Feeling overwhelmed by the tsunami wave of AI chatter? Wondering how your nonprofit can ride the AI wave without wiping out? You’re not alone.
The rapid evolution of AI technology has everyone’s heads spinning, trying to figure out how to adopt it responsibly and effectively to amplify their impact.
In today’s episode, I sit down with the phenomenal Devi Thomas, a beacon of knowledge from Microsoft Philanthropies, who’s illuminating the path for nonprofits in the digital age. Her insights reveal that the integration of AI isn’t just a trend; it’s a toolset for improving efficiency, personalizing donor engagement, and scaling impact with a tactical edge.
Devi, preaches that adopting AI starts with embracing our curiosity and permitting ourselves to experiment.AI’s potential to revolutionize nonprofit operations is immense – if wielded with intention, transparency, and inclusivity.
Ready to demystify AI and propel your organization into a future where tech and purpose align more closely than ever? Tune in to the full episode and learn how AI can be your co-pilot in achieving more with less, without losing the human touch that defines our missions
Important Links:
https://nonprofitcommunity.microsoft.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/devi-thomas
Episode Transcript
RHEA 00:00
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Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown, I’m your host, Rhea Wong.
Hey, podcast listeners, three along with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. This week’s guest is Debbie Thomas. She is the global leader of nonprofit community from Microsoft Philanthropies. And today we are talking about. All of the things for AI and fundraising. It is a fascinating world that we are now living in.
So buckle up and listen to everything Debbie has to say about her favorite use cases and the ways in which you can start to integrate AI into your own fundraising practice.
So let’s just jump into, before we talk about AI and all of the things, talk with us a little bit about how you Got started in the nonprofit world because I know it was a journey for you.
And I think sometimes in the nonprofit space, we think that there’s philanthropy and then there’s nonprofit and nary the twain shall meet. So love for you to tell your story a little bit.
DEVI 01:24
Yeah. Thanks for asking this question. It’s actually one of my favorite topics. I started in the nonprofit space. I was a journalist for a very brief.
Hot second, and effectively wrote a story about squatters rights in an international development setting and walked up to my editor and said, I want the story to be published. And the editor said didn’t I send you to cover an IPO? And I said, you did, but this is a story I want to write.
And pretty much after I wrote that story, I came back to, I was living in Boston. I came back and said, okay, I think I want to switch gears here. And I started working at a small nonprofit. 30 people that was focused on economic development, and I became part of their marketing team of two.
And it was probably the start of an incredible journey, as we like to say, very much focused on social impact and the nonprofit space. I Spent a total of five to six years at that nonprofit and then later moved into consulting for nonprofits and then went back into the nonprofit space again, this time at a much larger IGO.
And then eventually found myself in tech philanthropy using all of the incredible skills that I’d learned from the nonprofit space. space. And to this day, I consider myself the nonprofit girl sitting at the tech table. So this has been, quite, quite the experience for me and definitely one that I have always thought was something that I could tribute to my nonprofit career background.
RHEA 02:59
So tell me a little bit about that. How did you end up in tech philanthropy? Because that’s no E.
DEVI 03:05
No, not at all. It’s interesting. I think there was always a level of nonprofit technology in every job that I had to hold as a nonprofit. So you’ve worked in nonprofits before Rhea.
So you absolutely understand that you’re often Jill of all trades master of some. You’re going to hold roles as a program officer running programs. I did a lot of that. I did a lot of campaigns running campaigns. I did a lot of running marketing programs to be able to reach new audiences, whether they were donors or beneficiaries of the services the nonprofit was providing.
Providing did a lot of roles and fundraising. And in all of these scenarios, we use technology in some capacity. I often tell a story about how I used an Excel spreadsheet to do a direct mail campaign in one of my very first roles in nonprofit, and I couldn’t figure out how to get the merge, right. and here I was learning formulas and Excel and, understanding, that I had merged a bunch of names and addresses completely.
I made so many mistakes in those days, and here I am, years later working for the company that very much came up with that spreadsheet. There’s been a lot of leaps and bounds in technology for non profits over time. So when I left the UN Foundation I found myself looking for roles that were, effectively helping nonprofits out that were in that sort of in between space between nonprofit and for profit and an organization called salesforce.
org came to my understanding and there’s, this is a a wonderful nonprofit social enterprise part of Salesforce. It doesn’t exist today, but it did at the time. And it. Was an organization really focused on helping nonprofits use digital technology. And some of the questions they asked me in that interview were really much more about what do you know about nonprofits and these roles?
Can you define these personas? Can you help us understand what a fundraiser does day in and day out? And I thought to myself, yeah, that’s what I did for all those years. So I really found myself enjoying the opportunity to represent. Because that’s what I was doing. I was representing my career in a place that needed a lot of that representation to understand what nonprofits were looking for so that we could best get the technology.
And then moving from Salesforce to a company like Microsoft that is deeply rooted and invested in the nonprofit space has just been, an incredible privilege and very humbling so that I can do the same thing really represent.
RHEA 05:38
so Devi, my friend, let’s get into it because AI is a hot new topic. I think chat GPT busted on the scene about a year and some change ago and head just about exploded. it feels like even though it’s. Just a little over a year old that we’re already behind the eight ball.
And so I’m just curious from your perspective, you said at a really interesting point where you’re looking at all of these nonprofits around the world, doing incredible things at the same time that you’re looking at through their tech lens. So I’m just curious, like where to begin should we feel like we’re behind the eight ball?
DEVI 06:16
yeah, I think it’s interesting because. Similar to how we all remember where we are when we first heard about space discoveries or a person, landing on the moon or the dog, we all remember where we were at certain moments in times, even when tragedies happened, like 9 11, there seems to be this momentum around everyone remembering where they were when they first learned about chat GPT and what it could do right.
And I think that there was reactions that sort of. Ranged from this is scary to yay. I have something that can do my homework for me right all the way to reactions like, wow, look at the potential for this to really change how we do things. And what I would say is we’re at that point in time, a year and a bit out where we are really looking at reactions that are, this is here to stay.
Okay. Let’s now figure out what kind of role this is going to play in my life, in my organization, in my job, right? And I would argue that no one is Further ahead or too far behind in that journey right now. But we have as a sector the responsibility to keep on top of it. That’s really important.
And I think a really big reason why my role exists, right? I’m here to really help make sure that everything that’s happening in that world of AI is shared. With the nonprofit community, Microsoft works with 375, 000 nonprofits. That’s a lot of nonprofits. But we are open to all nonprofits. We have resources for everyone that are free that skill nonprofits up on AI and that help nonprofits understand the different levels and variations and models of AI that exist out there that are available to them.
So my first reaction to our, you know, we behind the ball is no, not at all. Okay. But if you’re not learning today, and if you’re not open to learning today, then we very soon will be. So I think my greatest hope is that everyone recognizes how new this is to everyone else. there could be my 82 year old grandmother is just as new to chat GPT as I am.
So we are all learning at exactly the same moment in time. And that’s really impressive because we have always looked at the sector and said, gosh, if that technology is being used by corporations, the nonprofit sector is going to start using it 500 years later. We don’t have to do that with A.
I. This is democratized available to all of us today. It’s accessible and it’s affordable. Two barriers that always existed before don’t exist right now for A. I. So let’s take advantage of this moment. Let’s get into the habit of learning and understanding what that learning can mean for the sector.
And that’s exciting. It’s really exciting to think about that.
RHEA 09:32
It’s funny as they’re talking, I’m reminded of Jim Collins and good to great, and the ways in which companies can leverage technology to accelerate what they’re doing, accelerate their impact and accelerate greatness.
And so I think I, look, I’ve never seen a better opportunity except for maybe the dawn of the widespread use of the internet to push us forward as a sector.
DEVI 09:56
That’s right. That’s right. And there have been so many opportunities from my own nonprofit experience where I think to myself that moment in time for me was me really understanding scrappiness.
I could just, make water. From wine or wine from water, you know, whatever you asked me to do, I could do and I think that’s exactly where, if I was managing grant proposals, corporate partnerships, branding decisions, operational budgets, social media, advertising all in one day in my scope in my last nonprofit job and the sheer amount of time.
I spent on meetings with clear develop deliverables, decisions, assigned outputs, all of that sort of makes it very clear to me that the tools that exist today around AI could really have helped me in all of those roles. I could have done twice the amount of work in a given day if I had these tools that I have today.
RHEA 11:02
It’s funny though, is I was thinking about this. So I used AI recently to help me read through a bunch of grant proposals. And the funny thing about it though, was it actually maybe took me about as long to, to find the right prompt as it did. To have actually just read the grant proposals. And so I think there was something there too, that was instructive around the skill of prompt generation and using AI to generate the prompt to actually get it to do the thing I wanted to do.
So it was a little, it was like a fun and exciting exercise. And at the end, I was like I might’ve actually been in the same amount of time. As if I just like, read the actual proposal.
DEVI 11:44
So I’m just, can I ask you when you first started, I don’t even know if you remember when you first started searching on the internet, did you find that was also true for how you inputted search terms?
RHEA 11:53
That’s such a good Good question. I think that’s right. I think that’s right. Cause I didn’t know exactly how put in the search term to get the thing that I wanted. So I think there is skill that you learn over time around things like prompt generation.
DEVI 12:06
Yes. And exactly how we all learned how to start texting in short form versus writing long paragraphs.
Although I think some people are still learning It’s the same concept. I find prompt engineering and learning how to write a good prompt so fascinating because what I’ve learned is that it’s actually all about tone and context. And if I get my tone right and I put my context in correctly, I’m going to get much better product than when my tone is off and when I don’t have the right context.
So those are the two areas that I’m really working on and I still don’t get it right. And remember I use all the time every day. So a lot of work to be done in terms of how we want to deliver prompts for our best outcomes.
RHEA 12:51
What’s really funny too is I actually, I turned to YouTube like the rest of the world because there’s this whole cottage industry, I don’t know if you know this, of people who generate prompts.
Like this is the thing that they do and they’re like doing YouTube videos about how to create this prompt. We live in such an interesting time.
DEVI 13:09
That’s right. That’s right. I think also think about sometimes when we think about using these tools, we’re very much caught in a circle of, do I want to be the one to write it first, or do we want the generated tool, the Gen AI tool to write it first?
Who holds the pen? And so much of our life has been spent holding the pen, creating the original paragraph, the original thought, the original idea, that now what we’re saying is, we just need you to ask the question. Let someone else come up with the first draft and you’re the editor. And would you rather be the writer or the editor is this huge question that I’m asking.
So I had a nonprofit who I was talking to the other day who said, it’s such a behavior change to become the editor. And I said, yes, it is because we’re used to, Maybe writing 80 percent and then someone takes us the other 20. Here we’re saying let’s get about 80 percent of it through generative AI.
And then we do the last 20%. And that saves, we think about 10 hours a week. Is what the data shows us today. So pretty impressive.
RHEA 14:28
What’s really interesting about that. And maybe this is just an old school way of thinking that I’ll have to get over is I often think that writing something out helps me think through.
And clarify my thoughts and so if I’m using generative AI to write content, am I robbing myself of the opportunity to clarify my thinking, or maybe catchy PT or generally I will do it for me, but I think there, I fear, maybe this again, maybe this is an old school way of thinking that something that may be missing from the human experience when we’re delegating.
The bulk of the writing.
DEVI 15:06
you know, I think it’s an and, and the reason I say that is because I’m the mother of, two young boys and I want them to be incredible writers. I think, they are in a world where they have everything easily available to them. They have grammarly to correct all their grammar.
They have, spelling syntax to correct all their spelling. And so here I am thinking I would really like them to go through the writing process. And so what I always recommend is learn how to write the actual essay or whatever it is you’re writing about Elephants and how elephants use their tusks, for example, and then go to chat GPT and check your work, right?
See what chat GPT says about that. Check those sources. See if those sources marry up with your own, have an understanding of how to draft the prompt. So you’re asking the right question. So it’s an and because now my kids need to learn how to write and they need to learn how to ask the right question.
if they can do both of those. They’re even better set up for the AI economy.
RHEA 16:14
Yeah, that’s so interesting. I think about I think Tony Robbins once said that the quality of your life is dictated by the quality of questions that you ask. Never truer than a generative AI era.
DEVI 16:25
That’s absolutely true.
And look at you hosting a podcast, asking all the right questions.
RHEA 16:30
I don’t know if those are the right questions or just where my curiosity lies, but let’s, turn a little bit. Cause you know, this is nonprofit low down. We’re talking to fundraisers out here. What are the ways in which you’ve seen AI improve, help progress the practice of fundraising?
DEVI 16:49
You know, It’s an excellent question. And I think that, Where I’m seeing most of the use cases follow it’s really in a broad spectrum, right? You have organizations that are really looking to move fast with increasing efficiencies in productivity. They’re looking at things like note taking, content summarization, building task assignments after a meeting happens looking at a relationship summary so that they understand what the next step is.
And then you have organizations on the other end of the spectrum who are looking at things like predictive models. How do I take a look at the donors that I currently have where those donors have given what those donor personas fit into? Are they more committed? Are they direct service only donors?
Are they non direct service donors? Let’s categorize them and then understand how to hyper personalize because if I hyper personalize that ask, I’m going to get more out of the lifetime value of that donor. So that’s the spectrum that we’re seeing. And what I’ve really recognized is that organizations that are starting on that sort of, 1st, end of the spectrum who are understanding the increasing efficiencies are having more and more fundraising staff using the tools at Microsoft.
The tool that we refer to as. Copilot, which is a really fun. You can go to Microsoft Copilot and just check it out right now. And you can actually toggle to work when you look at Copilot. And I could go in there and say, please summarize my last three emails from Rhea Wong. And Microsoft copilot will look at that closed data set.
Just you, just your data. It’s personal to you. It’s not going out into the web. It’s not going out to these broader data sets, and it’s going to summarize the last three emails from Rhea Wong. Now, if Rhea Wong was my donor, I am now understanding the last three times I contacted that person, what the context was for those conversations.
It may have been you. About a specific donation, or perhaps the donor inquiring about a specific campaign that we were doing. All of this allows me to save time in the longer sort of relationship building spectrum. That we have to consider as fundraisers. I also look at organizations that are moving fast and I’m seeing that it’s organizations that have already prioritized clean and secure data.
When a fundraiser has a really good sense of donor data, that’s Clearly categorized that clearly has the right kind of pivots and the right kind of segmentation. It’s a lot easier for them to then move into using both generative AI and predictive AI. Both kinds of a I am realizing are very valuable.
We’ve seen fantastic adoption across areas like translation services. Particularly when fundraisers are dealing with donors from different cultures and different. Parts of the world. We’ve seen a lot of that. We’ve seen a lot of hyper personalization. For example, a particular group in the Netherlands is categorizing their donor by giving type.
So this is a donor who likes to give to unrestricted campaigns. This is a donor that likes to give to campaigns that are focused on children in Syria. Let’s take a look at what that donors needs might be and let’s generate content. Thank you very much. Based on the last three gifts that donor gave again, hyper personalization and a way to look at your actual data set and see different ways that you can use your own brand language, your own messaging to generate that first draft.
Always check. Your sources always check that draft always keep human judgment in the loop. But really seeing a broad use of scenarios like that. And then finally, what I would say is realm of sort of. categorizing additional areas that need support. I’ve seen fundraisers work very closely with program teams to say, what is the data telling us?
Not just about where more funds are coming in for. So we know that the children that need this particular service in Syria, we’ve got a lot of fundraising campaigns out there, very successful. We’re getting those kids what they But can you use the data to tell us Where more funds are needed and how those, how that particular program and those needs could be related to the set of donors that we’ve just reached out to for this campaign.
And I think that’s really powerful. It’s sentiment analysis of sorts. It’s taking a look at the data in different ways and then analyzing and generating and summarizing content that makes sense for that particular group.
RHEA 22:05
Devi, I love all of this. And Is thinking about how we can leverage a I to create more human connection.
I think there’s a part of my brain, though, that is maybe resistant because I’m like well, day I used a I to generate an email response and I was like, I have no idea if the email response that I’m generating is going to this person’s inbox and then they’re generating an email and AI response to me.
And it’s like the AI talking to each other. And so I think for me. There’s this sense in a pre AI world that, Oh, Debbie’s sitting here and thinking about the content that would be useful and interesting to me. And then she’s sending it to me. And I feel really, I feel really touched by that.
It’s like a human who thought about doing that. Cynically, I think there could be a world where if I’m getting this hyper personalized content, will I get to a point that was like, okay the AI did the work like, I don’t feel that there was a human behind this, you know, thinking of me, it was simply generated by the data that you saw.
DEVI 23:14
I think it’s always good to ask yourself the question on whether this is is this particular use case. So in this case, we’re talking about an email. Is this use case something that’s reliant on your personal relationship with this person, right?
In this, in our case as fundraisers, we would say that relationship building is the most important skill we have. And does this require my communication skills? That, and that far outweighs the need for me to save time using the generative AI to respond. I’ll give you an example. I used generative AI yesterday on an email to set up a meeting.
I did not need a personal touch in there. I did not need, it was very simply, I’m going to be in the city on these dates. Do you think you will be free? That’s really all I needed to say. And I put in a quick prompt and I got an email generated with some niceties on the top and the bottom, literally. And I just hit send on it and it saved me time.
Now, I also sent another email yesterday that was specifically reaching out to a non profit and asking them for advice on something that I was very curious about that had to do with how they were approaching a specific program and scenario. And I didn’t use Copilot. I did not use any of my generative AI.
I had bullet one bullet to bullet three. And I said at the end, I said, and by the way, if you don’t know the answers to this, it’s okay. I’m just looking for some guidance and I really needed my tone to be clear. And I really needed people to understand that. I was just there looking for some support and that they didn’t feel like they had to, get back to me.
So I think when you need the human touch, use the human touch. I actually would just like to tell people, use common sense, because that’s the best way to understand when to use these tools and when to not to. I think we will, we would never just go in and blindly use anything, right? That’s very similar with this tool we have at our fingertips.
RHEA 25:32
So Devi, you’re sitting in a very. Unique place in the world where you get to interact with hundreds of thousands of nonprofits all around the world. What are some of your favorite use cases for AI, whether it’s fundraising or otherwise, because I just think it must be so cool for you to be able to pop your head into all of these different organizations and get a little window into what they’re doing in the world.
DEVI 25:55
Yeah, I’ll start with one that I think is very powerful, which is, a translation services for refugees. thought that was incredible. This is an organization that deals with refugees coming into a particular city in America, they speak. So many different languages, I think 45 to 50 different languages, dialects included, and their use of AI specifically generative AI as a translation service that helps their volunteers speak directly to the community members who are in need of assistance, get them everything they need, aid them with job applications, paperwork for visas, all of that.
It was just incredible to watch the impact that technology could have and where they were in the years prior to this service being available and where they are today, I think, has been remarkable. Like, what huge transformation. I spoke a little bit about the nonprofit in the Netherlands that spent some time on looking at their donors.
One of the things that I love about where they were using the data and AI together was in segmenting the donors and understanding the generational needs. fundraisers often look at the baby boomer generation, which tends to be the largest uh, of, you know, Donations tend to come from that, subset in terms of volume of gifts, as well as the amount of the gift.
And this organization was very much interested in Gen Z. And understanding where Gen Z donors could be involved in their cause. And what they looked at was how Gen Z was talking about their cause on social media. They did a wide social media listening tour, a sentiment analysis using AI to really understand exactly where.
Their might fit within the scope of what that particular demographic was thinking of another excellent use case. And I think we forget sometimes about the relationship between data and AI, because it’s so easy for us to look at AI and say, here’s a layer. Language model that’s basically taken.
It’s a library of all of the incredible information that’s out there in the world and out there on the web, and it’s summarizing it for me, right? That’s one use case of AI. There’s also looking at AI within your closed system within your organization’s data and leveraging that to pull the right kind of information and statistics out.
Another third use case, if I may, is volunteer training. And that has been hugely useful. There’s a nonprofit based in the UK that is run largely with volunteers. In fact, volunteers make up 80 percent of their numbers of their size of their org, and the volunteers are completely trained uh, curriculum.
Uh, and using, um, sort that have been created, um, leveraged using generated content. And a lot of this is because there was a lot of frequently asked questions coming from past volunteers, 200, 300 volunteers a year going through this system, they had a great amount of. Existing information, frequently asked questions, and all they really did was to summarize that into a curriculum that really helped the nonprofits get trained, volunteers to help them in of the volunteer services they were offering in the communities.
RHEA 29:33
I love that so much because actually it reminds me of a conversation I had just this morning with the head of a very large agency here in New York and she was talking about the need for knowledge management within their organization. I was like, it feels like an AI job that there could be a world, and I’m not sure what the tool is exactly, but the AI could Assemble and organize all of this collective information that the organization had about processes and systems and how we do this work and how do you fill out this expense report.
DEVI 30:04
Yeah, it’s an excellent use case. And also if I think about the nonprofits that I’ve worked for, one of the things that’s been really interesting to watch is knowledge management within the nonprofit because staff turnover is so high. And most of the nonprofits around the world. So what you’ll see is that the knowledge leadership is quite strong.
There’s a lot of institutional knowledge that’s saved. In fact, we never get rid of it. It’s archived and archived and files and files and folders and folders of information. That is an amazing place for AI to go in there and dig. If AI is within your closed space. loop again. And you’re making sure that has access to those files.
It’s a great place to comb through the information that you would need, but always with the human touch because you have to make sure that it isn’t outdated or is an old policy or, you know, of different ways where, you know, we’ve got make sure that we’re, we’re with old data.
RHEA 31:04
It’s funny as they’re talking, cause it, it, It It reminds me of the way that I think people think about delegating, right? I think there’s this school of thought of like, if I delegate it means I’m totally hands off or like I’m totally just doing it, but that actually there are levels of delegation and it’s almost like the trust but verify model of like, I’m going to trust AI to, carry the bulk of the work and I must verify that this is actually accurate and relevant and up to date.
DEVI 31:33
Yeah, I think we have to be very much accountable to our own prompts. Right? we are putting a prompt out there. We’re saying that the output that we get from that prompt is accurate or right. We’ve got to check our sources on that prompt. We have to make sure that we’re doing the work to understand that particular outcome is designed and fit for the purpose in which we’re using it.
And generative AI is too new to do that on its own. It needs us. It needs the trial, the error and the sensitive use cases that actually don’t apply, right? We’ve got to learn to understand when the answer is no, you can’t use it for this. It doesn’t work.
RHEA 32:13
right when I think because it is such a new technology, it We’re all kind of pioneering, like there are no rules or like best practices or this is how the policies that we use.
It’s exciting and also a little bit scary. I want to turn a little bit because you’re mentioning Gen Z and you’re mentioning retention, which is a perennial problem in the nonprofit space. And so I’m curious how you think AI might actually be helpful in both attracting and retaining younger talent, be it Gen Z or, God help us, what is it?
Gen Alpha?
DEVI 32:50
Gen Alpha. Yes. All the way back. Some of those. Yes.
RHEA 32:55
Hopefully I’ll be retired before they’re fully in the workforce. But yeah. How might AI be helpful in that regard?
DEVI 33:55
Yeah. think about the sheer scrappiness with which we approached our nonprofit roles, right? you know, I’m not going to mention the year because I’ll take it myself, but a very long time ago.
Uh, And then again, when I went back to the nonprofit sector again for, for six years, I think that that professional journey for me meant that I could really leverage technology like this to do more with less. But I think also The number one tool set that I used as a fundraiser with my corporate funders specifically.
And with my donors was communications. The number one skill set that’s required in this economy today is communications. LinkedIn just did a Skills for Jobs report around the AI economy, and this is what they discovered. It is the number one skill set employers are looking for. There is no better place to learn that than in a nonprofit role, particularly an early career nonprofit fundraising role.
These roles set you up for so much success in sales, in marketing. In business delivery, in relationship management, they really help you understand how people think, how to change behavior and change the way people think and to understand the very personal connection people have to the decisions that they make around giving their money.
And to me, Understanding that is what we mean when we use terms like keep the human in the loop, right? It is basically behavior change. We are looking to make sure that Our skill set as fundraisers is something that can be leveraged to help people connect to something they personally feel very, very comfortable with.
And I think that skill set that communication skill has a deep purpose in the context of AI. And if you pair that with the fact that nonprofits, I believe, will be absorbing more and more AI related. Tools and technology, we’re really putting, you know, gen a, this new generation of people who want meaningful purpose led jobs.
We’re putting them in an excellent position by introducing them to nonprofit careers. And I think it’s people like me and you who have gone through nonprofit careers and have landed in, in places where, you know, we’ve wanted to be. this is, it’s just another great example of why, you know, starting your skill, starting your role, using the scrappiness and resources of a nonprofit environment combined with the tools and technology of AI.
Just sets you up for so much success and the transferable skills that fundraising offers. It’s like the, it’s absolutely the root of success, I believe. , I’m a huge fan of the sector.
RHEA 36:24
I know it’s an anthem for fundraisers. Yes, exactly. Everyone should be a fundraiser actually. Everyone is a fundraiser whether they like it or not.
Yes. And I think you make a really good point. Because I think when I was starting out in my career, first of all, I was a 26 year old ED, which is in retrospect, ridiculous. Like why would anyone hire a 26 year old to be an ED? And it was a tremendous opportunity to learn, to grow. had levels of responsibility I would never have had if I’d been in a big company.
Right. Yeah, I had to figure stuff out and this is even before AI and like kind of, you know, when the internet was starting to take hold and I think it was just, it was hard and it was such an incredible opportunity for me.
DEVI 37:08
That’s right. I think in 2023, 33 percent of nonprofit job vacancies went unfilled and that number for fundraisers is double, which is very hard.
And I think that’s again, another reason why AI introduced in a nonprofit setting. Leveraging the fundraising function specifically um, opportunity to attract new talent to the sector, but what a great opportunity for that talent, right? This is, these are the careers that will fly in an AI economy.
RHEA 37:47
What’s funny that you mentioned that because I just listened to the Daily this morning about how uh, school attendance rates have not rebounded post pandemic. And the fact is that we use school is a place where people practice things like communication, they practice how to learn, they practice conflict resolution.
And so if we, if there are lots of kids who are not attending school, for whatever reason, then that’s Are they missing out on these opportunities for personal growth and social skills and communication skills? So and if so, how can AI be used to help bridge the gap and or? Instill skills that maybe you didn’t get in school.
DEVI 38:30
That’s right And I like the term co pilot for this reason because what co pilot is effectively telling you is that you’re still in control owner And you’re still accountable to the results. And that means that whatever skills you’re using are about shaping, toning, context, and understanding.
Asking the right question, right? It’s navigation.
RHEA 38:58
we’re finishing up, is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you feel like the folks of the nonprofit sector should absolutely know or be aware of as we’re living in this generative AI world?
DEVI 39:09
Yeah, I think one of the questions I get a lot. So I thought I’d talk about here is how to use this technology responsibly.
And I think for fundraisers specifically uh, that’s good question, and I hope we continue to ask it we should always live in a world where that that question comes up and we’re understanding what the ethical implications are. And one of the things that I share the most when I answer this question is around the idea that AI is fit for some purposes and it’s not fit for others.
So really acknowledging what you’re using the AI for and whether that purpose really works is a good place to start. And we talked about whether we reach out to our most beloved donors using an AI generated email or just by email. Writing the email ourselves, right? And we make that decision in a case by case basis.
Um, And that’s certainly how I use Copilot in my email as well. The second thing I would say is to always be transparent. So if you’re in a situation where you have used AI, a generative AI from an image generation perspective, and to draft a letter, maybe a global appeal letter, make sure you tell people that you’ve used AI for that.
I think it’s really important that we’re transparent with folks and sometimes share the prompt. Why not? Because at that point you’re, you’re telling them not just what you did, but how you created it and that you did it with best intentions, right? It really allows us to be able to create a lot of work in a short period of time, but to do so in a way where we are, you know, being to everyone involved.
Um, the study that came out of the Charities Aid Foundation um, that looked at 10 different countries, 6, 000 donors. to look at donor perception of AI. So one of my favorite studies that came out in the last few months and what they effectively found was that over 37 percent of donors thought that the benefits of, of AI far outweighed the risks and they hope the charities would continue to use it.
So this is giving us a little bit more trust and confidence. As a sector to use this, but to use it carefully to understand that it should be inclusive. It should be fair. It should take in all the privacy and data rights that we know we need to protect our communities with it. We should mitigate bias as much as possible.
But always remember that it’s there to be your co pilot to help you out when you need it. When used in the right way.
RHEA 41:46
Thank you so much for being here with us. This has been so informative. Uh, and I would you give folks to get started in?
DEVI 41:54
My number one piece of advice is to try it. That really has been something that I’ve, I’ve asked every single fundraiser that I’ve spoken to do.
It’s new to everyone at exactly the same time. I urge you to go to Microsoft Copilot. And try the version there. It’s a great place to get started. I also would check out fundraising dot a I, which is I know a group that you’re familiar with. Rhea. They’ve done a fantastic job setting out guidelines to help you be the force within your organization to set up an AI policy guide that works for your organization and your clients.
Cause. And I would really start with that. I also would check out Microsoft’s free digital skills hub for nonprofit employee training. So you’ll find a little bit more information on that. And then join our community of practice. We lead a nonprofit community uh, other nonprofits who are trying out AI.
That’s nonprofit community dot microsoft. com. So check that out as well.
RHEA 42:53
Wonderful. Thank you so much. And we will make sure to put all that information in the share notes. I appreciate you. Thank you so much.
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