pilot.

2. 💭 Thought for the Week: The Force Multiplier: Lessons from a Nonprofit That Launched AI in 90 Days.

3. 🌟 Interesting News

4. 🌐 From Across the Network

1) 👀 What Caught Our Eye: From the Workshop Floor: 90 Days to Your First AI Pilot

Last week, we gathered nonprofit leaders from across the sector - from Richmond to Toronto, from community building to faith studies - for our first live workshop. What was the outcome: equal parts curiosity and honest apprehension. And that’s exactly what we needed.

What we tackled: We mapped out organizational pain points (repetitive grant writing and donor data entry), explored apprehension around getting started with AI, and sketched realistic 90-day pilot plans.

Karen Johns, CEO of Net Impact (article below), walked us through their journey - from brand refresh to launching custom AI and a new membership platform. Her advice: “There isn’t an ‘it.’ There are multiple things. Give people the right tools for their roles. Leadership doesn’t need to be in the weeds.”

The conversation: Participants didn’t hold back. Concerns ranged from “Shadow AI” (staff already using ChatGPT informally, no policy in place) to trust issues with hallucinations and data accuracy. Others worried about overwhelm - layering AI onto tech stacks they’re still mastering. One director asked: “Will AI grow the digital divide, or can we use it to close the gap?”

By the end, aspirations emerged. Automated financial workflows.; AI-powered institutional knowledge bases for proposal writing; hyper-personalized donor outreach using dormant data. One participant summed it up perfectly: “I came in skeptical. I’m leaving with hope.”

What’s next: participants went home with practical workplans and materials to identify pain points, match them to AI solutions, and build those 90-day sprint plans.

We’re trying to build a space where nonprofits lead the conversation. Where we audit our “Shadow AI,” share what didn’t work, and reduce duplicated effort across the sector.

Want the materials? Reply to this email.

Our next workshop tackles AI governance and policies on 4th March at 2pm (EST) - the practical frameworks you actually need to adopt AI and put it in place across your organization. For early access, reply to this email.

2) 💭 Thought of the Week: The Force Multiplier: Lessons from a Nonprofit That Launched AI in 90 Days.

When Karen Johns became CEO of Net Impact, in 2023, the landscape was different. AI solutions were not widely sought after and she was staring down a familiar nonprofit puzzle: rebrand the organization, relaunch the website, and roll out a membership platform for 300 chapters worldwide. All with limited staff, a tight budget, and limited time to pull it off.

What Net Impact did next cuts through much of the noise around what it actually takes to implement artificial intelligence in the sector. No grand strategy or organization-wide transformation programs. Just a pragmatic approach to getting work done that many resource-strapped nonprofits might actually replicate.

Karen Johns, CEO Net Impact

Start with the problem, not the technology

Johns is blunt about Net Impact’s entry point: “It wasn’t like we just wanted to use AI.” The organization had specific outcomes in mind - launch a platform, reduce staff burden, and modernize communications. When consultants suggested AI tools could accelerate the timeline and cut costs, Net Impact didn’t lead with technology; they led with need.

This is something we often hear, but is often difficult to implement. Walk into most nonprofit conversations about AI, and you’ll hear variations of “We should probably do something with AI.” This is the wrong approach and doesn’t set you up to ask the right questions. So instead, Net Impact asked: “What are we trying to accomplish? Could these tools help us get there faster?”

The distinction shapes the roadmap that follows; within 90 days, the Net Impact team and Whitelabel launched a website rebuild, deployed a membership platform, and created NIA - a custom chatbot handling routine questions from across its community, as well as membership signups. Not because AI was fashionable, but because staff were drowning in repetitive queries that pulled them from strategic work.

Forget uniformity. Think roles.

This is where Johns parts ways with typical change management orthodoxy: not everyone needs to use AI the same way. In fact, not everyone needs to use it at all. The assumption that AI is one uniform solution is precisely the problem.

“There isn’t an ‘it,’” she says. “It’s multiple things.” Some Net Impact staff use AI for grant research. Others for data analysis. Johns herself? Unapologetic about staying out of the technical weeds.

For nonprofits already stretched thin, this offers relief. The pressure to achieve organization-wide AI literacy, to train everyone uniformly, often stalls progress entirely. Johns suggests something more surgical: identify who needs which tools for their specific roles, train them properly, and trust them to deliver.

It’s the difference between mandatory AI 101 sessions for the entire organization and targeted training for the development director who needs prospect research tools, or the programs team managing data collection. Different lanes, different tools, same goal of freeing capacity for mission work.

The real promise isn’t replacement

What Johns calls the “force multiplier” effect is where things get interesting for the sector. Net Impact didn’t hire additional staff to launch their membership platform or field chapter questions 24/7; they redistributed what humans do.

Now they’re doing things like analyzing 30 years of history and data to improve storytelling and planning workforce readiness workshops for Gen Z student members entering an AI-transformed job market. None of this required expanding headcount. It required asking what tasks could be automated so humans could focus on relationships, strategy, and mission delivery.

There’s a broader point here about how nonprofits might approach technology differently than corporations. The goal isn’t efficiency for profit margins. It’s buying back staff time for the face-to-face work, the community organizing, and the relationship building that no algorithm can replicate.

What it takes in practice

Net Impact’s experience suggests four concrete moves for nonprofit leaders navigating this space:

1. Map your time drains, not your technology options. Sit with your team and identify where hours disappear - answering the same volunteer questions, entering data, drafting similar grant narratives. Start there, not with “What AI tools exist?”

2. Choose one pilot with one clear success metric. Johns tackled chapter support first. Pick a single workflow, measure one outcome, and give it 90 days. If weekly data entry drops from six hours to three, that’s success. If staff can respond to donor queries within an hour instead of 24, that matters.

3. Build on existing infrastructure. Net Impact extended their existing privacy policies rather than creating new ones from scratch. They checked what AI capabilities already exist inside tools like Salesforce, Asana, and Canva. Many nonprofits might find they’re already paying for AI features they haven’t activated.

4. Secure board buy-in for major shifts, but don’t wait for permission to experiment. Johns brought in consultants to present to board members for wholesale implementation. Smaller pilots? Those happened at the operational level with trusted staff.

The case for cautious optimism

What’s striking about Johns’s account isn’t breathless enthusiasm for AI’s potential. It’s measured pragmatism about what worked for one organization in solving specific problems. She’s equally clear about what they’re still figuring out - data privacy boundaries, staff adoption curves, equity implications for their global south chapters.

But Net Impact proved something valuable: a nonprofit can move from curiosity to implementation in 90 days without halting operations, without massive budget increases, without requiring every staff member to become an AI expert.

“The goal isn’t to have everyone be experts,” Johns says. “The goal is to help people do their jobs better.”

In a sector perpetually asked to do more with less, it’s a practical framework worth testing.

We’re holding our next AI for Non Profits Network Workshop on Wednesday 4th March (2pm EST) on AI governance and policies - the practical frameworks you actually need to adopt AI and put it in place across your organization. For early access, reply to this email.

3) 🌟 Interesting News

‘Deepfakes spreading and more AI companions’: seven takeaways from the latest artificial intelligence safety report (The Guardian)

OpenAI wraps multi-city nonprofit AI Jam across India as focus shifts from pilots to deployment (Ed Tech Innovation Hub)

Mission Possible: Unlocking the Power of AI for Nonprofits (Fujifilm)

4) 🌐 From Across the Network

• Have an event, case study, gathering or interesting insight you’d like to share with the network? Drop us a note by replying to this email.

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