Tag Archives: artificial intelligence

Nonprofit Radio for September 30, 2024: AI, Organizational & Personal

 

Amy Sample WardAI, Organizational & Personal

Artificial Intelligence is ubiquitous, so here’s another conversation about its impacts on the nonprofit and human levels. Amy Sample Ward, the big picture thinker, the adult in the room, contrasts with our host’s diatribe about AI sucking the humanity out of nonprofit professionals and all unwary users. Amy is our technology contributor and the CEO of NTEN. They have free AI resources.

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer with a pseudoaneurysm if you made a hole in my heart with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate to introduce it. Hey, Tony, this week A I organizational and personal artificial intelligence is ubiquitous. So here’s another conversation about its impacts on the nonprofit and human levels. Amy Sample Ward, the big picture thinker, the adult in the room contrasts with our hosts, Diatribe about A I sucking the humanity out of nonprofit professionals and all unwary users. Amy is our technology contributor and the CEO of N 10 on Tony’s take two tales from the gym. The sign says clean, the equipment were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is A I organizational and personal is Amy sample ward. They need no introduction but they deserve an introduction. Nonetheless, they’re our technology contributor and CEO of N 10. They were awarded a 2023 Bosch Foundation fellowship and their most recent co-authored book is the tech that comes next about equity and inclusiveness in technology development. You’ll find them at Amy Sample ward.org and at Amy RS Ward. It’s good to see you, Amy Ward. I do love the Pod Father. I know it makes me laugh every time because it just feels like, I don’t know, like I’m gonna turn on the TV and there’s gonna be like a new, new, new season of the Pod Father where we secretly, you know, follow Tony Martignetti around or something. We are in season 14. Right? Yeah. Um Yes, I appreciate that. You love that. It’s, you know, you like that fun. So uh before we talk about um the part of your role, which is the, the technology contributor to N 10, uh the technology, the nonprofit radio and we’re gonna talk about artificial intelligence again. Let’s talk about the part of your life that is the CEO of N 10 because you have uh have you submitted this major groundbreaking transformative funding federal grant application? Yes, we submitted it last night three hours before the deadline, which was notable because I, I know there were people down to the, the minute press and submit. No, we got it in three hours early to what agency um to NTI A they had, this is kind of all the work that rippled from the digital Equity Act that was passed in Congress a couple of years ago. And, you know, now, you know, better than to be in Jargon jail. What is NTI A, it sounds like an obscure agency of our, of our federal government. It’s not, well, maybe to some listeners it’s obscure but it is, um, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. And you, I think that’s obscure to about 98.5% of the population, you know, I think I, I think I’m obscure to, you know, uh being obscure is fine. Um Yes, the National Information Administration and um prior to this uh grant um from the federal level where folks from all over were applying, every state was also creating state equity plan, digital equity plans. Um What funds might be available through the state funding mechanism to support digital equity goals. But a lot of those at the state level are focused on infrastructure, like actually building internet networks to reach communities that don’t have broadband yet, you know, things like this and so very worthwhile funding endeavor. I mean, we need, we need to have 100% of the population needs but even with those state plans and the work that will come from them and the funding it will not, we are not about to have every person in the country have broadband available to where they live, right? Ee even with all of this investment, it, it’s not gonna reach everyone and that means that the amount of funding within state plans for the surrounding digital literacy work, digital inclusion work, you know, making sure people know how to use the internet, why they would use it have devices. All those other components is gonna be really minimal through the state funding because even if they used all of it on infrastructure, they wouldn’t be done with that, right. So um the federal government, yeah. So, so the kind of next layer in all of that is this federal pool where they’re anticipating grant making about 100 and 50 grants somewhere averaging between five and, and 12 million each. There’s gonna be exceptions, of course, there’s ma there’s big cities, there’s big states, you know. Um but though all those grants will be operational from 2025 through 2028. So four kind of concerted years of, of national Programmatic investment. Um And these are projects kind of on the flip side, those state projects where this isn’t necessarily about infrastructure and, and building networks or even devices very much, right? It’s mostly the infrastructure programming and you’re asking for a lot of money. So tell, you know, share the, share the numbers, what you’re looking for, how much money. Yeah, we’re our project in the end I think came out at about $8.2 million project and we’re hopeful, of course. Um and I’m, I’m truly curious, um listeners who are always tuning into nonprofit radio from like fundraising strategy perspective. I’d love to learn from you or, you know, email me at Amy at N 10 anytime I’d love to hear your thoughts when you listen to this. But you know, N 10 is a capacity building organization is we, we don’t apply for grants often because quote unquote, capacity building is not considered a, a programmatic investment to most funders, right? And so it’s just not something that um they will entertain an application from us on. And but with this, we have already run for 10 years of digital inclusion fellowship program that is focused on building up the capacity of staff who already work in nonprofits who are already trusted and accessed by communities most impacted by digital divides to integrate digital literacy programming within their mission. Are they a housing organization? Are they workforce development? Are they adult literacy, you know, refugee services, whatever it is, if you’re already serving these communities who are impacted by digital divides and you’re trusted to deliver programs, well, you don’t need to go have a mission that’s now digital equity. No, you digital equity can be integrated into your programs and services to, to reach those folks. Um And so we’ve successfully run this program for 10 years and had um you know, over 100 fellows from 22 different locations around the US and have seen how transformative it’s been. These programs have been sustained for all these years by these organizations, they now see themselves as like the leaders of the digital equity coalitions in their communities. They, you know, fellows have gone on to work in digital equity offices or, you know, organizations et cetera. So it feels great, you have tons of outcomes from a smaller scale program and the grant is to scale up, scale this thing up. Yeah. Yeah. So instead of, you know, between 20 to 25 fellows per year with this grant, we would have over 100 a year. Um And that also means that instead of, you know, if there’s only 20 fellows and maybe we can only cover 20 locations while with over 100 we can cover or at least give opportunities to organizations in every state and territory to, to be part of this kind of capacity building opportunity. All right, it sounds, it’s, it’s huge. It’s, it’s, it’s really a lot of money for N 10. Um uh It, it falls within the range, I guess a little, no, it’s like right within the middle of the range, you cited like 5 million to 12 million, you said? So, yeah, exactly. So our, our application is kind of in the middle there. Yeah, slightly to the low side of middle. But, you know, we just call it middle, between friends. Um Yes and I mean, we’re hopeful, knock on wood, we’re really hopeful that this is an easy application to approve because we’re not creating something new we’re not spending half of the grant in planning. We know how to run this program. We’ve refined it for 10 years. We know it’s very cost efficient, you know, and in the end of four years, 400 plus organizations now running programs that can be sustained is accelerating towards, you know, addressing digital divides um versus, you know, a small project that just end 10 runs. All right, listeners, contact your NTI A representative, the elected person at the National Telecommunications and Infra Information Information Agency. Yes, speak to your uh Yeah. Yeah, let’s get this. Let this go. All right. When do you find out when? Well, you know, there was very clear information about down to the minute when applications were due, but there’s not a ton of clarity on when we will find out. So, you know, they are, they are meant to programs that are funded are, are meant to get started in January. So I anticipate we’ll hear, you know, in a couple of months, of course, and I will let you know, we’ll do an update. I’ll let you know you have my personal good wishes and I know nonprofit radio listeners wish and then good luck. Thank you. I appreciate all the good vibes would reverberate through the universe would be a transformative grant in terms of dollar amount and expansion of the program. Transformative. Yeah, 100% and staff are just so excited and hopeful about what it could mean for just helping that many more organizations, you know, do this good work. So we’re really excited and I admire intend for reaching for the sky because you have like a 2 to $2.5 million budget, annual annual budget somewhere in there. Um And you’re reaching for the sky and great ambitions uh only come to fruition through hard work and uh and thinking big. So thank you, even if you’re not, I don’t even want to say the words if you know, they should blunder if NTI A should blunder badly. Uh I still admire the, the ambition. Thank you. And no matter what, it’s a program that we know is transformative for communities and we wouldn’t stop it even if you know, they make a blunder and don’t, yeah, don’t tell. All right. Listen, don’t tell your NTI A representative. You said, don’t share that part of the conversation. All right. Thank you for sharing all that. And thanks for your support. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds, both online and on location, so you can grow your impact faster. That’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to A I organizational and personal. Let’s talk about artificial intelligence because this is not anybody’s mind. I can’t get away from it. I cannot. Uh I’m not myself of the concerns that I have. Uh They’re deepening my good friend George Weiner, uh you know, has a lot of posts, uh the CEO at the whale who I know you are, you are friendly with George as well. Talks about it a lot on linkedin uh reminds me how concerned I am uh about, you know, just the evolution. Uh I mean, it’s inevitable. This, this thing is just incrementally. This thing. This technology is uh is incrementally moving, not slowly but incrementally. I I and I, I cannot overcome my, my concerns and I know you have some concerns but you also balance that with the potential of the technology, transformative techno, the the transformative potential there. I’ll throw you. I was just gonna say, I totally agree. This is unavoidable. I can’t, you know, I cannot go a day without community organizations reaching out or asking questions or whatever and a place of reflection or, or a conversation that I’ve been having and I, I wanted to offer here, maybe we could talk about it for a minute. So, so listeners benefit by kind of being in, in one of these sides with us in the conversation is to think about the privilege of certain organizations to opt in or opt out of A I in the same way that we had for many years, you know, talked about the privilege of organizations in or, or not with social media generally. Like we think about Facebook and we go back, you know, 10 years, there were a lot of organizations who felt like they didn’t have the budget and like, practically speaking and they didn’t have the staff, well, certainly not the staff time but also not the staff confidence. Um I don’t even wanna say skills, but like even just the confidence to say, I’m gonna go build us a great website. They had a website, like they had a domain and content loaded when you went to it, right? But it wasn’t engaging and flashy and interesting and probably updated once, you know, and then Facebook was like, hey, you could have a page and oh, you can have a donate button and, oh, you can have this and oh, and you can post videos and you can, you know, it was like, well, why wouldn’t we do this? Right? And a bunch of our community members spend time on Facebook or maybe don’t even look for information on the broader web, but look for things within Facebook, you know, and, and have it on their phone and are using an app instead of doing an internet search, right? Like they’re, they’re going into Facebook and searching things. So they didn’t, those organizations didn’t feel like they had the privilege to opt out of that space, they had to use it because it came with some robust tools that did benefit them at the cost of their community data, all of their organizational content and data, right? Like it, it had a material cost that they maybe didn’t even understand. Right? And, and didn’t fully negotiate as like terms of this agreement. We’re just like, well, we have a donate button on Facebook and we don’t have one on our website, right? Not, not only, not only didn’t understand the terms, didn’t, didn’t know what the terms were right? Early days of Facebook, we didn’t know how and how many times how pervasive the data, data collection was, how it was going to be, how it was gonna be monetized, how we as the individuals were gonna become the product. And how many times did we talk? You know, I’m saying we like N 10 or, or folks who are providing kind of technical capacity building resources say you don’t know what could happen tomorrow, you could log in tomorrow and your page could look totally different, your page could work different, your features could be turned off. Facebook could just say pages don’t have donate buttons. And you know, I think folks felt like that was very, you know, oh, you’re being so sensational and then of course they would wake up one day and there wasn’t a button or the button really did work different, right? Like you people realize we’re not in control of even our own content, our own data. That’s right. The rules change and there’s no accountability to saying, hey, we need, do you want these rules to change? No, no, no, no, no. Like they set the rules and that was always of course a challenge. But we’re in a similar place with A I where folks aren’t understanding that the there’s, there’s no negotiation of terms happening right now. Folks are just like, oh, but I, I don’t have the time and if I use this tool, it lets me go faster. Because what do I have a, a burden of of time, I have so much work to try and do and maybe these tools will help me. And I’m not gonna say maybe they won’t help you. But I’m saying there’s a incredible amount of harm just like when folks didn’t realize, oh, we’re a, you know, we provide pro bono legal services and we’re based on the Texas border. Now, every person who follows our page, every person who’s RSVP do a Facebook event. Like all these people have a data trail we created that said they may be people that need legal services at a border, right? The there’s this level of harm that folks that are hoping to use these tools to help with their day to day work may not understand. I do not understand. Right. That’s coming in in silent negotiation of, of using these products. Right. And I think that’s, well, I can’t just in 30 seconds say, and here’s the harm like it’s, it’s exponential and broad because it could also the, the product could change tomorrow. Right. It’s this, it’s this vulnerability that isn’t going to be resolved necessarily. You, you said the word exponential and I was thinking of the word existential. Yeah. Both because I think I’m, I have my concerns around the human. Yes. Trade off is a polite way of saying it. Uh Surrender is probably more, is more in line with what I’m what I feel. Surrender of our humanity, our, our, our creativity, our thinking. Now our conversations with each other. One of the, one of the things that George posted about was a I that creates conversations between two people based on the, the, the large language that, you know, the, the, the data that you give it. It’ll have a conversation with itself. But purportedly, it’s two different people purportedly. Uh and I’m using the word people in quotes, you know, it’s a, a, a conversa. So the things that make us human. Yeah, music, music, composition, conversation, thought, staring and, and our listeners have heard me use this example before, but I’m sticking with it because it’s, it, it still rings real staring at a blank screen and composing, thinking first and then composing. Starting to type or if you’re old fashioned, you might start to pick up a pen, but you’re outlining either explicitly or in your mind, you’re thinking about big points and maybe some sub points and then you begin either typing or writing that creative process. We’re surrendering to the technology, music composition. I don’t compose music. So I don’t know the, but it’s not that much similar in terms of creative thought and, and synapses firing the brain working together, building neural nodes as you exercise the brain, music composition is that that probably not that much different than written composition. Yeah, brain physiologists may disagree with me but I think at our level, we you understand where I’m coming from and I’m kind of dumping a bunch of stuff but you know, but that’s OK. II I am here as a vessel for your A I complaints. I will, I will witness them. We can talk about them artificial intelligence. Also from George, a post on linkedin that reflects on its own capacity that justifies you. You ask the um the tool to reflect on its own last response. How did it perform? You’re asking the tool to justify itself to an audience to which it wants to be justifiable in, right? The tool is not going to dissuade you from using it by being honest about it, how it evaluates its last response. Well, yeah, I mean, I think, I don’t know, generative A I tools, these major tools that folks you know, maybe have played with, maybe use whatever you know, are programmed, are inherently designed to appease the user. They are not programmed, to be honest, they are. That, that’s an important thing to understand my point. We have asked the tool, what’s two plus two? Oh, it’s four. We’ve responded. Oh, really? Because I’ve heard experts agree that it’s five. Oh, yes, I was wrong. You’re right. It is 50, really? You know, I read once that it’s 40, yes, you are right. It really is four. OK. Well, like we, no experts agree that two plus two is five. So I think we’ve already demonstrated it’s going to value appeasing the user over, you know, facts. Um And that’s again, just like part of the unknown for most, at least casual users of generative A I tools is why it’s giving them the answers, it’s giving them. And what’s really important to say is that even the folks who built these tools and not tell you they do not know how some of this works. Some of it is just the the yet unknown of what happened within those algorithms that created this content. So if even the creators cannot responsibly and thoroughly say this is how these things came to be. How are you as an organization going to take accountability for using a tool that included biased data included, not real sources and then provided that to your community? Right? I think that string of, well, we just don’t know is not going to be something that you can build any sort of communications to your community on. Right. That, that is such a, a thin thread of, well, even the makers don’t know. Ok. Well, we have already seen court cases where if your chat bot told a community member this is your policy and it entirely made it up because that’s what, that’s what generative A I does is make things up. You as the organization are still liable for what it told the community. OK. If I, I agree with that, actually, I think that you should have to be liable and accountable to whatever you’ve you’ve set up. But if you as a small nonprofit are not prepared to take accountability and to rectify whatever harm comes of it, then you can’t say we’re ready to use these tools. You can only use these tools if you’re also ready to be accountable for what comes of using them, right? And I hope that gives folks pause, you know, it’s not just, well, you know, I talked about this with some organizations that, well, we would never, you know, take something that generative A I tools gave us and then just use it. We would of course edit that. Sure. But are you checking all the sources that it used in order to create that content that you’re, then maybe changing some words within? Are you monitoring every piece of content? Are you making sure that generative A I content is never in direct conversation with a community member or program, you know, service delivery uh recipient. How are you really building practical safeguards? Um You know, and I’ve talked to organizations who have said, well, we didn’t even know our staff were using these tools because we just thought it was obvious that they shouldn’t use it. But our clinical staff are using free generative A I tools putting in their case notes and saying, can you format this for my case file? OK. Well, there’s a few things we should talk about that. Where the hell did that note go? Right. It went back into the system. But it’s because the staff person thought, well, they can’t see that the data went anywhere because it’s just on their screen and they’re just copy pasting it over again. The harm is likely invisible at the point of, you know, technical interaction with the tool. The harm is from leaking all of that into the system, right? Um What happens to those community member? Oh my gosh, it’s just like opening, not just a door to a room but a door to like a whole giant convention center of, of challenges and harm, you know. All right. So we, we’ve identified two main strains of potential harm, the, the, the data usage leakage, the, the impact on our people in the uh getting our, getting our services um and even impact on people who are supporting us, trusting us to to be ethical and even moral stewards of data. So there’s everything at the organization level and I also identified the human level. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that human piece is important and, and not maybe on the direction that I’ve seen covered in, you know, blog posts and things. I, I, I’m honestly not worried in a massive way as like the predominant worry related to A I not to say this isn’t something that people could, should think about. But I don’t think the the most important worry about A I is that none of us will have jobs. I, I do think that there’s, there’s a challenge happening on what the value of our job is and what, what we spend our time doing. Because if folks really think that these A I tools are sufficient to come up with all of your organization’s communications content and then you are, then you still have a communication staff person, but you’re expecting them to do 10 times the amount of work because you think that the, you know A I tools are going to do all of the content, but they have to go in there and deeply edit all of that. They have to make sure to use real photos and not photos that have been, you know, created by A I based on what it thinks, certain people of certain whatever identities are like it, they don’t now have capacity to do 10 times the work, they’re still doing the same amount of work just in different ways if, if they’re expected to do all this through A I, right, just as, as one example. And I think organizations that can stay in this moment of like hyper focus on, on A I adoption really clear on what the value of their staff are, what their human values are that, you know, maybe you could say you’re serving more people because some of the program participants were, you know, chatting with a bot instead of chatting with a counselor. But when you look at the data of what came of them chatting with that bot and they are not meeting the outcomes that come from meeting with a human counselor. Are, are you doing more to meet your mission? I don’t know that you are, right? So I’ll give you that that’s data sensitive. It could be, I mean, there, there are, there are potential efficiencies. Sure. And, but, you know, are we, are we as an organization achieving them, right? And staying focused on not just, well, this number of people were met here, but were they served there? Were they meeting the the needs and goals of why you even have that program, you know, versus just the number of like this many people interacted with the chatbot? Great. But, but that’s a, yeah, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna assume that um you know, even a half a sophisticated an organization that’s half sophisticated before a, I existed had more than just vanity metrics. How many people, how many people chatted with us in the last seven days? I mean, that’s near worthless. I mean, you, you, I mean, it might be, I don’t know, Tony, I don’t know how much time you spend looking at the grant reports of, lots of times I don’t spend, I don’t spend any time. All right. Well, no, maybe it’s, maybe it’s the worst, worst situation than I think. But I, I mean, ok, so I’m, I’m, I’m assuming that there’s, but my point is the appropriate the valuable, the value of people. So, I mean, we should be applying the same measures and accountability to artificial intelligence as we did to human intelligence as we still are. We’re not, we’re not cutting any slack like it’s a learning curve or. So, you know that IIII I want our, our folks to be treated just as well in equal outcomes by the, by the intelligence that’s artificial as I do by the, by the human processes, right? And it’s, you know, I don’t want to go through this and say, have folks think like you and I are here to say everything is horrible. You could never use A I tools which like everything is horrible. Look around at this world. We got, we had some work to do. You know, there are spaces to use A I tools. That’s not what we’re saying. But the place where a lot, I mean, I’ve been talking to just hundreds and hundreds of organizations over the last 18 months and so many organizations like, oh, yeah, we’re just gonna, like, use this because it’s free or? Oh, we’re just gonna use this because it was automatically enabled inside of our database. Ok. Yeah, if it was so free and convenient and already available that should give you pause to say, why is this here? What is actually the product and the price? Uh if I give this back to the face, the Facebook analy. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And you can use A I tools when you know what is the product and the price. What are the safeguards? What is this company gonna be responsible for if something happens? What can I be responsible for? Yes, there are ways to use these tools. Is it to like copy, paste your paste file notes? Like probably never may that should just like, maybe we just don’t do that, you know. Um But sure, maybe there are places I had this really great example. I don’t know if I told this to you, but um an organization was youth service organization creating the Star Wars event and they were trying to like write the, like the evi language in like a Yoda voice. And they’re like three staff people are sitting there trying to come up with like, well, what’s the way a Yoda sentence works? You know, and they’re like they just put in the three sentences of like join us at the after school, blah, blah, blah, right? And said make this in Yoda’s voice and they copied, they were able to then use them. Right? Great. That was three people’s half an hour eliminated. They all they have the invite, right? The youth participants data was not included in order to create this content. You know, like there are ways to use these tools to really help. And I think we’ve talked about this briefly in the past, I really truly feel the place that has the most value for organizations is gonna be building tools internally where you don’t need to rely on. However, you know, these major companies scraped all of the internet to build some tool, right? You’re building it on. Well, here’s our 10 years of data and from that 10 years, you know, we’re going to start building a model that says, oh yeah, when somebody’s participant history looks like this, they don’t finish the program or when somebody’s participant history looks like this. Oh, they’re a great candidate for this other program, right? And you can start to build a tool or tools that help your staff be human and spend their human time being the most human impacts for the organizations, right? Um but oh very few organizations honestly are in a position to start building tools because they don’t have good data, they could build anything off of, right. Um they maybe don’t have budget staff systems that are ready to do that type of work. But I do think that is a place where we will see more organizations starting to grow towards because there is there’s huge potential value there for organizations to, to better deliver programs, better services, better meet needs by using the data you already have by learning by partnering with other organizations that maybe serve the same community or geography or whatever, you know, and say, yeah, how can we can like really accelerate our missions versus these maybe more shiny generative A I public tools that you know, the vast majority of the internet is flaming garbage. So a tool that’s been trained off of the flaming garbage, you know, it’s not going to take a long time for it to also create flaming. So be cautious if you’re thinking about using artificial intelligence to create your internal A I tool. Right. Right. So there, there, there’s a perfect example of the, the a good use case but also uh a um a concern, a a limitation, a qualification. That’s the word I was looking for 61. These words, sometimes the words are more elusive than I would like a AAA qualification. Um Its time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. In the gym. There are five places where there’s squirt bottles of uh sanitizer and paper towel dispensers and each location has a sign that says please clean the equipment after each use. And one of these stations uh is right next to the elliptical that, you know, I do. It’s actually the first thing I do. I walk in the room, take off my hoodie and just walk right to the elliptical twice. Now, I’ve seen the same guy uh not only violate the spirit of the signs but the explicit wording of the signs because this guy takes himself a couple of uh, downward swipes on the paper towel dispenser. So he grabs off a couple of towel lengths and he squirts it with the sanitizer that’s intended for the equipment and he puts his hand up his shirt and he cleans his, his pecks and, and his belly and it’s a sickening thing. I’ve seen it, it’s not a shower, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an equipment cleaning station. And, uh, so I, I, I’m imploring this guy. Yeah. Yeah. I, I guess I’m urging you to, uh, I’m just sharing because I don’t think anybody else does this. Uh, is there anybody else out there who does this? Probably not and not with these like surface sanitizers? It’s, it’s not a, it’s not a, like a, a hand sanitizer. It’s, it’s for equipment. So, you know, in the squirt bottle. So it’s not even appropriate for your skin. It is, it’s to clean hard plastic and, and metal and this guy uses it on his skin. So I’m, I’m waiting for the moment when he puts his hands down his pants so far, he’s just lifting his shirt. I, I’m waiting for when he puts his hands down his pants. Then I’m, then I’m calling him out. That’s, that, that’s beyond the pale. He, that requires revocation of your membership card. So, sir, the sign says, please clean the equipment after use. It’s not your equipment. That is Tonys take two. Kate. Does your gym offer like a shower room or a locker room? Yeah, there’s a shower. Yes, that’s a good question. Yeah, there’s a shower in the men’s room. Yeah. And he’s cleaning up there. It’s very strange. It’s gross. It’s gross. He sticks his hand up his sweaty t-shirt. Well, let’s hope he doesn’t go lower than that. Exactly. We’ve got bountiful book who bought loads more time. Here is the rest of A I organizational and personal with any sample ward. Yes. And we have, I, I would make sure that you have the link to include in like the show notes description. But, um, totally for free. And 10 doesn’t get any money. You don’t have to pay for anything. And 10 has free resources for creating, for example, uh, uh A I use policy for your organization that says, what are the instances in which you would use it or what are the instances in, in which you wouldn’t or, um, what types of content will you, you know, can staff copy paste versus what content or data can can they not um there’s templates for how to talk to your board about A I um how, how to build. Like we’ve actually looked at the tools and these ones we’ve approved for you to use. These ones are not approved, you know, all these different resources totally free and available on the end 10 website and none of them have decisions already made. We don’t say you can use this tool or you can’t use this tool or we recommend this use or not this use. Because ultimately, we, we are not going to make technology decisions for other organizations, but we want you to feel like whatever decision you made, you made it by thinking of going through the right steps, asking the right questions so that you can also trust your own decision, what whatever decision you come to, right? And that you have some templates to fill in um that were all created by humans designed by humans published by humans um to help you in that work. Um I think especially, you know, the, the the how to talk to your board and the um like key considerations, documents really just ask a lot of questions and say, you know, how different is it, if you’re say a animal foster organization and you’re thinking, OK, is a I appropriate for us to use versus uh that youth social service organization? OK? Very different considerations, right? And just helping people talk that through and, and see that the considerations are different for different organizations, I think is really valuable. As again, you consider ta facilitating conversation with your board. They’re also coming from very different sectors, maybe job types, backgrounds, experiences with A I. And so just like in your staff, there needs to be some level setting in how you talk about A I, because not everyone knows what A model is. Not everyone knows what a large language model. You know, these are words that have to be explained and kind of put out of the way and then to say, hey, it’s not all one answer. Not everybody needs to use every tool. And, and how do you talk about that, that with your teams going back to the Facebook analogy, you want to avoid the board member who comes to you and says, you know, artificial intelligence, we can be saving money, we can be doing so much more work. We can, we don’t even need a website. We have a Facebook page website. We’re not even sure we need all the staff that we have because we’re gonna be able to, we’re gonna have so much efficiency. So, you know, we need to OK. OK. Board member. All right. Yeah. So we’ve been here before. I mean, it’s, you know, probably I’m just gonna go out a limb and say it’s probably the same board member who had every board meeting says, does anybody know Mackenzie Scott? How do we get one of those checks. Right. Why don’t we get the Mackenzie? Yeah. Right. Right. Right. All right. Um, what else? Well, I was gonna also offer some of the questions that we’ve been getting, as, you know, we’ve been engaged with, um, a number of different organizations through some of our cohort programs and, you know, trainings for, for over a year now. And so maybe last year we were talking to them about, OK, let’s make sure you have a data policy, like just as an organization, do you have a data privacy policy? Do you know, so that anything you then go build, that’s a I specific whether that’s building a policy, building practices, building a tool, you, you have policies to, to kind of foundation off of, they’ve done that work, you know, now they’re looking at different products, they’re trying to create these uh you know, lists of like here’s approved tools for staff, here’s approved ways staff can use them. And just like we see with our Cr MS with our, you know, you know, email marketing systems, then they come back and they’re like, well, we, we reviewed it, we did everything and now it’s different now it’s a different version. Now they rolled out this other thing. Yes, like that is the beauty and the pain of technology, right is that it’s always changing and that we don’t necessarily get to authorize that change that it just happens. And so the rules change. Yeah. And so folks have been asking us, well, you know, how, how do we write policies with that in mind? And I think, um you know, if you are thinking about creating like that approved product list and, and you know, tools that aren’t approved or whatever, being really clear that these products have version numbers just like anything else. And so instead of just writing Gemini Chat G BT, you know, be specific about when did you review this and, and maybe approve it for use? Which addition was it that you were looking at? Is this a paid level? So staff could say, oh, it doesn’t look like I mine doesn’t say pro or you know, whatever it might be, right? Oh, I must be in the free one. OK? I need to get into our organization’s account or something. So the more clarity you can provide folks because right now of course, they could just do an internet search and be like, oh, there’s that product name, I’m gonna go start using it. It’s on the approved list. Um You know, folks, again, there may be new terms, maybe new product names that we’re not used to saying. And so folks aren’t as accustomed to looking at, oh, this is a different version of Chat GP T than this one was, you know. Um So just putting that out there for folks to keep in mind that these tools are, are really operating just like others that you are used to and there’s less of course documentation. But I’ve the questions we’re getting from folks is like, you know, the point I made at the beginning we can’t see anywhere in the documentation that explains why this is happening, right? They do, how could they document when the answer is, we also don’t know why that happens, you know, and so when you are talking to staff, especially if you’re saying, hey, these are approved tools and we have these licenses or here’s how to access them, training your staff on how to be the most human users of A I tools is to your kind of connecting to your human point going to be really important because we don’t want folks to feel that because they don’t necessarily understand how the mechanics of how it works. They’re just going to trust it without questioning the content or questioning, you know, for a lot of organizations who have built internal tools just as an example. It takes dozens of tries just to get the the model. Right. Right. So these other tools, of course, they’re not gonna be perfect isn’t real and perfect is absolutely not real with technology. So training staff, I’m like, how would I, how, how do I have some skepticism? How do I question what I’m seeing? How do I, how do I say even if it was internally built? This data doesn’t look, right. That doesn’t match my experience of running this program so that we don’t let it slip. Where? Oh, gosh. Oh, it was working that way for a long time. That’s also, um, I think, uh, a space where we as humans can be our most human, uh, you know, have some value add as humans. But again, staff need to be trained that they are meant to question these tools. Um, because that’s not, you know, I don’t know, a lot of organizations were like question the database. No, they’re like on the database, put everything in the database, right? And now we need to say no question, that report. It does that match your experience, you know, there was a long ramble but oh, absolutely valuable. The human, yeah, I the human contribution and of course, my concerns are even at, at the outset, you know, the, the early stage the seeding, the create seeding or surrendering the create creative process. Uh And now le let’s chat a little about this, the, the um the conversations. Yeah, I listened to the, I know the, the example that you mentioned earlier that George posted it was for podcasting. It, it was a podcast conversation around this and he gave them some, you know, some whole, some whole whale content and the two, the two were going back and forth and having a, a conversation. Yeah. Yeah, I listened to it and one thing I was curious if, if you caught as the pod father yourself um you know, it came across, you know, I’ve been had opportunities to see um a number of different generative A I tools and, and things closer to the, to the front edge of what things can do that are specifically like, you know, taking just a few seconds of you and then creating you. Um So hearing just like these, these could be any voices, these could be any people is like, yeah, OK. This is, this is what a I can do. It’s, it’s spooky. But when you listen to it, you can hear either you have a very bad producer and editor, you know, or this is a I because there’s certain um phrases that got reused multiple times, not just literally the audio clip of this whole sentence, you know, and the, and the intonation, the whole sentence clip was reused multiple times. Um So one of them, I think one of them was along the lines of that’s a really interesting point. Yeah. Yeah. And well, and there was one that was like describing the product. So it must have come from the page, you know, whatever source content um was provided. But, you know, it’s, I think that some of that is there and we as individuals, we as a society will decide if we give it value or not, if it’s, if it’s worth it to people to make podcasts through A I because we give it attention or we don’t like, I just I think naturally that will be there. Can I, can I just go on record or at this, at this stage and say that, that, that idea disgusts me. Oh, totally. But I do. And I, I realized that’s what Georgia’s Post was about. That. It’s now well, within conceivable, well, well, possible to create an hour long podcast of an artificial conversation based on an essay that somebody wrote some time. Oh, totally. Totally. I don’t. But I’m saying the reason, yeah, I agree with you. But I’m saying the way we, you know that toothpaste doesn’t go back in the tube by us, like we can’t turn it off generative A I tools can already make that. So we as, as individual consumers of content and as a society need to either say we’re gonna allow that and value it or we’re not, right? And, and not make, not provide incentive for organizations or companies to, to make that and, and distribute it. But I also think that the place in that kind of um video, audio kind of multimedia content that, that A I tools have capacity and will continue having more capacity to build is much more important than you. And I talked about this a number of months ago around Miss and disinformation is it’s one thing to say, made up voices, making some podcast about content like that’s garbage, right? But we can’t just like throw away the idea that that’s technically possible because organizations need to know A I tools are already capable of creating a video of your CEO firing your staff. You need to be prepared to say that was a spoof this is, this is how we’re gonna deal with this, right? Um Because while the like maybe further separated from our work, the idea of like content could just be created that way you and I can say we don’t value that whatever, but these tools are capable of, of spoofing us as, as people, as leaders, as organizations. You know, what, what would it look like if there was a video from your program director saying that everybody in the community gets a grant and you’re a foundation, right? Like these, these are real issues and I don’t want folks to confuse how easy it may feel for us to have an opinion that some of this A I generated uh content isn’t a value with the idea that it, it there isn’t something there to have to come up with strategy and plan for because, you know, we can say that’s garbage. But those same tools that made the garbage could make your spoof, you know, also labeling. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t trust every A I generated podcast team. I’m not, I’m not gonna call them hosts because there is no host um to, to label the content. I don’t trust, I don’t trust that that’s gonna happen because it was artificially generated. It’s not a real conversation. Yeah. Hello. For everyone that’s listening. Human Amy is here talking with human and Tony who I can see on the screen with me. Boycott your local A I podcast. I, I don’t know. There’s not, there’s not a solution. You’re right. We can’t, we can’t go back. I’m just voicing that we can say that it’s not something we value, we can say that this is why we don’t value it, right? The art of conversation, listening, assimilating, responding, listening again, respond, assimilating and responding. That that is an art uniquely. Well, maybe it’s not uniquely human. I don’t know if deer have conversations or, or what and we know whales do. So I take that back. It’s not, it’s not uniquely human, but at at our level, it, you know, it’s not just about we, we don’t converse merely to survive, merely to warn each other of threats. I’m suspecting that in the animal in mammal kingdom that wait are animals, mammals are mammals, animals? No, and I think it’s I think it’s a Venn diagram. Oh, so they’re separate. Ok. So there’s a two king kingdom phylum class order family genus species. I got that. I got that out of high school biology. I can, I can say it in my sleep kingdom phy class order family genus species. All right. In the animal kingdom. My suspicion is that more of the communication is about maybe like basic, like there’s a good food source. There’s a threat, uh, teaching young, don’t do that things like that. Survival more base, I doubt. You know, it’s about the aesthetic of the forest that the deer are in. But even if the birds are talking about the way the sunlight comes through the leaves, they are still alive. And I think what you’re trying to draw a distinction between is the value and even beauty of us having a conversation and the value of what comes of that conversation in our own minds and our own learning. But in this case, it’s recorded so other folks could hear it and, and I guess listen to it or be impacted by it versus it being a technical mechanism where we say, OK, here’s a long paper. Go make it sound like two people are discussing this, right? That’s not that that doesn’t fit the criteria of what we want or need to value in a world, that’s the world we want, right? Yes, the art of conversation, think something you look forward to, not something that you do out of necessity, right? And you know, there’s, I think a place where especially at end 10 conversations around A I have come back to is opportunities that A I tools may present for um different ways of learning different ways of accessing information. But again, those aren’t necessarily uh come up with two podcast host voices and then have them have a conversation about this, this research report you know, a lot of those tools could be made better but already exist, you know, different forms of screen readers apps that can help someone um maybe navigate the internet or, or, you know, summarize um documents to help them because they don’t want to read a 50 page document or they can’t read it for, you know, visually on the screen. So I think there’s space there. But again, it’s because you’re trying to preserve what is most human. And that is that user who maybe needs um accommodations of, of something that technology can provide. It’s not OK, let’s use technology to co create something separately over here and just hope people consume it, right? And to be clear, George didn’t post that thinking. Oh, great. Now everyone will want to consume this. No, it was, it was a demonstration. Um But I, but I, again, I’m just using that as a place to say, yes, there’s even conversations to say great, what accessibility could this create an agenda for, for our users? Right? But what’s most human is those users and their actual needs and not, you know, look what A I could do. Let’s just make different types of content, right? The last one I wanna raise is uh the one that caused me to use the word dystopian as I was commenting on uh commenting on Georgia’s Post, which was um the A I self reflection using uh having A I justify itself to the users that it is trying to attract and, and then relying on that, that as a, as an insightful analysis, as a thoughtful reflection, as, as contemplative of its own work that, that, that it’s doing those unique, those I think are uniquely, uniquely human actions, introspection, introspection, contemplation, pondering. How did I do? How did I perform? How can I do better? These might be uniquely human. I would argue there are a number of humans, I can see that don’t um Well, but I didn’t say I didn’t. That’s a different population. Now, you’re taking the whole, the whole human population. I’m talking about the contemplative ones. Yes. And there are, there are uh humans who are not at all introspective and questioning whether they could have done better and learning from their, from their contemplations. But I think those are all uniquely human activities. And we’re at, we’re now asking A I to purportedly duplicate those processes and analyze and contemplate its own work. Yeah. And as you said earlier, II, I and I, I certainly don’t trust it to be genuine and truthful. If, if A I is capable of truth, we’ll put that, we’ll put that existential question aside uh in its, in its analysis of its own work because as you, as you pointed out, the tools are built to, to be used by humans and the tools are not going to condemn or even just criticize their own work. Yeah, but we’re Yeah. And I think you heard of the challenge but there, I’m sorry, but, but there are humans who are deceiving themselves into thinking that, that the analysis and contemplation is accurate and uh genuine. Yeah. And I think part of the challenge I was gonna name is just that, that, that we as users, I’m not saying you and I uh individually but we as the human users of these tools are also setting ourselves up to be just, you know, dishonest in our use because we are bringing inappropriate or misaligned expectations to the product. We cannot, we, we cannot expect a tool that’s designed to appease us and to lie at the cost of giving an answer, you know, like uh we just wanna be able to do this to thoughtfully and honestly reflect on that or to say no, there is no answer, right? Um However, we had was the tools are designed to appeal to us. Right. Right. And when we are talking about that to be clear, you know, we’re really talking about generative A I tools, tools that are designed to generate some new content, new sentences, new answers, whatever we’re asking of it back to us A I itself is just such a massively blanket term that I don’t want folks to think nothing that could be considered an A I tool could be trusted to generate an answer because we’re, we’re specifically talking about generative A I there. But, you know, say you had like a machine learning uh model that was looking at, you know, 30 years of your program participant data. Well, that’s probably already a tool that isn’t set up to generate content. Uh You know, it’s not coming up with new participant data. It’s looking at the patterns, it’s flagging when a pattern meets the criteria, you’ve presented it to, you know, it’s maybe matching that data to something else. But again, you’ve said here are the things you could match it to et cetera. So this is not to say, Tony and Amy say never trust technology. They say bring expectations that are aligned to the tool differently to every tool that, that you’re coming to that hypothetical tool that you just described is being set on uh asked to evaluate your data, not its own data. It’s to evaluate your performance, your data set. It’s not being asked to comment and on and criticize or, or complement its own data. That’s the, that’s, that’s the critical difference. Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah. No, nobody here is saying, well, not, I’m not saying that you’re saying we are, but you’re, you’re wise to remind listeners we’re not condemning all uses of generative uh A I large language models, but just to be thoughtful about them and, and understand what the costs are. And there are, there are costs on the organizational level and there are costs on the individual human level and, and the you, you comment on the organizational level because you think more at that level. But on the human level, another level layer to my concern is that the cost is quite incremental. Mm It’s it, it our creativity, our art of conversation, our our synapses firing. It’s just happening slowly with each usage, we become less thoughtful composers, less critical thinkers and it just so incremental that the change isn’t noticed until until in my critical mind, it’s too late and we look back and wonder how come I can’t write a letter to my dad anymore? Why am I having such a hard time writing a love letter to my wife, husband, partner? Yeah. What there are, I know someone who uh is a new grandmother and she has a little kit where you write, you write letters to your grandchild and they open them when they’re whatever, 15 or 20 years old, like a time capsule. Why am I having trouble composing a uh a short note to my grandchild? Right. Well, and I think, you know, just honestly, as a person in this conversation, not, not speaking, you know, um from an organizational strategy perspective, I think as a person that is your friend, Tony, you know, I would say, I don’t personally have a pro, I can write a letter and I’m, I, and I think a strong communicator, I, you know, it’s hard to make me stop talking. So, you know, I, I could write a letter. I know, for other folks, even without a, I, they might say, well, what goes in the le like, I just, what, what do I put in there? What are the main things I should cover whatever? And I’m, I actually have less, maybe of a strong reaction to the idea that somebody would use generative A I to come up with. OK, what are the three things I should cover in my letter? And then I’ll go write the sentences and more that what I hear underneath what you’re saying is actually the same, I think important value I have and, and wrote about in the book with a fua et cetera, which is in the world I want in this, in this beautiful equitable world where everyone had their needs met in the ways that best meet their own needs. Technology is there in service to our lives and not that we are bending our lives in order to make technology work, right? And maybe in that beautiful equitable world, there are people who, who have a technology. Is it an app? Is it called A I anymore? You know, whatever it is that says, hey, Tony, don’t forget today is the day you write the letter to your dad. It’s, it’s Friday, you always write it on a Friday or whatever, right? And, and make sure that you do it because you know, it makes you feel happy to write that letter. Maybe that’s true. Maybe in that world. There are some people who have a tool that help them remember to do that. But, but what’s important to me and what I think I hear and what you’re saying is important to you is that technology is there because we need it and want it and that it is working in the ways we need and want it to work and not that our lives are, are influenced and shaped in order to adjust to the technology. Yes, I am saying that I just, I am concerned that the, that our, our changing is beyond our recognition. We don’t see ourselves becoming less creative and I’m not even only concerned about myself. I, I can write a letter and I think uh 90 I’ll still be able to write a letter. But there are folks uh who are infants now, those yet to be born for whom artificial intelligence is going to be so much more robust, so much more pervasive in, in ways that we, we can’t today imagine, I don’t think. Yeah. And what are those humans gonna look like? I don’t know, maybe they’ll be better humans, maybe they will. I’m open to that but I like the kind of humans that we are or, you know. Uh so, but, but I I’m open to the possibility that there’ll be better humans. But what will their human interactions be? Will they have, will they have thoughtful conversations? Will they have human moments together that are not artificially outlined first and maybe even worse, you know, constructed for them. I don’t know. Uh but some of the, some of my concern, although, although some of my concern is about those of us who aren’t currently living and have been born and across the generations less for older folks because their interactions with artificial intelligence are fewer if you’re no longer in the w if you’re no longer uh working your, your interactions with artificial intelligence may, may be non existent. Um And I think, I think it’s natural as you’re older, you’re less likely to be engaging with the tools than if you’re in your twenties, thirties, forties or fifties. Well, my very human reflection on today’s conversation is that uh it is usually the case that we start talking about any type of technology topic and you constantly interject that I need to be practical. I need to give recommendations. I need to explain how to do things and I appreciate and welcome you joining me over here in theoretical land about the impact of technology broadly across our work, across our missions, across our communities, across our future. Um Welcome, welcome to my land, Tommy. Uh I have appreciated this, this one time opportunity to let go of the practical tactical advice and to, you know, have what I hope listeners, um you know, had some thoughts, had some reactions, uh truly email me any time. But, you know, I, I hope that if nothing else, it was an opportunity for folks to witness or kind of listen in as and maybe you were talking to yourself in your own head, you know, of, of a conversation about what these technologies can be, what, what we need to think about with them. Because in any technology conversation, I think it’s most important to talk about people. Uh That’s the only reason we’re using these tools, right? People made them people are trying to do good work with them. So, so talking about people is, is always most important and, and I hope folks take that away from this whole long hour of A I. Thank you for a thoughtful human conversation. Yes, Amy Sample Ward. They’re our technology contributor and the CEO of N 10. And folks can email me Tony at Tony martignetti.com with your human reactions to our human conversation. Thanks so much, Tony. It was so fun. My pleasure as well. Thank you. Next week, a tale from the archive. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Marinetti. The show, social media is by Susan Chavez la Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty you’re with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for July 8, 2024: Improve Your Communications With AI

 

Carlos MoralesImprove Your Communications With AI

Carlos Morales, from Viva Technology, shares how to use specific ChatGPT prompts to accelerate your written drafts; optimize your messaging for clarity and audience; and, personalize your outreach as you maintain a consistent voice, tone and brand. All through artificial intelligence. (This was recorded at the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference, hosted by NTEN.)

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Welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be stricken with dysphasia. Not last week’s dysphagia, dysphasia. If I had to speak the words you missed this week’s show. Our associate producer, Kate is away this week. It’s all me. We’ll get through it. Hey tone. Oh, sorry. Continuing our 2024 nonprofit technology conference coverage this week. It’s improve your communications with A I. Carlos Morales from Viva technology shares. How to use specific chat GP T prompts to accelerate your written drafts. Optimize your messaging for clarity and audience and personalize your outreach as you maintain a consistent voice tone and brand all through artificial intelligence. I’m Tony Steak too. Giving usa why do we have to wait six months? We’re sponsored by Virtuous, virtuous, gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving virtuous.org and by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box. I’m channeling Kate fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. This isn’t so hard here is improve your communications with A I. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC. You know that that’s the 2024 nonprofit technology conference. And we are in Portland, Oregon at the Oregon Convention Center. We’re sponsored here by Heller Consulting, technology strategy and implementation for non profits. With me now is Carlos Morales, digital marketing strategist at Viva Technology. Carlos. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thank you so much. I’m glad to be here. Pleasure. Thank you. How’s the conference going? Are you enjoying? Oh, I’m loving it. This is very good. Is this your uh this is actually, this is my second one in like in the last 14 years. And so it has been a while. It’s been a while since you came, you miss them. I mean, NTC is a very good conference. It is. It is, I mean, great, great information, great sessions and great networking opportunity, meeting awesome people learning from a lot of people as well. Yeah. Have you done your session? I did, I did yesterday. People learned from you and now you’re learning from others as well. This is the community, the N 10 community. It is. It is. And uh your session that you did yesterday is accelerating nonprofit communications draft, refine and personalize with A I, correct. All right, personalization. It’s possible. It is, it is. Well, give us the overview first. Why, why did you feel we needed this session? Sure. Uh Well, as you know, A I is sort of actually now the uh the talk of the town, right. And so a lot of organizations are using A I or want to learn how to use A I to actually communicate better, to market better and to reach their audiences better. And so it’s a great tool. It allows to save, uh save us a lot of time. It can give us great ideas and how to do our job better. We can be more efficient. And so the whole purpose of decision is actually to give practical tip hands on uh tips and how to use chat G BT in this case, uh effectively for nonprofit organizations uh create some efficient and effective communication strategies. So, yeah. Alright. So uh you say, you know, draft, refined and personalized. So why don’t we take those in order, drafting comes first before we’re writing? So what’s, what’s your advice around the use of A I drafting? Sure. So when we’re talking about drafting, communication is basically let’s, let’s uh let’s talk about CG BT as being the tool that he actually we talked about yesterday. It’s going into chat GP T uh and prompting or giving instructions to cha G BT on a specific task. For example, help me write an email about fund raising for my donors. Um And you know, I want this email to be very uh to have a grateful tone. Um And I want you to cover, you know, mention all the goals that we were able to achieve based on our fundraising strategies. It’s just, it’s just a simple prompt. This is a simple instruction. Now, Judge GP T is gonna come up with, OK, here’s the email based on the instruction that you gave me as you actually read the first draft of the email, right? What you’re getting is basically, that’s the first thing that’s the draft based on one instruction, the email comes up and then you’re gonna actually now refine it. But the whole idea right now is just to start getting some ideas, brainstorming and what would be the best email I can send out to my donors? That’s it. So I’m just giving you one instruction, you create the task and then from there we’ll go and improve it. So that’s the draft piece and, and we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna improve it with future with additional instructions exactly in a prompt. And so that’s when the refining piece comes along because then as after I looked the draft, I can say, well, this is great, but I want you to be more specific. And so, and I want you to address the donors that actually donated between five and $10,000 for example. Um and I want, and I wanna make sure that uh you know, as you were thinking them, I wanna make sure that we actually put a link where they actually can go and click on it so they know how their money is being used. So now we’re actually adding more instructions to be able to actually refine that email. Now, maybe the first draft was not what you wanted. Maybe the first draft was too vague, too general. Well, the refining piece is giving more context, more detail to cha GP T. So you can actually get better results and you go from there. So this is obviously an iterative process, you know, using A I in G BT or any other language model is not a one time thing. It’s not like giving instruction once you’re gonna come up with, you know, with the best idea, the best email, the best marketing communication is not gonna happen. So you have to continue talking at it providing the context or the additional information for that, you know, for cha GP T to give you the best result possible. OK. Yeah. So you know, we’re talking about prompt engineering, which is a fancy way of saying, you know, learn how to talk to A I by giving actually the right prompts the right instructions. That’s what that is. And we had a session yesterday, a conversation about prompt engineering with uh with two other guys. Um All right. So is that enough? I mean draft refine and then personalize right, the personalized piece though, after you are refining after you’re enhancing your communication that email. Now, we wanna make sure that we are personalizing, right? Remember that I said donors that actually donated between five and $10,000 that piece of it. There you are segmenting you are, you are sort of actually personalizing your message to a specific specific segment of your audience, right? Because the language that you’re using is gonna be different for someone who probably donated about $1000 right? Because that money might go to a different cost. And so that’s the personalizing piece. The other thing too is that you can actually train cha GP T to adopt the tone, the brand voice of your organization. For example, you can actually give them documents, you know, past emails or a specific flyers in which you say I want you to look at the way that we have written this communication pieces to donors and I want you to actually adapt or a adopt that specific tone into the email. So that’s where the personalization and keeping your brand voice comes in. So that’s, that’s the piece about personalizing it. But you’re gonna, when we talk about personalizing it, it’s pretty much talking, you know, we’re talking about let’s let’s communicate with a specific type of audience. No, in this case, we’re talking about donors, it could be parents, it could be youth, depends who, who, who your target audience is. Yeah. OK. And right. And the personalization also comes from you giving it text to train itself to you, to train it to adopt my tone. Use this ii I don’t know, use some of the maybe use the language of the second paragraph, you know, or things like that. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with every donor at scale. Virtuous. Gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow impact virtuous.org. This is uh it gets a little tiring now back to improve your communications with A I I think we’re doing OK though. Uh you mentioned a link. Now, how would we a link? So donors can see how their gift was used. How’s that gonna work? So basically, you can actually do that. You can actually say well and I want in the email to for them to go to my website, give them, give it the URL, give it to your RL and then that will be included in the email that Chad G BT generates. Alright, I mean uh there must be more to talk about because you had a session we just did draft or fine and personalized. Um What what what, what more, what more do we need to talk about? Sure. Well, I think we look what we’re talking about actually communicating with JG BT. The whole thing is about prompting is actually about, you know, making sure that you know, exactly or you learn how to actually talk to it, give the right instructions. So one of the things that we talked about is OK, we actually came up with a basic structure, right? In other words, first thing that you wanna do is actually just state what your uh goal and the communication type is. So in other words, if you’re asking to write an email, that’s a communication type, the goal is to actually raise awareness about a specific, about a specific cause. You wanna also give context, tell cha GP T why this is important. You wanna also highlight the audience who is the audience going to be. So in other words, if the email is going to donors, that is my audience, you know, donors that actually donated between five and $10,000 for example, right. And what’s the call to action when I want them to actually go to a specific website for them to actually see how their money, how their funds are being used So that’s the structure, right? Basic structure that a prompt should have. When you actually have that structure, then you actually come up with a very good draft. In fact, we actually put it in practice yesterday. And when people actually saw that email, the first draft, they say, well, that’s a pretty good one. So when, when you actually come back into an editing mode, you’re refining it. Obviously, you spend a lot less time. Why? Because you were specific in the first try. If the promise to beg you’re gonna come, you know, you’re gonna have an output, you’re gonna have an answer more, more generic. So you’re gonna end up editing a lot more. So that’s the whole, that’s the whole, uh you know, kind of the whole idea is to actually learn how to talk to it. Now, I’m just mentioning, you know, email, but you’re gonna use it for marketing, how to create effective social media post. You can fact give it a, you know, if there’s a social media post, for example, either from your organization or another organization that actually has created a lot of engagement, you can grab that post, give it to chat GP T and say this post generating, you know, 25 shares had about 1000 views, whatever, whatever the metrics that actually you get from that post, you feed it to chat GP T and say I want to create something similar. But my audience is Xy and Z right, please adopt the best practices that you found from this post to generate one that is actually gonna work for me. Do you need to say please, you know, GP T just do it right. So it’s interesting because we, we, we were talking about it and one of the decisions like, well, you know, che GP T appreciates when you are polite and say please and thank you because you know, there’s been some research where this actually shows that when you are polite, you know, it’s end up producing better results for you. There’s research. Yes. However, however, the nice thing about this, you can actually read all this research in the world, but you can actually test it yourself. Is there been instances on my, on my end where I haven’t said please and then the results versus versus an instruction when I say please doesn’t change much. OK? So in my experience, you know, this is, this is one of the things that I’ve done. I get frustrated with cha GP T and you know what I’ve done is like you did not do what I asked you, you are making stuff up, you’re hallucinating because that’s the term that we use. So you’re making stuff up, please. OK. Revise the instructions and pay attention to details. All right. So I use the, please, then I draft the same prompt, same instruction without the plea and I pretty much get the same result right. There’s some instances when the results varies. A little, a little bit, right? But with a GP T, I’m gonna be honest with you, you can use the same prompt right now. Uh And then 10 minutes later you get a different, a different, um a different result. I’m gonna give you an example. So yesterday, someone asked at my session, OK, what happened if you actually say to chat G BT, write this email based on the target audience, you give it an audience and, and, and, and, and all the criteria. But then for the second prom, you say write an original email. What’s the difference between those two? Actually, there’s none because when you’re asking chai to write something, it’s going to be original. He’s actually creating the text for you. All right, you can edit it, you can change it, you can go back and forth, right? So, so we tested it out. So we tested it out. And so basically, we’re asking the same thing and one prompt, you know, uh we didn’t say original, the other one, we did. Obviously we had two different answers, right? Because because just one word that we changed now, what happened when you actually use the same instruction? The same one, no changes whatsoever, identical prompts, we also get different answers, but they were close but different answers. Here’s what happens when you can grab both, both of those answers. And you can say, oh my God those are good. What I can actually take from each of them to make one that is actually better and what you can do, you can give both answers to Cha J BT. And I said, I like both of them mention what you like about it. And now I want you to create one final email based on the instruction based on this criteria to make sure that is the best of the both versions that you gave me. So see all the things that we can do with it. And I’m just talking about text based, but we can do a lot of stuff, we can ask it to help us create prompt, to create images um to analyze data. Um You know, for nonprofits, for example, yesterday, we talked about let’s talk about different roles that you have in the nonprofits, right? You have a grant writer. How can you use a GP T to actually write a grant that’s very useful, you can actually fit in the whole information of the grant application, right? And then you can actually give a specific instructions and to tell you, you know how to actually answer those sections from the grant application with the tone of your organization. Make sure that actually highlights or give more importance to some of the sections of the grant of the grant application that it needs to be given importance to. But making sure that it maintains the whole brand’s voice, right? Obviously, it’s gonna come up with an answer. It’s not gonna be a perfect one. That’s where you actually go and start refining it and going back and forth. That’s, that’s just one, you know, one practical way of doing it. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers. Just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. It’s time for Tony’s take two giving USA. Why do we have to wait six months for a report about fundraising the previous year giving USA comes out each June 6 months after the end of the year, we used to have a far far superior product. It was the Atlas of giving longtime listeners to the show. May recall that the Atlas of giving Ceo Rob Mitchell was on the show several times, usually maybe always in January because the Atlas had and he was announcing the report on fundraising from the previous year in January. And on top of that, very importantly, he came with the forecast, the quantitative forecast of fundraising for the coming year and he had this report from the previous year and the forecast by sector, meaning nonprofit mission sector. He used to say, sector source, the source of the giving and state state, he could break down giving by state. He could tell you that last year, what the dollar amount was of arts fundraising in the state of Wisconsin. And in the forecast, he could tell you what the religious fundraising is going to be for the coming year in the state of Maine. That’s how robust and detailed and sophisticated the Atlas of giving was giving USA doesn’t even come close to this and we have to wait six months for it. And the forecast you get from giving USA is qualitative like uh the election and inflation and donors perceptions will impact fundraising this year. Oh What, what brilliant insight. So, so, so deep, the analysis and, and so actionable for us, it’s worthless. Uh OK, so what happened to the Atlas of giving? Uh it, it, it fell away, you know, so if, if I here I am saying it was far superior, why didn’t it survive? Well, the best products don’t always survive. Um In this case, it may have been underfunded. So the marketing and promotion was not adequate giving USA has its relationship with the University of Indiana and the Lily School of philanthropy which lends it uh undeserved uh credibility. And so, you know, puts those institutions imprimatur on the, on the giving USA product uh I believe it’s misplaced, but anyway, it’s there. So, but I, I really don’t have a complete answer as to why the Atlas of giving didn’t survive. I think the last report was 2017. So I think the last time Rob Mitchell was on was January of 2018 with the report from 2017, again, such deep analysis by sector source and state. And also, of course, then he had the forecast for 2018. I guess I’m voicing frustration and lament that we don’t have a better product. And uh I lament the loss of the Atlas of giving. That is Tony’s take two, Kate. No, of course, Kate’s not here. We’ve got just about a butt load more time this week. Here’s the rest of improve your communications with A I. Again, when you say use, use our tone, our voice, you can train it with your own text. You can even give it URL si mean, maybe a blog post or you can copy and paste or whatever. Well, and Tony, here’s the thing about it that you said give it a blog post. Somebody actually asked yesterday can actually, can I give cha G BT a link to my page? So he knows a little bit about me about my organization and ask him based on that information to actually write an email, making sure that he’s skipping that brand’s voice, that has a little bit of background of who the organization is. And use that when it’s actually drafting that email, right? And so, um, and you can certainly do that. You can certainly do that. And so, um, so it’s powerful, there’s so many things that we can do with it. You know, I’m gonna share with you a, a concern that I have that I shared with the, the, the two, um, the two technologists who were talking about the prompt engineering yesterday. And I’ve shared this with other folks too. I, I’m interested in your reaction. Um My, my concern about the use of chat GP T or any of the, the generative A I tools is that we’re, we’re seeing away our most creative time, which is the blank page, the creation of the draft. We’re staring at the blank screen. How do I get started? Um You know, where should I start with my ending or should I start with my call to action in the middle or, you know, but where that to me is the most creative that we can, we can be and then less creative than that is refining editing, you know, copy editing, uh proofreading naturally, you know. Um So, so to summarize it, like my concern is that we’re, we’re gonna become less creative, we’re giving away our most creative moment. That blank screen moment. What’s your reaction to that? You know, I don’t know what kind of answers you get in regards to that, but I have found myself to be more creative by using Chat G BT. And the reason why is because now I’ve learned how to be more effective at communicating and given a specific instructions. Not only that though, but as I’m actually seeing the answers, I start thinking of ideas that I actually can use to enhance the final product that I want from cha GP T. So in other words, to me, for example, if I’m looking, I’m gonna give you example, I did, I did my workshop yesterday. Did I use C GP T to create an outline for my workshop? What do you think the answer to that is, of course, I did have I done workshops before on marketing and social media and uh and technology. Yes, I have prior to chat GP T. What did I do to create an outline for a workshop that I was about to present? What do people do? You go to Google? Right? You do a little bit of research, you can come up with an outlet yourself, but then you go to Google and you start actually looking at case studies, you start looking at concepts you start looking at and then you start putting all the information together. What Cha GP T does is basically grab all the information that he knows that exist and actually put it in a package for you in front of your screen based on the instruction that you give it. That’s what it does, right? So, so to a certain point is like if I want to write an email, for example, I would say to cha GP T I need to write an email, right? Um Ask me clarifying questions to get more context before proceeding. That’s it. Then cha G BT will say, all right, you, I I understand you need to write an email. Now tell me who the audience is. What’s the type of tone that you wanna use in the email? What are the key messages that you want to convey? These are things that well, we, we already know that we need to write on an email. But what chat G BT is helping me is kind of actually be more organized if there are things that I’m seeing there that I hadn’t thought about. And then once I see it is, oh my God, I forgot this. Now, now chat G BT is prompting you exactly is prompting me instead of actually thinking and being a little bit more creative and how I can enhance that process. And so that’s the way that actually I see it. Um So I don’t think the creative process is gonna go away. What is actually happened with shifting and how to be creative in a different way by using technology. And so, and that’s, and that’s the way that I, that I see it. That’s actually I see it with the people that I work with and how we have applied A, I thank you. Creativity in a different way. Yes, definitely. Um What else do you want to talk about? We, uh we could still spend some more time. What, what haven’t we gone deep enough on or? Well, yeah, I think, uh you know, for nonprofits, for example, but this is the audience of your, of your podcast. It’s like the question is, how do we actually use a tool like cha GP T to be more efficient? Well, you know, I gave you prior examples and how it can help you save lots of hours. You know, one of the things that we talked about yesterday was like, you know, if you want to write a blog post and you want to write a blog post about um mental health issues for teens uh in your, in your local area, for example, and the purpose of the blog post is to educate parents and provide resources well, prior to cha GP T, you probably would think and you will look at the blank screen going back to your, to your concern and you probably spend about eight hours trying to write, to write a very good blog post. Right? Well, with J GP T, we can certainly actually spend between 2 to 2 and four hours and actually write a very good blog post. Now, what happened with the other four hours, the other four hours that I’m not spending now and writing a blog post can be used in the marketing piece of the blog post. Now that I have written it, what can I do to actually promote it better and making sure that parents actually get to see it and get to apply what I have I have written for them to do or the tips that are provided for them in terms of mental health and, and, and, and, and how to deal with that with, with their, with their Children, for example, with their kids. And so notice how technology now is being used more efficient and we become more, I mean, uh more efficient on time, but more effective in the way that actually we produce results. So those are some of the things that I think is important for if you are a for nonprofits, if you ask the question, OK, what are the number one thing that you want cha GP T to help you with a lot of people are gonna raise their hands, they’re gonna say content creation, how to create more engaging content on social media. For example, my goodness, you have these tools, it’s gonna help you do that, right? And so when we’re talking about, you know, uh you know, using a GP T more for the nonprofit organizations, you know, one of the things that I would say is like get good at prompting. But on the other hand, just yesterday, I was reading an article where prompting in a few months is not gonna be something that it’s gonna be needed because what’s happening is as this technology advances, um the la language model is actually by just giving an instruction, the language model is gonna be able to actually predict what exactly is it that you want. So, and so basically, it’s not gonna be, you know, you’re not gonna need to be more detail than necessary sometimes. And so, so it’s a dancing rapidly, right? You actually go and go to websites and grab uh you know, uh prompts library for any type of role that you want. And then what you do is just copy and paste it and edit it based on your own needs. Prompt library. Oh yes, yes. So you want you, you know, you copyright it. Yeah. If you actually are a graphic designer, uh data analyst, there are actually prompt libraries in which you actually for anything pretty much that you want, you can copy it and paste it, edit it as you see fit and it will allow you to get more results faster, right? And so, so, you know, for nonprofit organizations, one of the things that I say is like, let’s get good at the basics first. If you get good at the basics, you’re gonna, you’re gonna see right away. Very good results. You’re, you’re gonna actually produce some tangible results, great results for your organization and then you’re gonna be able to now promote, better, communicate better. Um you know, if you are using uh cha GP T to create content on social media, you’re gonna be able to actually see the results of that by the content being more personalized, remember, personalizing and refining. And so those are the things that I think will be beneficial for fund raising. My goodness. If you’re, you’re fund raising and you have a database of donors, you feed that to cha GP T and you start segmenting your donors based on the amount of money that they actually have given you. Not only that, then you personalize that email, like I told you at the beginning based on that, not only that those that are actually have not engaged with you or for some reason, they haven’t donated with you in a while. How do we re engage them? How do we make sure that we remind them of the cause that at some point they actually, you know, believed or they engage with us at the first, but they haven’t done in a while. How do we re engagement? How do we actually make sure that actually they, you know, they donate, they come back. So look at all the great benefits that you can actually as a nonprofit can reap from this technology. It’s just knowing how to use it, right? It’s key. But you know, but as you, as you’re learning how to use it, the creative, the creative actually thought comes to you and say, oh my God this is just one tip of the iceberg. Now we can do this, this and that. So that’s what I say is technology for me had to allow me to actually be more creative in the way that I do things. All right. Yeah. All right, Carlos, we’re gonna leave it there. All right. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you, Carlos Morales, digital marketing strategist at Viva Technology. Thank you very much again for sharing, Carlos. My pleasure. Thank you and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 24 NTC where we’re sponsored by Heller consulting, technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits next week, exploiting conflict and intuition makes better products. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by Virtuous. Virtuous. Like I’m 14. My voice breaks, virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow, giving, virtuous.org and by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Love that alliteration. This does get a little tiring doing my per one person. II, I must be out of practice doing it by myself. It’s been over a year. Our creative producer is Clare Meyerhoff. I’m your No, no. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for June 5, 2023: Artificial Intelligence For Nonprofits

 

Afua Bruce, Allison Fine, Beth Kanter & George WeinerArtificial Intelligence For Nonprofits

We take a break from our #23NTC coverage, as an esteemed, tech-savvy panel considers the opportunities, downsides, potential risks, and leadership responsibilities around the use of artificial intelligence by nonprofits. They’re Afua Bruce (ANB Advisory Group LLC); Allison Fine (every.org); Beth Kanter (BethKanter.org); and George Weiner (Whole Whale).

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[00:04:19.33] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me, but you’d get slapped with a diagnosis of algorithm a phobia. If you said you feared listening to this week’s show Artificial Intelligence for nonprofits, we take a break from our 23 NTC coverage as an esteemed tech Savvy panel considers the opportunities downsides potential risks and leadership responsibilities around the use of artificial intelligence by nonprofits. There are fewer Bruce at A N B advisory group LLC Allison. Fine at every dot org, Beth Kanter, Beth Kanter dot org and George Weiner at Whole Whale on Tony’s take to a give butter webinar. We’re sponsored by donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. Here is artificial intelligence for nonprofits in November 2022. Chat GPT was released by the company open AI they’re more powerful, maybe Smarter GPT four was released just four months later in March. This year. The technology is moving fast and there are lots of other platforms like Microsoft’s as your AI I guess the sky’s the limit. There’s Google’s help me, right? And Dolly also by open AI creates images. So artificial intelligence can chat and converse answer questions. Do search, draw and illustrate and write. There are also apps that compose music, create video and coding computer languages. A team at UT Austin claims their AI can translate brain activity into words that is read minds and I’m probably leaving things out what’s in it for nonprofits. What are we risking? Where are we headed? These are the questions for our esteemed panel. Bruce is a leading public interest technologist who works at the intersection of technology policy and society. She’s principal of A N B alpha, November, Bravo Advisory group LLC, a consulting firm that supports organizations developing, implementing or funding responsible data and technology. She’s on Twitter at underscore Bruce Alison. Fine is a force in the realm of technology for social good as president of every dot org. She heads a movement of generosity and philanthropy that ignites a profound transformation in communities. You’ll find Allison Fine on linkedin. Beth Kanter is a recognized thought leader and trainer in digital transformation and well being in the nonprofit workplace. She was named one of the most influential women in technology by Fast Company and is a recipient of the N 10 lifetime achievement award. She’s at Beth Kanter dot org. George wegner is CEO of Whole Whale, a social impact digital agency. The company is at whole whale dot com and George’s on linkedin. Welcome all our esteemed panelists. Thanks, welcome to non profit radio. We’re gonna start just big picture. Uh I’d like to start with you just what are you thinking about artificial intelligence?

[00:05:30.10] spk_1:
That is a very big picture question. What am I thinking about artificial intelligence? I think um there are lots of things to consider, I think first is um all of the hype, right? We have heard article after article whether or not we wanted to, I’m sure about the promises and the potential of chat GPT specifically generative AI more broadly. Um Well, uh you think about some of the image based AI solutions, generative AI solutions that are out there that have been in the headlines recently, of course, as someone who’s started their career off as a software engineer where AI has been around for a while. And so sure, generative AI is a different type of application of AI, but it is building on something that has been both out in the world developed for a while. Pre chat GPT most organizations or several companies just embedded AI into the tools you already use, whether it’s gram early or something, I’m betting ai into their solutions. So what I’m thinking about now is how do we help organizations navigate through all of the hype and figure out what’s real, what’s not real, um recognize where they should lean in, recognize where they can take a pause before leaning in and then of course, underlying it all, how do we think about access, how do we think about equity and how do we think about how embracing AI will change or evolve jobs?

[00:05:59.52] spk_0:
And these just define generative ai for us? So everybody knows what, what we’re referring to and we’re all, we’re all on the same platform.

[00:06:08.78] spk_1:
Sure. So, generative AI is where it is essentially looking at a large model. Chat gps specifically uses a large language models. So lots of text and looks at that and then gives you what is statistically sort of the next uh most reasonable or probable word based on a prompt that you give it. So developing the recommendations as you go along,

[00:06:35.79] spk_0:
Allison, please. Yes, big picture.

[00:08:08.00] spk_2:
Well, a few adjust said it beautifully that this isn’t a brand new idea, although we are in the next chapter in terms of advanced digital technology. I think organizations tony need to get their arms around this right now. Ai before AI gets its arms around them and their organizations, Beth and I started to look at AI about five years ago with support from the Gates Foundation and the promise of it is that AI can eat up the road tasks that are sucking the lifeblood out of so many nonprofits, staffers, they are drowning in administrative um tasks and functions and requirements that AI can do very well in fundraising. It might be researching prospects, taking the first cut, communications with donors not sending it out, just taking the first cut, helping with workflow, helping with coordination. Um And the responsibility is for organizational leaders, not line people and not tech people, but organizational leaders to figure out where the sweet spot is what we call co body between what humans can do and need to do. Connect with people, solve problems, build relationships and what we want the tech to do mainly rote tasks right now. So understanding ai well enough tony to figure out where it can um solve what we call exquisite pain points and how to make that balance between humans and the technology is the foremost task for organizations right now.

[00:08:32.35] spk_0:
Death.

[00:10:18.39] spk_3:
Great. So Alison and Noah said it so well. So I’m just going to actually build on it but go into a specific area that where that is kind of the intersection between ai and workplace well being and kind of the question, you know, well, ai fix our work. Um can it transform like the work experience from being exhausting and overwhelming to one that brings more joy that allows us to get things done efficiently but also to free up space to dream into plan? Um And or is it going to be a dystopian future? I don’t think so. Um And by dystopian related to jobs I’m talking about kind of, you know, we’ll get rid of our jobs like who, who will lose out. And um just a week or two ago, the World Economic Forum released a report that predicts that nearly 25% of all jobs will change because of generative ai and it’ll have a, you know, a pronounced impact by displacing and automating many job functions um that involve writing, communicating and coordinating, which is, which are the things that chat GPT can do so much better than previous models. Um But it will also create the need for new jobs, right? I heard a new job description recent, a prompt engineer. So somebody who knows how to ask the types of questions of chat GPT to get the right and most accurate and high quality responses. And I think I’m building on what Alison said about co body. I think this is the future where AI and humans are complementary, they’re not in conflict and it really provides a leadership opportunity to redesign our jobs and to rethink and reengineer workflows so that we enable people to focus on the parts of the work that humans are particularly well suited for. Like relationship building, decision making, empathy, creativity, and problem solving. And again, letting the machines do what they do best but always having the humans be in charge. And again, that’s why Allison and I always talk about this as a leadership issue. Not a technical problem.

[00:10:50.46] spk_0:
Leadership, right? Okay, we’ll get the leader responsibilities. George, what are you thinking about ai

[00:11:30.47] spk_4:
hard to add such a complete start here. But I would say that just because this is a fad doesn’t mean that’s not also a foundational shift and the way we’re gonna need to do work and how leaders are gonna have to respond. I also just want to say like right now, if you’re listening to this podcast, because your boss forwarded it to you saying we gotta get on this. I understand the stress you’re under. It is really tough, I think right now to be in the operational layer of a nonprofit doing today’s work expecting to make tomorrow’s change. So stick with us. We appreciate you listening.

[00:12:03.93] spk_0:
Thank you, George. Like happening to the co host role, which uh which doesn’t exist so careful care. Watch your step. Let’s stay with you, George, you and I have chatted a lot about this on linkedin. Uh use cases. What, what uh what are you seeing your clients doing with ai or what are you, what are you advising that they explore as their um as they’re also managing the stresses that you just mentioned?

[00:13:00.00] spk_4:
Well, right now we’re actively custom building AI is based on the data, voice and purpose of organizations that we work with. One of the concerns that I have is that when you wander onto a blank slate tool, like open ai Anthropic Bard, you name it, you’re getting the generic average as of who pointed out the generic average of that large language model which means you’re going to come off being generic. And so we’re a little concerned about that and are trying to focus our weight on how you tune your prompt engineering toward the purpose of the organization. We’ve already mentioned, grant writing, reporting applications, emails, appeals, customization, social post, blog, post editing. It is all there if you’re using it the right way, I think.

[00:13:22.32] spk_0:
And that gets to the, the idea of the prompt engineer to that, that Beth mentioned what, what you’re so avoiding that generic average with sophisticated prompts. George.

[00:13:47.96] spk_4:
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we jokingly call it the great jacket problem where I showed up to a conference and I was wearing the same gray jacket as another presenter and I was like, we both walked into a store and we both thought that the beautiful gray jacket we put on was unique and that we would be seen as such for picking out such a great jacket. When in fact, when you go in to a generic store and get a generic thing, you get a generic output. And my concern is that without that leadership presence saying, hey, here’s how we should be using this with our brand tone voice and purpose that every single new hire out of college. We’re running into the social media game. Beth has already played this game, Allison, we’ve already played this game where we handed the intern the Twitter account because they used it in college. We’re gonna just replay that again and I’d rather just skip that chapter

[00:14:22.42] spk_0:
and that we’re going to get into this too. That, that generic average also has biases and misinformation. False. Well, they’re not false, false information. Um How about you? What are you seeing your clients? What are you advising usage wise?

[00:16:24.89] spk_1:
A couple of things. So, first, I think Allison touched on this as well is that you can sort of take a breath. You don’t have to embrace everything all the time for everything. I know it can seem right now that everyone’s talking about generative ai and how it’s going to change your world. Um But you can sort of take a breath because um as I think Allison and Beth both mentioned, right, the technology is only good if it’s working for our mission, if it’s working for organizations. So really taking the time um as a leadership team to really be clear on what you want to do, what differentiates your organization and make sure your staff is all aligned on. That is the first thing that um advise organizations to do. The second is to think about then the use of AI both to help your organization function and deliver it services out in the world. But then also to think about how it impacts your staff. So I think sometimes we can get caught up in, we’re going to use A I hear it’s going to like, you know, we’ll be able to fix all of our external messaging will be able to produce more reports, will be able to produce more um grant applications, all good, all valid. But remember also, your staff has to learn how to use it and staff has to learn how to make the prompts. Your staff also has work internally that they are doing that. Perhaps AI could be used to help speed up the their task and free up their time and their brain space to lean into what humans do best, which is some of the relationships and having empathy. So thinking also not just about how AI can help you maybe generate more culturally appropriated images for different campaigns around the world or how generative AI can help you fine tune some messaging or how generative AI can help you better sort of segment and deliver services to, to your communities that you serve. But also how you can use AI to do things like help with notes, help with creating agendas, help with transcripts and more what are some of the internal things to really support your staff that you can, you can apply AI towards

[00:16:48.76] spk_0:
Alison that’s leading right to some of those rote tasks that that you mentioned. Um So I’m gonna put it to you in, in, in terms of uh Kirsten Hill on linkedin asked, what’s the best way for a busy nonprofit leader to use AI to maximize their limited time?

[00:18:49.78] spk_2:
So people are looking for some magic solution here, tony and we hate to disappoint them, but AI is not magic fairy dust to be sprinkled all over the organization. Uh This is a profound shift in how work is done. It is not a new word processing, you know, software AI is going to be doing tasks that only people could do until just now. Right? Any other year going back, um people would have had to be uh screening resumes or writing those first drafts, um or, you know, coordinating internally. And now basically the box are capable of doing it, but just because they’re capable of doing it doesn’t mean that you should, you know, unleash the box on your organization. Our friend Nick Hamlin at globalgiving, a data scientist said AI is hot sauce, not catch up a little bit. Goes a long way. We Beth and I have been cautioning people to step very slowly and carefully into this space because you are affecting your people internally and your people externally, right? If a social service agency has always had somebody answering questions of, when are we open? And what am I eligible for? And when can I see somebody? And now a chatbot is doing that, tony, you have to be really careful that one, the chatbot is doing its job well and two that the people outside don’t feel so distant from that organization that it’s not the same place anymore. So our recommendation is, that’s

[00:18:52.67] spk_0:
a, that’s a potential. I mean, it could, I guess mishandled this could change the culture of an

[00:19:36.78] spk_2:
organization. Absolutely. If you are on the outside and you’re accustomed to talking to Sally, who at the front desk and all of a sudden the organization says to you, your first step has to be talking to this chat bot online. Instead the organization has solved perhaps a staff issue of having to answer all these questions all at the same time. But it’s made the interaction with those clients and constituents much worse. So we need to first identify what is the pain point we’re trying to solve with AI is ai the best solution for doing that and then to step carefully and and and keep asking both staff and constituents, how is this making you feel? Right? Do you still feel like you have agency here? Do you still feel like you are connected to people internally and externally and to grow it from there? There is no rush to introduce AI in everything that you do all at once. There is a rush to understand what the impact of automation is on your organization.

[00:21:00.42] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Stop the drop with donor box. Over 50,000 nonprofits in 96 countries use their online donation platform. Naturally, it’s four times faster, easy payment processing. There are no set up fees, no monthly fees, there’s no contract. How many of your potential donors drop off before they finish making the donation on your website. Stop the drop, stop that drop donor box helping you help others donor box dot org. Now back to Artificial Intelligence for nonprofits with fewer Bruce Allison. Fine Beth Kanter and George wegner. Beth, I see you taking copious notes. I think, I think there’s a lot you want to add.

[00:23:39.85] spk_3:
Oh, there’s so many good points made and I was taking a lot of notes because like nowhere to jump in. Um So a couple of things, uh George said, uh we, we did the social media thing and we turned it over to the intern. Let’s not do that again, but I’m not sure that’s gonna happen because with social media adoption, if we think back, uh you know, the dawn of social media started in 2003, it really wasn’t until six or seven years later. And I remember it quite distinctly when the chronicle, Phil apathy and organizations were really embracing it. There was a lot of skepticism because social media adoption was more of a personal thing because it started as the individual, it wasn’t immediately brought into the workplace. Um And I think chat GPT will be a little bit different because the benefit there is, you know, the sort of the allure of efficiency saving time, right? And or it can help us raise more money. So I think we might see it develop more quickly in the workplace and if nonprofit leaders are, are part do smart adoption, then there will also be the training uh required and the retraining and the re skilling. And I think for me, the most important thing about this is that it is going to change the nature of our work and that if you just let that happen, you’re missing an opportunity because we have a chance to really kind of accelerate workplace line learning, both, you know, formal and informal to, to re skill staff that in a way to embrace this, that’s not going to cause more stress and burnout. The other thing I was thinking about the great jacket and I love that um Metaphor George, I love it. Um In that, you know, if nonprofits are turning to and buying the $20 a month subscription for Chat GPT, they’re getting the Great Jacket version and missing out on the opportunity to really train it. But the other hand, if they’re just going without an organizational strategy, are they being trained in, are they put entering confidential information into Chat GPT? Are they using their critical thinking skills? Because we know that uh chat GPT can hallucinate and pick up crap? Right? Are they really, you know, are they, are they doing that? Like, are they just saying, write me a thank you letter for this donor versus write me a thank you note in the tone of in a conversational tone um that recognizes this donor, you know, quality blah, blah, blah, right? And um and then go back and forth and refine a draft. So, so there’s a piece of like um uh I guess technical literacy that has to be learned and that’s like the technical problem. But then there’s also this whole workplace learning and workplace um uh you know, reengineering of, of jobs and bringing in new jobs and different parts of descriptions that also need to take place as well. So we’ve got to prepare the organization’s culture uh to adopt this in a way that is ethical and responsible.

[00:24:07.24] spk_0:
George you feel any better.

[00:25:12.72] spk_4:
I’m not sure how I felt to begin with, but the uh the, the piece to add on as a nuance, there is not just the generic output but the normalization and ability for people to identify A I created content is going to explode. What does that mean if I were to show you a stock photo right now? Versus when I took on my phone, it would take you 0.5 seconds to be like, yep, stock photo, stock photo, stock photo. And we have all seen the appeals that go out with generic Happy Family with Sunset and background. And I think what’s going to happen is the text that is generated by folks that are using gray jacket G P T s is that your audience is going to see it, identify it and shut it down mentally. It’s like driving past that billboard or that banner ad. It’s going to be a wash. It may seem unique to you. But I think, uh, I think that’s another thing that we’re going to see happen. I just want folks

[00:25:13.82] spk_0:
to know, okay, I just want folks to know that that Great Jacket is a real story. You, you and you and another guy did show up with the exact same jacket

[00:25:21.64] spk_3:
at some point and 10 conference, wasn’t it in New Orleans?

[00:25:24.91] spk_4:
It was, it was a fundraising uh fundraising conference. And actually the other guy’s name was George. So there was two Georges to great jackets. I felt very um silly.

[00:25:38.76] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:26:29.31] spk_2:
So, um the ultimate R oi Beth and I feel and we wrote about in the smart non profit is what we call the dividend of time that is to use AI to do those rote tasks that I talked about a few minutes ago in order to free up people to do human things. And George the opportunity isn’t we hope to send out more messages or to be, you know, continue down the transactional fundraising path. The opportunity is to use your time to get to know people and to tell them stories and to listen to them. So with or without A I organization stuck in that transactional hamster wheel tony for raising money. And if they can’t get out of that AI is definitely not going to help them. The opportunity here is to move that entire model into the past and say we’re going to create a future where AI gives us the time and space to be deeply relational with people. That’s the opportunity.

[00:27:17.67] spk_0:
Well, I’m gonna come to you in a moment and talk about how we can prevent the, this generic average, this gray jacket uh from taking over our culture. But Alice and I just want to remind you that when I had you and Beth on the show to talk about your book, The Smart non profit, I pushed back on the dividend of time because it feels like the same promise that technology has given us through the decades. And I’m not feeling any more time available now than I did before I had my, my smartphone or um whatever, whatever other technology I’ve adopted that was supposed to have yielded me, yielded me great, great time. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t feel any, any greater time.

[00:28:42.12] spk_2:
I don’t believe that that was the promise before. And certainly what we found with the last generation of digital Tech tony is that it made us always on and everything became very loud and very immediate. No question about it. And this next chapter in AI is not guaranteed to give us time. What we’re saying is there’s an opportunity to work differently and to create this time if leaders know how to use it. Well, that’s the big if, if we’re just going to sit back and said late, let’s ai supersize our transactional fundraising and send, send everybody 700 messages a day because that’s worked so well said very sarcastically then no, it is not going to make us any free up any time. But what we are saying is this technology has the capacity to do all of that work that is sucking up 30 40% of our time a day and we could be freed up. But only if we use it smartly and strategically,

[00:28:51.05] spk_0:
how about, you know, how we can help prevent these generic averages with their biases and marginalization of already marginalized voices. You know how and, and just from the fear of taking over the institutions, culture, how, what are the methods to prevent that?

[00:33:20.42] spk_1:
Um Sorry, I think I would start with an analogy that I’ve used before. That technology is not a naturally occurring resource. There’s no like river of technology that we just walked down to and scoop up and now we have technology and it immediately nourishes us to some of what Alison was just mentioning. Um in order to actually use AI effectively, it takes intentional management, it takes intentional decisions about how to use it when to use it and why to use it. And so that definitely applies when we think about how do we differentiate, differentiate ourselves even as we use AI and also how do we make sure that we then are being intentionally inclusive? Um I don’t know of any technology that just by happenstance has been inclusive. Um And so it requires intentional decisions. So some ways that bias can appear in generative ai systems are with some of the, the coding that is done inherently with some of the data sets that are used. Even with large language models, they reflect right now every on the internet. Um I know a lot of great people on the internet, there’s a lot of things on the internet that do not align with my values, um or even my actual lived experience. Um And so how do we then think about sort of combating that? So I think one, we’ve already touched on prompt engineering to make sure that we are asking it the things that we want to get back if you ask chat GPT, for example, um to describe what, what are risks with chat with generative AI will give you one list. You refine that prompt to include specifically what a risk with chat with generative ai including or specifically affecting women or people of color. It will give you a more refined response. Chat GPT a month ago. If you asked it, the doctor and nurse were arguing because he was late, who was late. It would tell you the doctor was late. He asked the same question but said because she was late, it would tell you um it was the nurse that was late, that now has changed because the people who are programming to GPT have manually made those changes. So as we think about how we can use it, it is through some of the software that we’re building on top of it, some of the plug ins that you decided to take advantage of, to not take advantage of how you might be able to use it on your own sort of proprietary information with the right parameters in place to keep it on your, keep it with your own data in ways that make sense for your organization there. Um I think it’s an opportunity for funders to fund the creation of new data sets or fund the creation some more responsible plug ins or fund um you know, new open source developments as well. So I think that’s an exciting play there. Um And then I think also there is an opportunity to use chat GPT or sorry, generative AI in ways that really do enable more representation. Um Working with someone who is um an advocate for women’s rights in India. We’re talking through ways that she could more quickly generate posters and informational materials using generative AI for both images and text for different places on the subcontinent that she couldn’t physically get to. Um And that she didn’t have talent on the ground to get to. That is different though I’ll say from the announcement from LEVI a couple of months months ago that they were going to use chat cheaper generative AI to create a diversity of models rather than hiring people or buzzfeed recently saying um shareholders meeting that they would use AI to help create authentic black and Latino voices presumably um instead of talking to actual authentic black. So um they didn’t, she was a statement a day or two later saying no, no, no, that’s not what we meant, we meant something else. Um But, but my point is there are ways to think about how you can use generative ai as a nonprofit organization to better reach and connect. But also make sure that you are still doing it in a way as I think all of us have said so far, that really does center people that does center communities and isn’t trying to necessarily replace those relationships.

[00:34:11.43] spk_0:
Beth our our master trainer, I see a need for training for leaders for for for users. I mean, I’m not seeing any of this happening now, I’m not seeing how to use, you know, but is there, is there a training issue here for, for people at all levels? You’re sorry,

[00:35:55.78] spk_3:
sorry about that. I don’t want them back. Absolutely yes. But we, I make a distinction between training and learning. Alright. So training professional development, formal ways of learning particular skills and those might be more around the technology, literacy, literacy skills like, you know, prompt engineering, for example. But then there’s also the informal piece of learning which is informally uh discussions with different teams about how it’s changed their job, right? Or uh or, or reflecting on a job description or, or job workflow that needs to be changed and then sharing that with other departments. Um So, you know, so there’s kind of like workplace learning that is connected to with the workplace culture. Um and which in some ways has nothing to do with the technology. It’s kind of like as a result of the technology. Uh what do we now have the possibility to do because we have this freed up time or because we have not spent so much time staring at a blank screen and not doing anything because of blank screen syndrome. You know, chat DBT has like helped us get to that first draft quicker and maybe human editing has done the second and the third, third draft. Um uh and we’ve gotten a better result. Um And that has improved our end results with our fundraising goals or whatever we’re trying to accomplish. Um you know, what comes next. Um So those are the pieces of learning that, um you know, that haven’t been possible a lot of times in nonprofits because we’re so busy trying to get the stuff done on our to do list and, and or were being overwhelmed. So, um so what, what is possible now that we’re able to do our jobs better and we’re able to take on these different tasks. How can we improve our results? Um And outcomes,

[00:36:24.68] spk_0:
George, how are you teaching your, your clients who are hopefully translating that into learning about using non using generative ai are you, are you talking directly to leaders? Are you, are you training users on, on better like skills like better prompting? What’s what does teaching training look like for you?

[00:38:14.82] spk_4:
I mean, we’ve done our best to put out as much free content as possible, first and foremost, to try to, you know, raise the tide of understanding for nonprofits and we’re putting all of that out as fast as I can think to create it internally. We’re having weekly training sessions on use cases for us and we’re actively building and improving on client custom created GPT uh endpoints that pull their data in and their purpose in. I want to go back though to Beth talking about what actually, you know, education and this looks like and we could train you on how to swim over this podcast. We could talk about all the things you need to do. Like I’m watching my daughter learn to swim. There’s no storybook, there’s no encyclopedia, there’s no webinar that you could watch that would teach you how to swim. There is a fundamental component of this. If you jumping in the water and interacting with the tool learning, coming back, realizing where it frankly lies to you. As I am really happy, we have all pointed out where it hallucinates where it’s helpful and where the opportunities are. And by the way that’s gonna change next month and so it’s not a single point in time and, you know, this, you, you’ve been an engineer for, you know, a while and seen it’s like the, you know, the code you played with, you know, a month ago, it’s just different tomorrow and what’s possible is different tomorrow. Um On the other side of the coin, I’m a little concerned, you know, we have gone through and maybe you’re getting anxiety when you hear yet another tool. Yet another tool. There’s over 1600 tools listed on just one site, future tools dot IO. And there’s going to be even more tomorrow. There are 95% of these things that are just going to be gone within a year. So I’m also cognizant of the rabbit holing that can happen in this.

[00:41:48.75] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. I’m doing a Give Butter webinar later this month, debunk the top five myths of Planned Giving. I am especially excited about this one because the Give Butter host Floyd Jones and I are gonna be together co located face to face person to person in person real time. So, uh the energy that he brings and I try to keep things light moving. I think we’re gonna have quite a bit of infotainment on, on this one with Give Butter debunked the top five Myths of Planned Giving and it’s Wednesday, June 14th at two p.m. Eastern time. But you don’t, you don’t need to be there you can get the recording. If you can’t make it live. Watch archive. I used to say that on the show, listen, live or archive now it’s just listen, archive no more live but this is listen, live or archive bonafide. Uh If you want to make a reservation, you go to give butter dot com, then resources and resources and events. Very simple. So make the reservation. If you can join us live, that would be fun because I love to shout folks out and I’ll answer your questions. If you can’t sign up and watch the video, it’s all at give butter dot com resources and then events that is Tony’s take two, we’ve got the boo koo but loads more time for artificial intelligence for nonprofits, I’d like to turn to some of the some of the downsides even more explicitly. So we’re all talking about efficiency and uh the the time time saved the dividend of time. But um at what cost, what potential cost, short term, long term, um We’ve already talked about, you know, they’re being a bias towards dominant voices that are existing, dominant voices remaining dominant. Um For you had a great example of someone in in in India, right? Trying to, trying to represent folks that she can’t get to see. So there, I mean, there’s a potential upside but you know, all this at, at what uh at what potential cost and then there’s, we haven’t even mentioned, we mentioned false information, but in the video realm, deepfakes, video and audio, deepfakes, photograph, deepfakes. Who wants to, who wants. I’m being an egalitarian there who wants to uh launch us into the, the risks and downsides part of the conversation.

[00:41:54.45] spk_1:
I’m happy to start, I’ll say for the record, I am generally an optimist. However, um there, there

[00:42:02.41] spk_0:
are some things uh we’ve taken judicial notice.

[00:44:17.34] spk_1:
Thank you. Thank you for the record. It has been noted, I appreciate that. Um So again, just reiterating what we’ve already said, intentionality really matters here without intentionality. Um Things can go really wrong because General Ai has the ability to hallucinate. Um And because General Ai is reacting to what data already exists, recognize that sometimes the things that decisions that we can make based on that could be really wrong. So um if you can think through and imagine how Ai might be used to help with hiring processes, um even with a more standard version of AI, for example, Amazon a few years ago, put some work into developing a system that would identify people who were best poised to be managers and succeed in senior management at Amazon. The results of the AI show that white men from particular schools were best boys. Is this actually true based on skills? No, but it was based on the data that they had, which was trained on their internal data, which showed being a company and Northwest, it just reflected what their practices had been in some of the things they changed. Amazon end up not rolling that out because they had a human in the loop there that sort of looked at what was coming out and showed that in reviewed and determined this is not actually in line with our values is not in line with what we’re trying to do. Um So I think uh pushes to completely remove a human from that decision making loop are ways that generative ai can go really wrong very quickly in organizations think we’ve already started to talk about some of the bias that can appear in results. Um give the example already with gender that is true for um along a number of other demographics as well. And so not correcting for that or recognizing even that even with these large language models, even with something that’s trained on the internet, um not everyone is represented there. And so making a lot of decisions based on what’s there may not give you and may not give you the most inclusive and equitable response that you want. I think those are two ways that this can go wrong.

[00:44:33.58] spk_0:
Allison anything you wanna, you wanna add to this? Sure.

[00:45:47.94] spk_2:
Um So the AI revolution is far bigger than Chad GPT in generative AI AI is going to be built into every software product that an organization buys in. Finance in hr in, you know, customer service in development. Those products were created by programmers who are generally white men and then trained on historic data sets, which as you just mentioned, are deeply biased as well. So you have a double whammy that by the time the product gets to an organization, it has gender and racial bias baked right into it. This again is why it’s a leadership problem, tony, we need organizations to know what to ask about these products, to ask how it was built, what assumptions were made in building and how it was tested for bias, how you can test for bias before that hr software program you just grabbed through into your mix is screening out all of the black and brown people applying for these positions. So these are real everyday concerns about integrating AI into work and why we need to be careful and strategic and thoughtful about how we’re integrating it into organizations.

[00:47:32.67] spk_3:
Yeah, Beth, I really want to pick up on a point that a film made about um the concern about not having human oversight at all times. And one of my favorite examples of this comes from Kentucky Fried Chicken in Germany. And um they were using a generative ai tool that was um that could develop different promotions that they could put out there. And the data set that it was using was a the calendar of holidays in Germany and of course, then some promotional language like 5% off cheesy chicken, right? Um And they got into trouble because there, there was a lot of social media messaging that was just put out their generated by the generative ai and the message was um happened on November 9th, which is the anniversary of Kristallnacht, which is considered the beginning of the Holocaust. And the, and the promotion was, you know, enjoy $5 off a cheesy chicken to celebrate the night of broken glass. And, you know, and so I think that the issue is, is that we begin to put so much trust into these tools that we think of them as human or the equivalent of human intelligence. And that, you know, we just take it for face value and we don’t have that human intervention with those critical thinking skills. And um and that’s where harm could be done um to the end users. Um So I, I just really think it’s comes back to that co batting example that we’ve talked about and again, the, you know, the need for leaders to really be reflective and strategic in how they executed. It’s not just about learning how the right prompts to ask GPT chat to get a particular output.

[00:48:10.15] spk_0:
There was another example of that uh at, I think it was at a college. Uh they put out a press release and at the bottom of the email, it said, you know, generated by chat GPT or something. I mean, so a human, you’ve all talked about humans being involved with the technology you know, a human hadn’t even scanned it to, uh, to know to take that, that credit line off the, off the email. So, you know, like blind usage.

[00:48:58.01] spk_3:
That’s an interesting thing to, to think about. Like, um, do I disclose, like, if I, if I was writing a post an article and I went to GPT chat to, like, because I needed to get it from 1000 words to 750 words. And I could ask it, you know, too long. Didn’t read standby for some text, please reduce from 1000 words to 750 words um which I actually have used, but I don’t take a cut and paste and I actually sat and compared what it, how did, how did it change the language? And one thing I did notice is it took out any sentences that had a lot of personality to them and it transformed it into this very generic kind of text, you know. So again, it requires a human editorial oversight. If you will,

[00:49:20.80] spk_0:
George, you want to talk about risks downsides.

[00:50:17.62] spk_4:
Yeah, I would say this is more of a bigger picture risk that I see as the net result of we’re talking about GPT tools being built into everything we use. One is that, you know, if, if you were using it blindly, you were the product you’re handing over information. Uh There was a actual open ai hack. Well, a hack or data leak where all of the conversations that were being uh stored on the side were accidentally shared and open. And so I think that’s something to be aware of bigger picture. I am watching very closely. The impacts of chat, first search chat, first search bard and being barred is Google’s AI that is now rolled out out of their private into a public beta is going to destroy organic traffic for information based searches to nonprofits. Inside of what I believe is the next two years. The second order effects of that are so many that we would need several podcasts to understand, but I’m no longer telling clients that we should expect more organic traffic next year. Versus this year.

[00:50:57.37] spk_0:
You experienced this with your own with the whole whale site. You, you had, you had, you did a search and it gave and the search tool gave you back some of your whole whale content. It did credit it. But then your concern was that that credit was purely optional, but right, you, you experience this with your own, with your own intellectual property.

[00:52:14.75] spk_4:
I’m watching it across a lot of, you know, we get roughly 80,000 month in terms of monthly users looking for information that we put out there. I test what that looks like when I do similar searches on bing as well as perplexity dot AI and now barred. The thing that scared me the most is that bar just sort of decided not to even bother with the footnotes in its current iteration and just gave the answer to one of uh several articles that dr significant traffic to our site. There are two types of traffic that S C O is providing. It is informational and then transactional. And so for the informational, I would encourage your organization to do some of these sample searches and begin to plan accordingly. And it makes me a little sad that that part of nonprofits ability to be a part of the conversation when somebody’s asking for, I don’t know information about prep and HIV information or something about L G B T Q rights history doesn’t get you engaged with the organization. It just gives you the answer and there’s something missing there that I think is going to have negative downstream impacts for social impact organizations. And

[00:52:22.87] spk_0:
you expect to see declines in there

[00:52:38.37] spk_4:
will be a decline, significant declines. And that’s concerning to me because it’s cutting non profits out of the conversation that they have traditionally been a part of when people are looking for information. And especially in a time where we’re going to have a rapid increase in disinformation because these tools can be used to create that at scale.

[00:54:19.95] spk_0:
We already have enormous disinformation. It’s hard to imagine it growing exponentially or logo rhythmically. Um I’m interested in what you all think about my concerns. Uh Executive summary that it will make us dumber my my, my reasoning behind that is that a lot of what we’re suggesting, not just us here today, but a lot of what is being suggested is that, you know, it’s, it’s a tool, generative ai is a good tool for a first draft. Uh Beth, you mentioned the Blank Screen syndrome, but to me writing that first draft is the most creative act that we do in writing or in composing, it could be music. And my concern is that if we, if we’re ceding that most creative activity away, and then we’re reducing ourselves to editor or copy editor, not to, not to minimize the folks who make their living editing and copy editing, but it’s not as creative a task for a human as sitting in front of that blank screen or that empty pad for those of us maybe start, maybe start with pen and paper and, and then we’re seeding the most creative activity away and reducing our role to editor, which is an easier job than starting from whole cloth. And so I fear that that will make us uh dumber, reduce our creativity. And I’m saying, you know, generally dumber, you’re all being so polite. You could have just jumped

[00:56:12.96] spk_3:
in. I was well, I, I didn’t want to just interrupt you. Challenge you, but I do want to challenge you. I agree with you, but I also disagree with you. Um So one piece of this one thing that I worry about and it might be um science fiction, but I, um, and I haven’t yet seen research on this, but I do know there’s this thing called Google Brain. You may be familiar with it. Um You’re trying to remember something and you can’t remember it because you haven’t exercised your retrieval muscles from your brain. So you go to Google and you start Googling to, to remember something and it’s a thing called Google Brain. And there was a study that showed that people who were using Google Maps or the other or Apple maps um to navigate. Um it is making their geospatial skills less robust. Um And so the recommendation is you don’t want to completely lose your ability to navigate that you should like get a map, get to go back to a paper map. So there’s definitely some and there is research around this that there’s definitely when you’re doing something in an analog way, if you’re writing it down, it encloses your brain in a different way than if you’re typing it. So the thing that I worry about with this is less about it being creative, taking our creativity away because I think if if you’re trained as a prompted engineer, you could be trained to like brainstorm with it right in a way that sparks your creativity versus takes it away. But what I’m worried about is how does this affect, how will this affect the human brain? Um You know, down the road another decade or so that if we’re not using our brain skills of encoding information and retrieving information and it’s like a muscle, you know, is that going to make us more at risk for dementia or Alzheimer’s down the road? Um, I know it sounds crazy but that’s like the thing I worry about.

[00:56:47.28] spk_0:
I don’t think it’s crazy. That, that’s what I’m concerned about. I’m, I’m concerned on a world level that we all collectively will, will just not be as creative and I’m calling that will be dumber. I

[00:57:49.77] spk_1:
don’t think the amount of creativity and innovation is sort of finite and that if we use tools that we’re no longer going to be creative, I think we have computers now to help us draw, to help us um write, we can write on a computer versus before we had to use different paper, we had to only draw with a limited set of tools when we got, um you know, computer aided graphics and more, we just had more different ways to see the world, more different ways to uh to figure out what images we wanted to see and how we wanted to engage. Also someone who likes to write a lot. I’d say I’m really grateful for my editors and the fat that their brains were different than mine do when I start writing. And so um those skills are complementary. But I say that because I think that we will have to change sort of will evolve, how we think, what we think about and how we work. But I think that is a different type of creativity, different types of innovation rather than us just no longer being creative. Yeah,

[00:57:55.80] spk_0:
I didn’t mean eliminate our creativity but reduce it. It’s

[00:58:10.94] spk_2:
important tony to stay out of these binary arguments of AI is so bad or AI is so good, it is going to be a mix as technology always has been. I was just reading a book the other day that talked about the introduction of moving pictures and how how appalled people were that, you know, they could see these images over and over again, right? And was going to take away all of people’s creativity.

[00:58:23.12] spk_0:
The same thing when when silent movies became talking,

[00:58:36.56] spk_2:
you know, we do this every time we are changing our brains. I’m not saying that we aren’t, however, there is going to be an explosion of creativity of jobs we haven’t thought of yet of opportunities, we haven’t thought of that comes out of this next chapter that we are just beginning now. And I think it’s important to go into this with as much information as we can cautiously again, but with a sense of X with a sense of excitement and adventure as part of this because something really, really interesting is about to unfold.

[01:00:49.90] spk_3:
And I just want to also affirm what Allison just said this kind of new creativity and it was making me think of. Um I think it was about a year ago that dolly came out, which is the image generator um that works by looking at patterns and pixels of images that are on the internet. Um And, and create something new based on your response. And I know um and I heard an artist talking about this, like, you know, there’s this whole debate about, you know, should, is it our tools like dolly that are analyzing pixel patterns and images created by real artists? Are they stealing their work without their consent or without their compensation or is it or is this like creative thinking tool? So I, you know, I was messing around and I have a black and white Labrador party, you know, a Labradoodle party, black and white guy. And so I, I asked, you know, create a image of a black and white party. Labradoodle surfing a wave and the style of Hokusai. And it generated for um images in the style of Hokusai. Some of them were silly. Some of them were, oh, this is really interesting and it prompted me, oh, what would it do if I asked it to do this in the style of Van Gogh or the style of money? And then I started getting all these other ideas about things that I wanted to do. And before I knew it, I had 1000 different images of a black and white party. Labradoodle doing all kinds of things that I wouldn’t even have thought of if I hadn’t seen, like, the response that it gave me from the first one. Um, but so is that different than if I were to, if I just did a brainstorm with myself about what I could draw, if I could draw anything, or is this aided creativity much in the way that an artist would go out, you know, and look at landscapes for inspiration.

[01:01:22.10] spk_2:
Yeah. Now one place, one place in a lot of trouble, tony is the fact that our policy makers are so far behind on AI, right, we’re gonna have enormous copyright issues. We have enormous ethical issues coming up of when AI should be used in policing. The department of Defense is experimenting right now with completely automated lethal drone weapons. Is that really who we want to be that we have robots killing people without any human oversight on the ground at all or, or in, you know, some, some headquarters at all, there are really profound policy issues that we should be talking about right now and we are way behind on those

[01:01:51.16] spk_0:
George you wanna comment on the role of government or, or push back on my

[01:02:45.37] spk_4:
uh the role of government is beyond my pay grade. If I’m honest, um you know, I’ll stick to my scope. I will say though tony in 2004, podcasting became a thing, new technology before that there were gatekeepers there and I think you’ve done very well as like as far as I know the longest running podcast for nonprofits, like it opens up new opportunities. There are over two million images created on Dolly per day and that was back in October. So I’m willing to bet it is increase the output, you know, at, um and on a personal level, like it has increased my output and I have, you know, had a lot of fun building and working with it. And as it, you know, unblocked me for, for the new creation of content undeniably though the way we use tools then shapes the way we change. And I do agree, there is a depth of knowledge potentially lost in being able to simply say, write me an article about this thing and then I tweak it as opposed to that part of learning an approach. And I think academia is um really reeling from how to teach this next generation. And I’m, I’m curiously watching how they train the next generation of people coming into the workforce on

[01:03:24.54] spk_0:
you all gave, well, let me say you all gave your all optimistic about your, your, your, your all probably more optimistic. I’m, I’m, I don’t know if I’m skeptical, I’m just concerned, I’m just concerned about the dumbing down of the culture and the culture, meaning the world

[01:03:31.72] spk_2:
culture, you

[01:03:33.67] spk_1:
know,

[01:03:36.64] spk_2:
have you seen our culture? How much dumber?

[01:03:39.30] spk_0:
Yeah, we’re starting at a pretty low level. That’s, that’s how bad I think it could get. Yeah. Yeah,

[01:05:17.38] spk_1:
I just wanted to uh um just emphasizes, I don’t think we spend enough time on one of Alison’s last points about the, um the copyright issues, the ownership issues, even as the data economy has exploded since the age of big data was declared. Um We have created systems that really extract from certain people, some certain populations, historically marginalized populations rather than enable and empower these same populations who stated we then rely on or I should say corporations in general sometimes oftentimes nonprofits as well. Um And that is just um increased at scale with generative ai with AI more broadly, right? And that um you know, especially with generative ai and things that scrape the whole internet of things that people put out there no longer as George uh mentioned no longer at attributing sources, no longer pointing to source material, no longer giving credit to people. Uh Same with artists and music and others. I think that is a huge issue. And I think one um from an ethical perspective, ethical perspective, especially for a nonprofit whose mission is to empower marginalized communities. And that’s a particular nonprofits mission. It’s a big question to consider of how and when should you use generative ai systems that do not um attribute information. Um And don’t sort of close that loop back to the people who powered the systems?

[01:05:25.25] spk_0:
All right.

[01:05:26.81] spk_1:
I don’t know, that’s a positive note, but it’s a note that was,

[01:07:14.66] spk_0:
that was more mixed and positive but great valuable points, you know, great promise um with potential catches and leadership, the importance of leadership and, and proper usage and all. All right, thanks to everybody for Bruce, you’ll find her on Twitter at underscore Bruce. She’s principle of A and B advisory group, Allison, fine president of every dot org where there are fires to put out. You find Alison on linkedin, Beth Cantor at Beth Kanter dot org and George Weiner, Ceo of whole Whale whole Whale dot com and Georges on linkedin. Thanks everybody. Thanks very, very much. Next week. What power really sounds like using your voice to lead and using your executive skills if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by Donor Box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others donor box dot org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The shows social media is by Susan Chavez Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for April 17, 2023: #23NTC & Building An Inclusive Board Culture

 

Amy Sample Ward#23NTC!

Amy Sample Ward, NTEN CEO

Amy Sample Ward kicks off our coverage of the 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference, hosted by NTEN. They cover the Conference details, and delve into weighing the benefits and risks of the fast-moving technology, artificial intelligence. They are the CEO of NTEN and our technology and social media contributor.

 

 

Renee Rubin RossBuilding An Inclusive Board Culture

Let us explore the signs and symptoms of your board’s current culture, and strategies to be more inclusive and equitable, if that’s something your nonprofit needs to pursue. Let us also dive into how to manage toxic people on your board. Renee Rubin Ross is founder and CEO of The Ross Collective.

 

 

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[00:00:11.08] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti

[00:00:13.08] spk_1:
non profit radio.

[00:02:02.99] spk_0:
Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. We’re beginning our 23 N TC coverage this week. And, oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d have to undergo counter immuno electrophoresis if you opposed me because you missed this week’s show. 23 N T C Amy Sample Ward kicks off our coverage of the 2023 nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10. They cover the conference details and delve into weighing the benefits and risks of the fast moving technology, artificial intelligence. They are the C E O of N 10 and our technology and social media contributor also building an inclusive board culture. Let us explore the signs and symptoms of your board’s current culture and strategies to be more inclusive and equitable. If that’s something you’re non profit needs to pursue. Let us also dive into how to manage toxic people on your board. Renee Reuben Ross is founder and CEO of the Ross Collective on Tony’s take 2 23 N T C. Thanks. We’re sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box, your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. And I’m sorry, my voice is a little horse because I did spend so much time capturing interviews at 23 N T C. Here is 23 T C with Amy Sample Ward.

[00:03:08.83] spk_1:
Welcome back to tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C. You know that it’s the nonprofit technology conference hosted by N 10. This is not our first interview today, but I’m sure that this is going to be the kickoff of nonprofit radio’s coverage of 23 N T C where we and you’ll find out why very shortly where we are sponsored by Heller consulting to technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. The reason that we’re going to do this interview first of the many 20 to be exact interviews from 23 NTC is because with me now is Amy Sample Ward. You know who they are, the CEO of N 10 and our technology and social media contributor, which makes them the grand imperial wizard and Grand Poobah of the 2023 nonprofit technology conference. Amy Sample Ward. It’s a real pleasure to see you in person. It

[00:03:25.91] spk_2:
is wild to get to see you in person after all this time. I know I, I am touching you and I think I need to update my, my business card. The uh I have a whole string of titles now, I guess

[00:03:28.75] spk_1:
well, to the extent you’re willing to put on your business card.

[00:03:33.04] spk_2:
This was all a

[00:03:43.27] spk_1:
joke. But nobody uses business cards anymore. So I’m not offended. Although there’s this little stack of cards, I’m trying to get rid of. Still some people take them. Yeah, there are some, maybe,

[00:03:45.35] spk_2:
maybe they’re really helpful. Maybe

[00:03:47.33] spk_1:
they’re all boomers. I don’t know. But somebody, somebody’s, there are people who would rather not just scan a code, would rather take a physical card. So I have

[00:03:57.10] spk_2:
actually don’t even have business cards. You don’t, I don’t have business cards no longer if I wanted to

[00:04:06.11] spk_1:
no longer. Okay. That’s fine. Well, then don’t add it to your business card. Um We’re at 23 NTC. Congratulations.

[00:04:11.57] spk_2:
Congratulations happening. We are looking around at a big old hall. There are booths, there are people, there are snacks.

[00:04:21.96] spk_1:
How many people, how many people are here with us in Denver? We

[00:04:30.14] spk_2:
have 1600 people here in Denver. 400. That’s a lot of people online. Four

[00:04:33.31] spk_1:
104 100 virtual 1600 in person. Yes, we’re feeding 1600 people toilet ng for 1600 people. Yes, we have, we

[00:04:43.17] spk_2:
have lounges, we have many parks. We have everything.

[00:04:47.19] spk_1:
Yes, there’s, there’s a quiet room, there’s birds of a feather rooms. There’s yoga. There’s,

[00:05:18.21] spk_2:
did you see the, the everybody yoga out downstairs earlier? It was beautiful. It was like 50 people and it was yoga. You don’t need to have ever done. Yoga before you don’t need experience for everybody. You know, there were folks who were in chairs versus sitting on the floor, you know, and everybody was just doing it all together out in that big foyer downstairs. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was beautiful

[00:05:23.26] spk_1:
wall of windows.

[00:05:42.24] spk_2:
Yeah. I mean, we can be at a technology conference but I think, you know, we’ve talked about this lots of times whether it’s the NTC or, or just how we think about technology in general. It’s actually not about the technology, right? It’s about people and people being able to meet the needs they have and honoring that those needs are different for different people. You know, like there have to be a lot of different lounges because you maybe want a different lounge that I want, right? Like somebody wants to not be talking. Tony-martignetti wants to be talking, you know, like to

[00:06:08.22] spk_1:
talk. Yes, indeed. Right. So you, yeah, you take care of the whole person, you the NTC collective, the collective. Yes, the collective. Absolutely. Um Today’s keynote. Yeah, I don’t know which of the three I was interviewing

[00:06:13.50] spk_2:
this morning was no ball.

[00:06:15.34] spk_1:
Okay. What was, what was their message?

[00:07:16.99] spk_2:
She had so many different things to talk about. And one thing that I want to call out and that encourage people to maybe think about themselves and go follow, go find she’s written books. She has lots of ways that you can follow her content. But this morning, we talked a lot about technology as a social economic and political practice. It is it is happening, you know, it’s not static, it isn’t just there. These are, these are ways that certain economic issues, classes dynamics are, are, are actively being managed. These tech through technology power, social dynamics are being managed, right? Like those things have been baked in from the beginning. So when we think of and we’ve certainly talked about this before, like bias that gets built into a tool. It isn’t just I like orange and you like blue or something, right? It’s biased that some people will forever be able to better use that tool. It’s bias that some people maybe never access that tool. That um the, the idea that we are in surveillance systems all of the time and we are kind of being told these are utilities, we must all use these tools right there. Their convenience, they’re making our lives better

[00:07:45.95] spk_1:
safety and security are often uh just justifications. Yes.

[00:08:51.14] spk_2:
Yes. And even if, even if it does feel this is this is the point that made this morning, maybe it does feel kind of casually better that the ads you’re getting are things maybe that you actually would consider buying versus something that’s totally unrelated to you that is not worth you. Your data being sold, used, misused and deciding who you are, right? Some of some of our data being sold um and being used by other, other. Well, anyone that isn’t us is deciding, can you get alone? Right? Can you do? Are we even gonna, like, actually believe that you can graduate from college? Are we gonna let you in? Are we gonna hire you for this job? Right. Um, so it isn’t just this like, I think we kind of, um, anim eyes it or make it, make it so generic that it loses a little bit of its harsh reality when we think, oh, the data is out there but whatever, it’s like my purchase history and I like that they recommended a good product, right.

[00:09:05.44] spk_1:
Right.

[00:09:56.03] spk_2:
But, but that same data set is determining if you know, like Sophia said in the UK, banks are looking at social media to decide if they’re going to give you a loan. Does it look like all the people that you’re connected to our, like historically separated from any access to wealth? Well, we’re not going to give you a loan. Well, then that means we’re not using, we’re not predicting anything we are deciding with that technology, right? This isn’t predictive analytics, this is restrictive analytics, right? We’re using this to gate keep and to continue to oppress people. Um And I think a really big part of that conversation too was we everybody here at the NTC and folks that are listening to non profit radio are folks who are both the users impacted by that and organizations in a position to maybe not realize they’re playing a part in that, you know, like, maybe you’re sending all of your users into those tools because it was easier. Or you thought they were already on Facebook or even if it’s not social media, you’re using a certain product and you didn’t realize that

[00:10:23.67] spk_1:
because you didn’t do your due diligence around exactly their privacy rules. Jeez. You gave me chills. I’m getting my synesthesia kicked in and I’m sure it’s not the air conditioning, that’s it. We need to show about this remarkable

[00:10:34.23] spk_2:
this,

[00:10:34.53] spk_1:
right? We could be contributing ourselves, right? Uh innocuous, unknowingly

[00:12:18.15] spk_2:
unknowingly, right? Um And she works um and as a faculty and leading a department at U C L A and brought up an example from the academic world of years ago when there was the tool that was being sold marketed to professors and universities that you could upload all of your students papers into it. And then it would tell you if they had plagiarized from the internet, you know, oh, that’s something else that already exists. And she and her colleagues immediately said, oh, this is not good. This is actually not good. And a lot of other folks like, what do you mean this means like we’re catching the students who were trying to plagiarize. Of course, we all know that means that small successful company got bought by a bigger company who knew what they could do with a big old data set. Right. So what just think if you wrote a paper in college when you’re still trying to, like, figure out your ideas and you’re still learning, like, the paper is meant to be a learning practice. It’s, it’s not meant to be published for the world. And now 15 years later you’re applying for a job and that shows up, you know, as part of your data record. Right. And maybe it has ideas that you fundamentally don’t believe now or even ever, but didn’t really know what you were saying and now you can’t get a job because people see this and say, oh, you wrote this paper. So as organizations, when we think we’re saving time or we think that we’re doing something by, by letting the robots do it so that we ourselves are not subjectively making decisions, right? We might actually be making even harder subjective decisions down the line for those people, right? We might be setting them up into systems where their data and their issues are.

[00:14:14.62] spk_1:
This is so enormously timely with, with all the talk about artificial intelligence, chat, chat GPT. The other ones I can’t name off the top of my head and, and our use our use of them. Look, there was a guest on maybe an hour and a half ago. He said we’re not going to know it was Maureen will be off. I think we’re not, we can’t stop this. It’s like trying to stop the the, the innovation around automobiles, you know, or the phone or trying to stop airlines, airplane, airplane flight, it’s not possible but are smart use of it and, you know, are constrained use of it. So I shared with this another thing you and I, you and Gene and I need to talk about this, the three of us together, informed, informed and, and thoughtful and, you know, I’m concerned about the, the more the likely less the due diligence, but just the thought that goes into it. My concern is that I shared this with Maureen and um the advice, a lot of the advice that I see is use artificial intelligence as a first draft. And then so you’re not, you’re no longer facing the blank page, put a pin, I’ll come back to that in a second and then you put your own tone to it, your own language. That’s exactly my concern. You’re reducing yourself from creative thinker working from a blank blank screen to, to relegate it to copy editor. And I don’t mean to insult any copy editors

[00:14:21.63] spk_2:
very valuable

[00:14:22.73] spk_1:
but not nearly as creative process as looking at a blank screen working from

[00:15:28.53] spk_2:
nothing. I think the really big piece of that is we have seen plenty of evidence. We do not need more evidence to know that what these artificial intelligence tools are providing to us is misinformation. The tool is not only giving us quote unquote facts, right? So it isn’t even that you need to add a copy editing layer. If you were to do that, you would need to go back and actually say, is any of this real like Sophia Sophia said this morning, they had received um you know, that other people in academia are making this point of, you know, oh, this is leveling the playing field, right? Because now folks who maybe aren’t naturally confident or comfortable writing and they communicate better in other ways. Now they could use artificial intelligence to help them get a jump start on the paper and then they edited and you know, whatever, but they have reviewed papers written in this way. All of the footnotes are not real articles, they’re not real books, right? Because artificial intelligence made up a book to reference. So

[00:15:38.17] spk_1:
the footnotes are not

[00:16:02.10] spk_2:
real, right? Because artificial intelligence was told to make a footnote. So it notated words in the format that it learned online is what a footnote looks like, right? So the idea that it is there, I like I like you’re saying, you know, the idea that gets us started and then we go in and like we judge it up. No, I mean, unless you’re using it for the outline structure of, I want an intro paragraph and then I want, you know, but what, what then is left that is viable. We are not helping people get a jump start. We are actively creating more in misinformation in in content.

[00:17:14.98] spk_0:
It’s time for a break. Stop the drop with donor box there. The online donation platform. How many possible donors drop off before they finish making the donation on your website? You can stop that drop and break that cycle with donor boxes. Ultimate donation form you added to your website in minutes. There’s no coding required when you stop the drop, the possible donors become donors. It’s four times faster. Checkout easier payment processing, no setup fees, no monthly fees, no contract required. You’ll be joining over 40,000 us non profits that use donor box, donor box helping you help others at donor box dot org. Now back to 23 N T C.

[00:17:24.69] spk_1:
There’s another layer on top of that because you mentioned the footnote specifically uh linkedin Post someone I I follow a lot on linkedin. He follows me. Um I think I can George Weiner at the whole whale whole whale. Um

[00:17:33.94] spk_2:
Who’s maybe here

[00:17:35.73] spk_1:
is George here, George,

[00:17:37.74] spk_2:
I don’t want to be part of this information, but I think that George might be

[00:18:11.92] spk_1:
here. His concern was he did a search of something that whole whale is very well known for. I guess it was, I think it was S C O basic seo basically. And um he did a search in artificial intelligence. He was using an AI tool for search and it came up with a top result that was taken from Whole Whales resource page or something. And it credited Hole, it did credit Whole Whale. His concern was that the next step would be, it would take from Whole Whales resource page and not credit Whole Whale, right? There was no requirement for it. So in this case, it was a legitimate footnote, but his concern is that it’s gonna be stealing his intellectual property and not crediting him in whole

[00:19:24.95] spk_2:
Whale. Because if you think about what artificial intelligence is doing is like at scale able to read all of the internet, right? We’re not able to read all the internet. It’s reading, not technically all of it, but like, you know, so much more of it than we could read without the kind of human context that we’re able to put on something. I know that on the nonprofit radio website, there are pieces of content where you’ve said, Amy said, quote blah, de blah, de blah, right? I work at N 10. My name is Amy Sample Ward. The idea that artificial intelligence would know to read the next sentence to know that I said the thing when that thing is all that mattered because it was relevant to what it was trying to create. And even if it did create a footnote, it would likely be non profit radio, right? But the radio show doesn’t talk, right? It wouldn’t be crediting you. So it’s already set up to fail.

[00:19:35.14] spk_1:
But even the greater likelihood is that it’s not going to credit anyone. It’s just going to take the it’s going to take the intellectual property,

[00:20:08.19] spk_2:
right? Of course. And so, you know, I think we’re over estimating what it could do and putting human expectations onto artificial intelligence that it can’t and shouldn’t, it doesn’t need to be human, right? But we are we are blurring the lines of what is best for humans to do and what is best for a data crunching tool to do, right? We did talk about things I

[00:20:26.90] spk_1:
feel like I’m drowning, drowning in the ocean that I live across the street from. Look. Um Alright, so we know we need to talk about this again, but I mean, I guess you know what we’re talking about is thoughtful use, but I’m not, I’m not convinced that humans are thoughtful enough to to to to thoughtfully use this wave. That’s the tsunami that that’s gathering such speed that even Elon Musk said, signed something that said, let’s take a six month pause, which

[00:20:45.04] spk_2:
which, which is ridiculous. Well,

[00:20:48.70] spk_1:
but, but the idea that there be a pause and artificial pause in in technological growth is absurd.

[00:20:56.52] spk_2:
So this thing, what we know of is not actually accurate to what has currently been developed that just hasn’t been released.

[00:21:02.62] spk_1:
I don’t know it’s happening nefariously and, and the Washington Post will uncover it in, in six months or something when it’s already too late.

[00:21:13.26] spk_2:
And I think

[00:21:14.47] spk_1:
the point is it’s not stopping and no, we need to be thoughtful, but I’m not, I don’t have a lot of confidence that were thoughtful enough beings to not take advantage of this

[00:23:18.18] spk_2:
about necessarily that were not thoughtful and we need to be more thoughtful. I think what, what I see at least, and here in the community is that folks feel like there wasn’t a choice. This was the only tool that was available and we’re sitting in the middle of a giant exhibit hall, right? With like 100 and 20 people. And there are people in here that do the same things as each other. You know, there’s no other nonprofit radio in here. But, but there are people, you know who do the same thing and the the illusion that we don’t have a choice as individual nonprofit organizations or as individual users of technology is a myth that is being over and over and over told to us so that we don’t go looking right? That we don’t unsubscribe that we don’t opt out that we don’t say no, you cannot have my data, right? Because that’s the say it’s the same story of you need this, this is useful to you. This is improving your life is also and don’t look behind the curtain. There’s nowhere else to go. There’s no one else, you know, because that’s, that’s the power that is the that is that political, social, economic practice that’s happening by technology to keep us as we are, right? And so breaking out of that is not okay. Everybody here has to go make their own tools. That’s not what I’m saying either. Even just knowing that there are options, pushes you into thoughtfulness because now you’re saying, oh, well, how would I decide between these? Let me ask some questions, right? And when we think there’s no choice, we don’t bother asking the questions. We don’t know what they’re gonna do when we sign up for their product. Right? So even just thinking, well, let me like, shop around already sets us up to be so much more mindful of what we’re doing with technology, the decision, the investments we’re making, you know, what products were putting our communities data into, you know,

[00:23:22.21] spk_1:
your consciousness, right?

[00:23:40.59] spk_2:
So I don’t think it’s hard to like turn that to go over that hump. And it’s not like we’re asking everyone to become enlightened on a topic that they’ve never heard about were saying just ask questions. I know that there is more than one option, right? Um And that already gets you moving the power back on to your side, right? They are answering to you now versus you feeling like, well, I just signed up and now now we’re using this tool, you know, you have

[00:24:08.84] spk_1:
options, you have options. NTC is one place to find out what those options are. 10 is thoughtful use of technology and 10 the courses and you can do them for certification for God’s sake. If you need certification diploma, they have them. Uh 24. Yes,

[00:25:07.14] spk_2:
Portland, Oregon. We really thought when we had the NTC in Portland in 2019. Um and we thought, oh, everybody loved it. We just got so much great feedback from the community that the city was fun and accessible, that restaurants were good, you know. Um People had a great time and we’re like, okay, well, we can come back to Portland. Let’s really put this a long time from now and now it will be, you know, we just had Denver and then we’re back in Portland because we had three years of not being on offline. So, yes, back in Portland, everyone on the team is super excited just to be back in a place we’ve been before and it makes all the decisions easier. Um We already have ideas for making it better. So, and, you know, we’re in Denver here, but we’re also online and there are sessions that are only in Denver, their sessions that are only online and then there are sessions that are simultaneously in both places. And let me tell you, we are learning a lot.

[00:25:20.41] spk_1:
There’s a lot of that takes a lot of technology support, especially the, the ones that are here and virtual.

[00:25:31.86] spk_2:
Yes, I would say in person stuff, you know, fine under control, you know, regular snap,

[00:25:36.15] spk_1:
totally

[00:25:54.20] spk_2:
online stuff also totally fine, you know, every once in a while somebody logs in the wrong zoom or, you know, whatever, but that’s fine. It’s the hybrid sessions where we have really asked a lot of technology and technology seems to still be deciding how it feels about us. What does it

[00:25:59.14] spk_1:
look like in those rooms? Can camera, can we see the the audience members who are virtual screen with all of them?

[00:26:35.76] spk_2:
Both places can see, you know, back between and we have and 10 staff person or one of our trained volunteers is a host on both sides so that there’s somebody who’s not the speakers or the attendees themselves trying to say somebody has a question or the questions over here or you know, like those two hosts can talk 1 to 1 and like own their side, right? So we have those two house, we have the actual like zoom and then we have all of the technology that needs to be in the Denver room to make sure that the microphones are sinking in real time to the stream to the video, to everything else.

[00:26:55.46] spk_1:
Yeah.

[00:27:59.56] spk_2:
And honestly, so far, knock on wood, I think we had a snafu this morning where, you know, and it’s like the perfect worst thing to happen. You know, the bad thing that happened was volunteers wanted to make sure that their sessions were great and tried to log in early to set them up early. And so they booted the session that was already happening. So it wasn’t like nobody came or nothing ever happened. You know, the caption ear’s have all been there and it’s the normal caption team we work with who are just so great and consistent. All the volunteers have been early, if not on time, you know. So the pro and then we realized, oh, the problem is that, that volunteer logged in? Oh, that’s why we all got booted. Oh, they were able to figure it out. Send a message to everyone and say if your shift starts at 9 15, we mean 9 15, we do not mean 9 13. Yes. So it wasn’t easy to fix challenge,

[00:28:02.27] spk_1:
conscientious volunteers. Not

[00:28:20.38] spk_2:
so we’re learning a lot about like what prep do the folks on both sides really need to pull that off. Like maybe maybe, you know, Ash and Jeremy and Drew have a session with you in the summer and talk about doing hybrid virtual events and how to make them really successful. You know, people are still doing. I mean so many folks fundraising gala have kept the hybrid piece where they’re like, oh, we could have 100 people at home donating that we didn’t buy food for. Yes, please, you know. Um so I think I think we’re really gonna see hybrid stay around. People are gonna want to keep doing that. Um and you know us, we’re happy to share all of our mistakes so that you can learn from them. Yes.

[00:29:30.55] spk_1:
Alright. Alright. So 24. So I would expect 24 NTC is also going to be a hybrid. It sounds you wouldn’t abandon that. All the learnings. Yeah, all the, all the problems next year, it’ll be 800 virtual. Alright, thank you. All right, we’re looking forward to 20 well, we’re loving 23 NTC here in Denver. Looking forward to next year. You and Gene and I, I think we just picked, identified probably three different subjects that the three of us could spend an hour talking about. I’m glad, you know, I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s concerned, even George wegner kinda, you know, he was more leaning towards, well, the risks aren’t, you know, I don’t, I don’t think that, that, that had great. Yeah, but I, I need George to be more and more thoughtful before he comes down on one side or the other.

[00:29:42.55] spk_2:
And I think that from, from any position

[00:29:44.61] spk_1:
Georges, let me just not put it on George wegner. I need the Georges Georges to be more

[00:30:56.77] spk_2:
thoughtful. I think it’s important to also remember that when we’re thinking of what are those risks, we’re filtering that through. What do I think those risks are? And, and I, or you and who you as the listener, whoever the one asking that question cannot be the one assessing risk for everyone. You have not experienced the same harm that everyone has experienced from tech in Ology. You maybe don’t have the same view of what you need that technology to do so, the idea that any one of us could say, oh, the risks aren’t that bad or these are the definitive list of risks. We just can’t, you know, it’s too dynamic of a constantly changing situation to say that the risks, the risk list stops or that it is or is not too much to care about, right? Because for some folks, there are people who are not online because of these risks, right? They are choosing to not even have access to some of the utilities that we all can benefit from working remotely, having access to education remotely because these risks are too harmful, right? So I just want to caution any of us from saying this is it or this is the view, right? The view is changing every day when all the people in this room release a new version of their product, right? Or by each other and decide to do different things and it’s

[00:31:12.82] spk_1:
also very personal. Yes, it has to be personal, organizational

[00:31:37.77] spk_2:
and that’s the that’s the place from which I want everybody here to take their duty, right? Is that it is personal and you have a duty as an organization to honor that personal level of choice and risk for every community member that you are expecting to give you their data, right? That you’re expecting to trust you. And that that’s kind of an entry point to to that mindfulness around technology is like it’s not yours. It is theirs. And are you allowing them to have choice? Are you allowing folks to decide how much data to give you a knot or what you can do with their data? Like it just opens up a whole five more shows of what we talk about, right?

[00:32:02.44] spk_1:
Alright, good. This is not, this is not there, this is not their last appearance.

[00:32:06.97] spk_2:
Let’s talk about Jean about the legal piece of that too, right? Because there’s a social conscience of what you do with your community members, data and there’s actual legal.

[00:32:46.00] spk_1:
We will, we will. All right, Amy Sample Ward, the C E O of N 10 grand high exalted mystic ruler of 23 NTC. Um I was surprised to see them walking on the street today. I thought I’d see them in a chauffeured limousine. You bring 1600 people in the city of Denver. I thought you get the penthouse suite concierge Bellman. Okay. Thank you very much. So. Good to see you. Thank you and thank you for being with our 23 NTC coverage where we are sponsored by Heller consulting, sharing the booth with us doing technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thank you.

[00:33:04.34] spk_0:
It’s time for Tony’s take two first. I need to thank Heller consulting. So thank you Heller consulting for your sponsorship of tony-martignetti non profit radio at the 2023 nonprofit technology conference.

[00:33:21.78] spk_1:
Very

[00:34:52.37] spk_0:
grateful that we shared a large booth together that I was able to make lots of interviews to Heller after each interview, bringing folks over to meet the Heller team that was Kaya and Paige and Jet. And I also met the CEO Keith Heller. Uh Thank you. Thank you. Hello, consulting for partnering with me, sponsoring nonprofit radio at the 23 N T C. Thanks so much. Thanks to the listeners who came by, but a bunch of folks come over say, oh, you’re the, you that radio got, you know, the nonprofit radio guy, one guy said in the bathroom. But in any case, I got a chance to meet lots of listeners. So that’s very gratifying. Thank you to those folks came over. I’m not gonna name who came over in the men’s room. We’ll just leave that uh to lay right there. But thanks listeners who, who joined us at 23 N T C and thank U N 10 N 10 supporting nonprofit radio. I’m grateful for our partnership. Thank you to the team at N 10. Congratulations to the staff for a successful fun valuable conference. My thanks, my congratulations out to end 10. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo, but loads more time here is building an inclusive board culture.

[00:35:28.60] spk_1:
Welcome to tony-martignetti, non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C. The 2023 nonprofit technology conference were at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy. And implementation for nonprofits with me now is Renee Reuben Ross. She is founder and CEO of the Ross Collective. Renee Reuben Ross. Welcome to nonprofit radio.

[00:35:35.60] spk_3:
Thanks so much. Great to be here.

[00:35:39.78] spk_1:
Absolute pleasure to have you. Your topic is building an inclusive culture on nonprofit boards. Right. Right. I think I have some sense, but I’m gonna let you articulate because you’ll do it better. Why we need this session?

[00:36:51.10] spk_3:
Oh, wow. Well, so many things. But, um, I think that I do a lot of different things. I do strategic planning and board development facilitation. And I also teach board development at Cal State University, East Bay. And so I’ve had so many, I identify as a white person and consultant. I’ve had so many people come up to me who are on board saying, wow, we are really struggling to build a positive culture and what do we need to do? How can we make things different? And I mean, I would say people of all different racial backgrounds, people who are, you know, people who might just be joining the board, who don’t know what’s going on. And so in, in, in having these conversations, I’ve developed a way of thinking about all right, what are some practices that support boards to do better work? Because I think that many of us, you probably know someone who’s joy. You know, it seems like everybody else knows what’s going on here and I’m trying to catch up, but I just don’t feel like I’m part of this and that might be around information. It might be around the culture in terms of racial equity, it might be around relationships. So, really thinking about what are some great practices that boards can keep in mind gender equity as well

[00:37:18.08] spk_1:
as a board. And there are two women and one’s a woman of color and, and we, you know, we feel minimized. Yes, I’ve heard things like, you know, we feel patronized, minimized. All the power is in the middle aged white guys.

[00:37:45.07] spk_3:
I start with the assumption that we all that we each have something to contribute. And going back to this idea of equity that the people who are closest to the problem should be weighing in on the solutions so that we really need to do consciously design boards and organizations in a way where all voices are heard and affirmed. And that that’s a good thing. That’s not, that’s not anybody losing anything that’s actually all of us getting to do better work that supports everybody. Yeah,

[00:38:01.01] spk_1:
the zero sum game where, well, if, if she has a voice than I’m losing that much of mine. But it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s

[00:38:12.05] spk_3:
ludicrous. Right. Right.

[00:38:12.78] spk_1:
Power is, power is infinite. Power, infinite. So you’ve got some signs and symptoms, indicators of, of what your current culture

[00:39:55.78] spk_3:
is. Right. Well, I am going to have a story that I’m going to share stories. So I was on a board and I had a colleague who came and joined that board. And at the beginning, she was pretty quiet. But then over time, what happened, which I had not expected was she started to come to the board meetings and there was always something bothering her and she was really angry and she, she became sadly this, this angry person in our meetings. And I didn’t expect this. She was someone that I knew she had some good things to contribute. But I started to think about what can I do? And I know that many of my students, many of the clients that I work with have the same issue which we’re going to talk about tomorrow in my session, which is what do you do about somebody who, who has, what do you do about somebody who has become a toxic board member? And so I suggested this kind of, this is really what happens. This is not like, oh, we’ve never met this person before. Usually people who come on board, somebody knows them ahead of time. But what ended up happening was I did my, I did my checklist, which is our, the board procedures. Good. Yes. Are we generally building positive relationships? Yes. Are we honoring equity and listening to all voices? Yes. And then it was like, what I ended up doing was counseling Micah colleague off the board. And I just said to her, you know what I’ve noticed is, it doesn’t seem like it makes you happy to be on this

[00:40:03.54] spk_1:
board. She probably realized it herself.

[00:40:21.46] spk_3:
She realized it herself. I’m somebody who’s not afraid to have the tough conversations. I wasn’t, I wasn’t angry with her. I was stating the truth in a courageous way and it got her to reflect on her participation and to leave the board. What

[00:40:23.47] spk_1:
do you think? Was, was there anything having to do with the, with the organization? Was it was, it was, it was some

[00:40:47.30] spk_3:
other things that were going on. And so many of us have a lot of things that are happening in our homes and with our families that maybe we are bringing to board meetings, right? So it’s really a matter of how can board members act courageous and proactively so that the board so that everybody feels, everybody feels like, wow, when I come to this meeting, things are going in a positive direction because what I’ve heard about boards these days is people really need to feel like their time is worthwhile and if they don’t, they want to do something else, especially now in this post pandemic time, my time is really valuable.

[00:41:13.58] spk_1:
Take off your three little three questions that you ask.

[00:41:16.68] spk_3:
Right. So, so I, so I have this framework that I share with my students, with my clients and my blog. It’s all about, are you utilizing formal practices? So that the first one is formal practices, goals agendas, agreements, term limits. We could just have a

[00:41:34.43] spk_1:
whole bylaws,

[00:41:39.98] spk_3:
bylaws, right? And, and I have, I have encountered or that will say, oh, no, we don’t have term limits. We have people on our board have been here for 20 years. You need to tighten that up. That is not responsible.

[00:41:51.17] spk_1:
You’re saying, I notice you’re saying not just have procedures. Are you following the bylaws may have two consecutive three year terms as the max and you’ve got this 20 year board member. So great,

[00:43:25.55] spk_3:
you got to enforce this and have a way of being in conversation. So first of all, for good, good meeting agendas that are aligned with the goals of the organization. Second of all informal procedures and this is really the relationship building peace. And I think that in these days, if anything, people want more than ever to feel that they feel connected to other board members, they feel a sense of belonging on the board that there’s compassion understanding that, you know, that it isn’t just get the work done, but they’re really that there’s some sort of positive team feeling. And I will say that I share this on a podcast on a webinar and someone said, well, how much does it cost to build? It doesn’t we’re talking a Starbucks coffee. Yes, presence, right? So, so first, so formal practices, informal practice and informal practices given attention, given, given attention really accounting for the fact that people process information differently, learn differently. That’s another informal practice that can really support good, good culture and good

[00:43:33.49] spk_1:
meetings on this, on this one before we move to the third, can other social events for the board which don’t have to be expensive. The person who’s concerned about spending too much money, you can, you can bring everybody into witness, witness some of the work you’re doing if you have that type of work.

[00:45:15.15] spk_3:
But you know what you just is, there was a board that I was invited to join and they said we want to have, we want to have, we’re having all of our meetings at seven a.m. And I was like, I know that I’m a working parent that’s seven a.m. is a horrible time for me. And, and so it is also a matter of being aware of how are, how, how can these practices of, of the board be as inclusive as possible. Um So, so then, and then going on to equity and the reason that so, and I define equity as being committed to shifting systems and sharing power as we talked about before. And the reason that I mentioned equity is that sometimes and I do some work as part of a cross race team where I’m leading along with my colleague, Crystal Cherry. We lead conversations for, for mostly historically white boards around racial equity. Sometimes there is the one person who one person who may be black or who may have something really, really important to say. And that person, even if it’s one person, that person needs to be hurt. Uh And so there’s some, some stepping back that needs to happen on behalf of, you know, by white people sometimes and some real perspective taking to focus more on equity

[00:45:16.30] spk_1:
sharing, power sharing. Uh

[00:45:32.37] spk_3:
And, and this is, we’re all on a learning journey, but it’s like start the journey, the train is going and, and again, if you, when we leave these conversations, we talk a lot about how does this align with the mission of the organization? So we had an arts organization that had their location in a primarily white neighborhood. Um Alright, how do you, what are you going to do in terms of outreach? Given that 45% of your city are people of color. You are not serving the mission to serve the whole community

[00:45:53.92] spk_1:
perceived in the community as a white elitist organization. So you’re not, you’re not attracting new supporters of any type volunteers, donors, board members, whatever is really

[00:46:04.04] spk_3:
about how does this work of um shifting systems of listening to more perspectives, deepen and strengthen the work of the organization?

[00:46:16.29] spk_1:
Anything else on the on the culture? Before we talk about dealing with your toxic person personages?

[00:46:26.56] spk_3:
I think that what I would say is I when I do this work, I encourage, I’m sure you do the same kind of thing. The first step is really assessment. How are you doing right now? And so as people are listening, I would say, put your podcast on pause for a second.

[00:46:52.19] spk_1:
Okay, come back. So, so,

[00:47:17.83] spk_3:
so, and, and these are questions for, for not just for one person, for the whole board. Um I will say that, that we had, we did one conversation with a potential client and it was this man, white man. And we said to him, well, are you building belonging on your board? And, and he said, of course, I am so and we said, well, how do you know? He’s like, well, I’ve asked my three best friends and they all feel a sense of belonging, you know, it’s like, okay, you got to go beyond beyond who you hear from. And maybe that means you survey your whole board or do you have a consultant come in and do interviews, whatever the way that you’re, you’re gathering data, you need to be more comprehensive in, in your learning and perspective taking.

[00:47:44.26] spk_1:
Can we go to toxic, toxic folks had to deal with? I mean, you had a good sample of a good story about your friend, your friend did the board experience.

[00:48:50.06] spk_3:
She’s still my friend because I spoke in a caring way. I wasn’t angry with her. I can see I do that. This is how I approach any kind of service or work, you know, and the same thing that I um that I would suggest for clients, positive or negative. In her case, there was she was having more of a negative experience. So it wasn’t the right fit for her. Other times, sometimes the situation comes up where somebody is on the board, they had a really strong relationship with the previous executive director with the previous staff. And then those people have left, the organization is going in a new direction and this person’s really frustrated. That is a pretty common scenario, right? And so what do you do? It’s up to the new leadership to say yes, we affirm the direction that we’re taking. We’re, we’re sorry that you, that you are not with us, but we are going forward. That’s okay. Again, it’s sometimes leaders, some of the leaders that I meet need just more courage to take this kind of action.

[00:49:10.61] spk_1:
Yeah, other other advice about approaching someone who’s, who’s toxic on a board.

[00:49:17.22] spk_3:
I think that’s just

[00:49:27.99] spk_1:
straightforward factual, you know, conversation. What about, what about in the moment in the, in the, in the heat of a meeting? Someone is dominating the conversation or, or just belittling someone else’s idea? That’s a good, that’s a better example, belittling someone else’s ideas were in the board meeting right now. Thank you for

[00:49:56.99] spk_3:
that. So, some of the practices that I do. So, one of the things that I do when I lead a meeting, I always use meeting agreements and meeting agreements are how it takes a minute or two. How do we want to be together? I have a list of meeting agreements around listening to one another. Curiosity respect

[00:50:03.32] spk_1:
before you joined the board meeting, at

[00:50:06.02] spk_3:
the beginning of each meeting for a minute. And then, and then it’s a matter of depending on how the meeting that helps frame

[00:50:14.81] spk_1:
things. How do we,

[00:50:55.00] spk_3:
is there anything you need to add? Um But I do think that this is where this is where some of this goes back to the framework that I’m a before. Because if, if there is, you want to start with a good agenda and you want, and it is possible to say, all right, well, we’ve been talking about this for 30 minutes. We said we would talk about it for 15. We’re going to cut it off here because we have other things that we need to accomplish and we’re gonna need to talk about this in committee. But so two different things. So one is if somebody is sort of going off, you can use some of those kinds of moves. But then the next part of it is is if someone is belittling somebody, I think that goes back to how do we want to be together and

[00:51:03.86] spk_1:
remind them of what we all agree half an hour

[00:51:06.90] spk_3:
ago and, and have maybe it’s the board president, maybe it’s executive director again, going back to that person. It should be the

[00:51:13.84] spk_1:
board chair in the, in the heat. Of the men in the heat of the meeting. It should be the board chair. It’s their job to run the job to run the meeting.

[00:51:24.00] spk_3:
But it may be that, that person, you want to talk to that person offline, find out what’s

[00:51:27.98] spk_1:
going on. But I’m putting you right in the, in the battle right now. We got to defuse the situation right now because someone is feeling someone has been hurt and, and minimized and someone else’s trotting over them. I think I would like, what do we all agree at the beginning of the meeting? This is not appropriate

[00:51:53.00] spk_3:
and I would go and what I would do would be to go back to them. Like I went back to my colleague and just said, you seem really angry in these meetings were all trying. We’re all working to get more meals to seniors what’s going on. You know, this is really a little bit beyond hear what they have to say and then see what the next step for them is. But, but really, but really again, courage, directness and, and I want to say, protecting everybody in the meeting by, by keeping a safe and caring environment.

[00:52:23.02] spk_1:
It’s also gonna depend on how the person reacts. I think in that moment with apology, you know, I’m I’m sorry, I got carried away versus

[00:52:34.27] spk_3:
okay. Fine. Yeah, that’s true. You’re right, you’re right.

[00:52:36.24] spk_1:
But this possible responses in between those but you know, apology a public apology in the moment goes a long way.

[00:54:03.20] spk_3:
Right. I had, I had another person who reached out to me and said, you know, we have one person who’s hijacking our meetings and he just won’t stop. And so then that was where I went back to my framework. And all right, do you have term limits? Do you have a structured agenda? Do you know what the purpose of these meetings is? I’ll use your checklist to have that structure. Have you talked with other board members to get clarity on what you want and how, how you want to be together and once you can get that, oh and adding the equity piece, are you, can you confirm that this person doesn’t have a perspective that are you sure that this person doesn’t have a perspective that needs to be listened to because I don’t want to, I don’t want to take that off the table. It may be that, that they do. In this case, the person did not. And when, when I talked to this client, it gave her the permission to say, alright, we understand that you want to do blah, blah, blah, but the nine of us don’t. And so we’re going forward over here and it seems like maybe this board isn’t right for you anymore. That’s okay. And that actually kept, it’s that it’s that 2020% of the people or 5% of the people taking up, you know, so much of your time and, and then the board got back on track through that. Okay.

[00:54:05.24] spk_1:
Um What else? What else? We’ve only spent like 20 minutes together? What else are you going to share with folks tomorrow that we haven’t talked

[00:54:12.14] spk_3:
about yet? Yeah, I think that. So I just, this is my first NTC to see how it is. I would say that, that, that

[00:54:23.47] spk_1:
congratulations on being selected as a speaker community, the community voted and chose you.

[00:55:55.14] spk_3:
It’s exciting. Um What I’m trying to do now is create a lot of spaciousness in the meetings that I lead in these presentations. And by spaciousness, I mean, spaciousness, interactivity you’re really giving because people more than ever want to talk, want to have the opportunity to talk. So how I’m, how I lead this conversation, so how I recommend board members should lead these conversations really to say we want to hear from you, we want time for us to talk it through and sometimes there may not be enough time in um in the meetings themselves that may mean that you need to go off and you know, have committee meetings so that you can be more expansive in exploring a certain topic. But really understanding that with everything going on in the world, people are holding a lot and there is a need for more processing of all of this and that needs to go into the design and to just come into you don’t want to come into a room and say, let’s, we’re just getting down to work. It’s really the opposite of that. It’s really what’s here in the room right now. Um, I, I have, there’s a book called Permission To Feel by Marc Brackett. Don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. And there’s an app to that and it’s really about how you’re feeling right now and it’s such a simple question, but just to say as a check in with your board members, how are you feeling right now? And again, it doesn’t cost very much, but it’s a way to say we’re all here together. But what do you need to leave behind? So you can be here in the room and that creates a lot better work.

[00:56:25.24] spk_1:
You’re promising the folks who attend tomorrow that you’ll, you’ll leave them with a take away the next the next step, next step for building a healthier board. How do you help them identify that next step?

[00:57:33.26] spk_3:
So my, my theory of learning is what you care about. What you embrace. What you notice is what you’re going to start working on. So the reason that I am handing them my hand out with the Venn diagram of these three areas and sorry, I’m being technical, formal practices, informal practices, equity is because I, I don’t, I want each person in the room to reflect on what is working and, and what they want to do next. And to commit to something, right? Something that they want to change in the organization. And it might just be, um, I’m gonna go back to my board and I’m gonna share this with them and we’re gonna have, uh, you know, group conversation about this understanding that we are doing really well in terms of informal practices because we all get along really well. But we actually, we don’t have term limits and that’s hurting us because we’re not getting new people involved with our organization. So a

[00:57:39.50] spk_1:
lot of his internalized what you believe should be a next step where you believe you should work first.

[00:58:17.40] spk_3:
I have a longtime background in education, doctorate in education and studied adult education. Truly believe that we are building our own knowledge and motivation from what we care about and boards are too. What are you giving your attention to? So give my goal for the session is that people give their attention to these three different areas and think. Okay, I’m going to share many practices, but which ones do you need to pay more attention to? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Can we leave it there? What do you think? Sure. Feel good.

[00:58:20.02] spk_1:
Yeah. Alright. You know, feeling like there’s something else we didn’t talk about. He didn’t ask me.

[00:58:46.44] spk_3:
Um I think we’re, I think we’re good. It’s really exciting to, you know, it’s really, I’m very curious about who’s going to come to this session and the challenges they’re bringing and I was, it’s very energizing to see okay room full of people, most of them I haven’t met before. And what will they, you know, what questions do they have about this and what, what’s working for them most? And where do they find, where do they feel like they need to do more fine tuning? What are you excited

[00:58:57.59] spk_1:
about that? What drew you to the nonprofit technology conference? This is your first one, but you’ve obviously been working with nonprofits a long time. What brought you to an NTC?

[00:59:07.30] spk_3:
I was, I was interested in, you know, in meeting all kinds of people and connecting and, you know, learning about some of the ideas that are out there and how this conference works. You

[00:59:17.40] spk_1:
just have never heard of it

[00:59:34.55] spk_3:
before. I have heard of it before. Yeah. And I mean, what I’ve noticed in my work is I have a lot of referral partners who are fundraising consultants who are sending me work and I’m sending them work and I’m guessing that I’ll connect with some new people, you know, who could be potential referral partners. So, yeah, you know, it’s funny because I did have a friend who said, wait, your, your facilitator, why are you going to the technology conference? But I was like, well, there’s a leadership track and so it’s not

[00:59:48.62] spk_1:
only for technical techies I T directors, we all know

[00:59:52.41] spk_3:
that. Right. Right. Right.

[01:00:02.14] spk_1:
Great, Renee Ruben. My pleasure. Thanks for Thanks for sharing a Reuben Ross founder and CEO at the Ross Collective. Thank you for being with tony-martignetti non profit radio coverage of 23 N T C where we are sponsored by Heller consulting technology strategy and implementation for nonprofits. Thanks for being my pleasure, Renee. Thank you. You’re welcome. And thank you

[01:01:16.37] spk_0:
next week. Technology Governance for Accidental Taxis as as accidental taxis, technology governance for accidental techies. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. I’m not sure you’d want to do that though. Actually, this week were sponsored by Donor box with intuitive fundraising software from donor box. Your donors give four times faster helping you help others. Donor box dot org. I’m sure my voice will sound better. Next week, our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The shows social media is by Susan Chavez Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty B with me next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for October 10, 2022: The Smart Nonprofit

 

Beth Kanter & Allison Fine: The Smart Nonprofit

That’s Beth Kanter and Allison Fine’s new book, revealing the potential of smart technology and artificial intelligence for your nonprofit, and the entire sector. Beth and Allison are with us to share their thinking.

 

 

 

 

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[00:00:44.94] spk_0:
Oh, I neglected to mention, you hear me, you hear me do an intro to the show and then we’ll chat uninterrupted and then I’ll do the outro and then I could say goodbye Hello and welcome to Tony-Martignetti non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d bear the pain of infra occlusion if you made me chew on the idea that you missed this week’s show. The smart non profit That’s Beth Canter and Alison finds new book revealing the potential of smart technology and artificial intelligence for your nonprofit and the entire sector.

[00:00:56.53] spk_1:
Beth

[00:00:56.87] spk_0:
and Allison are with us to share their

[00:00:58.74] spk_1:
thinking

[00:01:28.01] spk_0:
on Tony’s take to debunk those top five myths of planned giving, sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o and by fourth dimension technologies I. T infra in a box. The affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper.

[00:01:32.30] spk_1:
What

[00:01:32.54] spk_0:
a pleasure to welcome

[00:01:33.29] spk_1:
back

[00:01:41.59] spk_0:
Beth Kanter and Allison Fine to the show. Both been on multiple times, although you know them uh they they they each deserve their own special

[00:01:47.79] spk_1:
introduction.

[00:01:49.33] spk_0:
Beth Kanter is an internationally recognized thought leader and trainer in digital transformation and well being in the nonprofit

[00:01:56.46] spk_1:
workplace.

[00:01:57.94] spk_0:
She was named one of the most influential women in technology by fast company and received the N 10 Lifetime achievement

[00:02:04.82] spk_1:
award.

[00:02:05.48] spk_0:
She’s at Beth Kanter and

[00:02:08.97] spk_1:
Beth

[00:02:30.78] spk_0:
Kanter dot org. Alison Fine is among the nation’s preeminent writers and strategists on the use of technology for social good. She’s a member of the National Board of Women of Reform Judaism and was chair of the National Board of Naral Pro Choice America Foundation and a founding board member of Civic Hall. Allison is at a Fine and Alison Fine dot

[00:02:34.94] spk_1:
com.

[00:02:36.18] spk_0:
Bethan Alison welcome back to nonprofit radio

[00:02:40.69] spk_1:
Thank you for having us. tony

[00:02:43.75] spk_0:
congratulations on the book.

[00:02:47.60] spk_1:
It’s very exciting. The response has been tremendous so far.

[00:02:52.45] spk_2:
So both of our 4th book and 2nd collaboration together.

[00:02:56.91] spk_1:
Second,

[00:03:20.05] spk_0:
yes, you’ve co authored the network non profit if I’m not mistaken. Alright and fourth book for both of you. Congratulations all around. I would actually like to start with the last sentence of the book. If every nonprofit in the sector can transform itself into a smart non profit we can transform the world end quote. Uh does anybody want to claim authorship of that particular sentence? Is it possible for co authors to remember who wrote each each sentence throughout the

[00:03:28.19] spk_1:
book?

[00:03:29.76] spk_0:
Not, no,

[00:03:31.30] spk_1:
not possible, but so

[00:03:33.14] spk_0:
then All right, Allison, what what uh what does it take to become this uh ideal. Smart non profit

[00:04:33.67] spk_1:
So a smart non profit tony is an organization that understands deeply how to stay human centered and by that we mean putting people first, internally and externally using the most advanced technology organizations have ever had at their disposal. This this, you know um family of technologies like ai machine learning robots and so on and by doing that tony we can stop the incredible hamster wheel of business frantic business of organizations just playing a daily game of whack a mole with email and telephone and ongoing meetings. All of that road work can be done by the technology, freeing up people to build relationships and tell stories and build communities and solve problems and do the deeply human work that most of us came to the sector to do in the first place.

[00:04:45.71] spk_0:
And you you used the word business that was not business, that was business

[00:04:52.15] spk_1:
in the U.

[00:05:08.43] spk_0:
S. Y. Yes. Okay. Um Alright. So there are many uh considerations for becoming a smart nonprofit and some some important roles of leadership that that come out in the book. Um Beth anything you would like to add to the to the intro to our conversation.

[00:05:25.86] spk_2:
Um Sure. What Allison laid out so beautifully is the key benefit of that nonprofits get from embracing this technology and that is the dividend of time and that time can be reinvested either in building better relationships with donors or or clients or stakeholders or also could be reinvested in the staff to free up time. So we’re not. So as you said, the busy work takes up a lot of time but it also takes up a lot of cognitive overload and maybe if we had more spaciousness we would be less exhausted. Um and and more inspired and less burnout.

[00:06:15.66] spk_0:
Yeah the that that dividend of time is throughout the book. And uh well except that hypothesis for now I have I have I have some questions about that, some little skepticism about that, but for now we’ll accept that the dividend of time will indeed accrue to people who work in in in smart nonprofits and to to the to the organization generally. Um Are

[00:06:18.75] spk_1:
you skeptical that it can be created or are you skeptical that people will know what to do with it once they created it? No,

[00:06:27.95] spk_0:
well I don’t wanna I don’t I don’t want to challenge right off the bat but

[00:06:33.36] spk_1:
uh

[00:06:52.52] spk_0:
skepticism that that it that it can be realized. Not not that people will know what to do if it does get realized, but um yeah well let’s come back to it, let’s leave the hypothesis uh as as as perfectly fair and and uh something to truly aspire to because there are as you say, and as you lay out mostly in the last chapter, um there are great places that the sector can go when we realize this uh this dividend of time. Um

[00:07:10.37] spk_1:
let’s

[00:07:19.93] spk_0:
talk a little about, you know, some of these elements of being a smart non profit Um beth let’s stay with you for you know, human centered. What what do you what do you all mean by by that?

[00:08:00.23] spk_2:
Well I guess we use another term in the book um called co batting and really with that I like that because it’s like figuring out what the machines can do best. Right that the automation technology there’s certain tasks that the technology is really good at doing. And those are things like analyzing large amounts of data and automating kind of rote tasks. But there are there’s stuff in our jobs that humans should do and always do. And that is the relationship building, taking the donors out to lunch. Like you were telling us you took a donor out to a nice restaurant recently. You know that’s not something the automation is going to do for you. Um and being creative having empathy, making intuitive decisions. And so when we use this technology leaders really need to understand like what is the right workflow and always keep humans in

[00:08:19.06] spk_1:
charge?

[00:08:21.28] spk_0:
What what’s the what’s the

[00:08:25.05] spk_1:
how

[00:08:25.33] spk_0:
can we how can we make sure that we center humans in in adopting this this smart technology?

[00:09:29.83] spk_2:
Well I think the first step is to ask to talk to them and get their feedback and their input in before you even like grab the software off the shop? It’s not about that at all. Um you really have to start with. Um you know, what are the points of pain? What are the exquisite pain points that we want to address by adopting this technology and getting feedback from the end user’s whether that staff clients donors and then, um, setting up a, you know, an understanding of what the journey is, what the workflow is and where you divide things. And then you begin to go look at software tools and uh, and and find vendors that are aligned with your values and once you’ve, or technologists that are aligned with your values and then once you’ve done that, you can begin to start with pilots and uh, an iteration on it before you get to scale. This is so different tony than social media, which both Allison and I have talked to about where we’re encouraging people to just jump in experiment fail fast. What we’re saying with this technology is that it’s really important to, um, to go slowly and to be knowledgeable and reflective about it.

[00:09:53.74] spk_0:
And reflective. Yes, reflective is, uh, something else I wanted to ask about. So what you read my mind fantastic being reflective Alison, what is why, what’s that attribute about for the, for the smart non profit

[00:11:37.25] spk_1:
So this is, um, something I’m deeply passionate about tony Um, I don’t know if, you know, I had a first career as a program evaluator and uh, it’s very, very difficult to get, particularly smaller nonprofits who are so busy and so under resourced to take a step back and not only think about how is what they’re doing, Getting them closer to the results that they want to do, but how can they improve over time and we need them to understand not only the human centeredness that beth just spot on, you know, outlined, but in particular tony how are we making people feel internally and externally about our efforts? Are we making people feel seen and known and heard or and this is particularly important when we talk about smart tech, do you feel like a data point, just you know, a cog in large machinery? Um that’s just getting lost um and we know that feels terrible, everybody has experiences of feeling being made to feel small by organizations and nothing is more important in our work, particularly in the social service and human service areas of making people feel known and heard and yet it is just the sticking point for the sector that it is the thing that gets left off and again we’re back to the business of work, so we want people to be reflective of. Is this the right technology, are you solving that exquisite pain point that you had? How are you making people feel when machines are now doing what only people could do until just a few years ago, you know, through smart tack and is it solving the problems that you set out to solve?

[00:12:00.50] spk_0:
Uh Yeah, I I admired that idea of, of reflective because you know, it’s it’s closely related as you said to being human centered uh you know, thoughtfulness um and it goes to like preparation to um it

[00:12:23.51] spk_1:
also goes to leadership right? You have to have a leadership within an organization that isn’t so brittle that they are open to learning about how to improve and there are too many organizations that are so fearful of being seen as not doing something well that they won’t openly and wholeheartedly be reflective about their activities.

[00:12:42.57] spk_2:
And it’s also about the culture too, and we’ve used this word a lot dizziness and when we have a culture of business and people are multitasking and there’s back to back meetings. They don’t have that space to be reflective. So um and and that’s so required to um to make the changes that you just read about the last line of our book, you know, to get to that place

[00:13:23.79] spk_0:
and we’re gonna talk some about the leadership. Uh you talk about being trustworthy and empathetic, we’ll we’ll we’ll get there. Um Another, another attribute you you mentioned um beth is being knowledgeable, knowledgeable about the tech and I think it’s limits too. But what would you you say it you’ll say it more eloquently than I will.

[00:13:33.54] spk_1:
I

[00:13:33.74] spk_2:
think we can both say that both Alice and I can say both eloquently, but I’ll kick off with um when we say knowledgeable and we’re and we’re saying this to leaders, we’re not saying that you need to know how to code. Um you know, roll up your sleeves and write the code but you need to understand um

[00:13:51.97] spk_1:
what goes

[00:13:57.94] spk_2:
into the code and whether it’s biased um the data sets it’s been trained on and you need most of the time. A lot of leaders in the nonprofit sector when it comes to technology it’s kind of push back, you know sent down the hall to the I. T. Department and we’re really asking leaders to lead in because there’s you know potential challenges which Allison is really great at explaining.

[00:14:16.56] spk_1:
Alright

[00:14:18.19] spk_0:
well Alison explain those but then maybe you can tell us a story too about

[00:14:22.12] spk_1:
uh

[00:14:22.80] spk_0:
about like the degree to which a leader needs to be knowledgeable.

[00:15:38.16] spk_1:
Uh So we’re talking about um this family of technologies tony that is very quickly becoming embedded in every single part of organizational life. Right? This is not a you know fundraising software, smart tech is going to be embedded in the finances and the back office and the coms and development and everything. And the idea of having machines automatically paid for things or screen resumes or screen people for services is a fundamental shift in who is doing work and how it’s being done. Right? So when you understand that premise, you have to have the C suite leaning into this to underst and what it means when your staff is doing different things than they used to do and when people on the outside are engaging with machines instead of people, these are fundamental shifts. So one area. Um Well too I just mentioned that are so important is if you are automating the screening of resumes, then the assumptions that some programmer put into that system and the resumes that were used to test it for looking for certain kinds of employees with certain kinds of skills are going to be biased. I can tell you that right now, right. They are going to have a bias. And largely that bias is going to be against, you know, people who are black and brown or or women.

[00:15:57.35] spk_0:
It’s gonna be in favor of white men.

[00:16:40.39] spk_1:
Exactly. Because that is what employment looks like. Those are the questions we use those are the expectations that we have and the programming was done most likely by a white man. Um So if you don’t know what to ask. The creator of that software that you’ve just bought that is going to quote save you a ton of time looking at resumes. Um but also screen out um people of color and women then you’ve just an incredible disservice to your organization and the same if you are providing housing services or food services to people in need, the same kinds of biases are going to be found in these systems, right? This is a systems problem. And that’s why as Beth was saying, this is not a technical problem. This is not something where you say go I. T. Guys go find us a good product. You know, they’re not looking out for your organization’s interest in equity. That’s what leadership is for right, setting those moral standards, setting that compass and making sure that your values are aligned in everything you do and how you do it as an organization.

[00:17:59.64] spk_0:
Yeah. You both are very clear in the book that this is a leadership issue, not a technology issue. It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They have another interesting newsletter this week advocating for the use of cliches. Their argument is that cliches shouldn’t be ruled out entirely but used judiciously. Like not don’t go overboard either. Whatever you think about cliches, my point is they’re thinking about them. They’re thinking about how best to communicate your story because your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. Now back to the Smart non profit any any stories, can we can we tell a story at this point? Alison

[00:18:23.00] spk_1:
sure there are, there are social services agencies around the country um that we’re using smart tech systems to provide um food assistance. And only after the system had been in place for several years. tony did they find out that it was literally leaving out black people from the system. In the opening chapter of our book, we talked about a screening tool called V. I. Speed at uh

[00:18:39.80] spk_0:
three times.

[00:18:40.55] spk_1:
I

[00:18:42.50] spk_0:
just kept saying it. V. I. S. P. D. D. Yeah.

[00:18:50.81] spk_1:
Yeah the I stood at that was programmed by um why white man with very good intentions that unintentionally was leaving black people out of getting priority housing in hundreds of communities around the world, four years before the social workers finally got heard saying, we know this tool doesn’t work on the ground, we’re using. It, it is not screening people correctly because the questions were biased against people of color who have so much trouble getting into public systems.

[00:19:32.89] spk_0:
You you have three caveats sort of that that you uh you make very clear and bias is one of them. So we’re just talking about that um responsible use is another another of the three beth can you can you talk to uh what you’re thinking about responsible use and sort of thinking through problems?

[00:19:59.01] spk_2:
Um Sure. Uh it’s kind of like taking a Hippocratic oath that you will do no harm. Right? So the example that Alison just laid out, obviously there was harm done by keeping people screening people out for important services. Um so so it it who’s um non profits to do uh something that we call threat modeling? I know it’s a big scary term and word and it comes from the internet cybersecurity but

[00:20:11.51] spk_0:
didn’t frighten me.

[00:20:17.94] spk_2:
Okay, well it might frighten some people we have had that reaction, um but it’s just basically

[00:20:19.33] spk_0:
not profit radio It’s very savvy listeners here.

[00:20:21.72] spk_2:
Absolutely,

[00:20:23.24] spk_0:
this is this is a higher echelon audience than you’re

[00:20:25.77] spk_2:
right, of course, your

[00:20:26.90] spk_0:
other podcast. So please

[00:20:28.49] spk_2:
threat

[00:20:29.80] spk_0:
modeling is not intimidating to us.

[00:20:31.51] spk_2:
Okay, so threat modeling is actually having a brainstorm of all the possible things that could go

[00:20:36.33] spk_1:
wrong.

[00:20:42.33] spk_2:
Um if you uh implement this technology um what what harm could be done to the end user um if they if they were given um let’s say you have a buy right? And in fact the Trevor project is an example of an organization that did this threat modeling. They wanted to they had a problem. Um they had, you’re familiar with the Trevor project,

[00:21:02.88] spk_0:
explain, explain what what

[00:21:04.80] spk_2:
okay, so they provide uh

[00:21:07.10] spk_0:
counseling

[00:21:23.42] spk_2:
to yes to L. B. G. T. Q. Youth, you know through text and online phone, if you will. And so they’re dealing with kids who are in crisis and a whole, you know, um continuum of issues and they have councilors that there who are volunteers but they’re trained in this very specific, very sensitive type of counseling, especially when young people are coming to them in crisis. And so um so the problem was, you know, they needed to scale um and get more counselors in there so they could help more clients. And so they decided that they wanted to use a bot,

[00:21:44.37] spk_1:
which

[00:22:33.01] spk_2:
is, you know, automated response. We’re all familiar with thoughts, you know, buy a pair of sneakers online or trying to make a doctor’s appointment and you encounter a bot. And so rather than replace the counselors on the front line with this technology that won’t be human center, it could be potentially dangerous. Um especially with a sophisticated self learning bot, which could learn through, you know, and learn through interactions and say the wrong things and that could be devastating to an end user who’s in crisis. But what they decided to do was to use the bot for training simulations. So they took data from real conversation, stripping all privacy information and they use this to train their bot, which was a highly sophisticated software that was self learning. But they said that this spot will not be on the front lines with anybody, will only interact with um for training simulations. So what this did was free up a lot of time from the staff in terms of delivering trainings to more quality control. So they were able to get more counselors on the front

[00:22:51.82] spk_1:
line, so

[00:23:01.15] spk_2:
it’s an example of being human centered, but it’s also an example of that dividend of time and and repurposing it um and also uh making sure, you know, so it’s doing no harm. Yeah,

[00:23:15.16] spk_0:
and that and that responsible use. Okay, okay. Um the other the other caveat you have, so you have, you have three caveats bias, responsible use and privacy. Talking about ethical standards who’s uh, who’s who’s most interested in talking about privacy Allison Fine, raised their hand first.

[00:25:08.25] spk_1:
Yes, I did. Um so this is not a new issue, right, We’ve been dealing with digital privacy um for a long time, but as a sector haven’t really ever gotten our arms around it. tony right in that we has a sector have just subscribed to. I think we think the lowest expectations from the commercial side, which is you try to get as much personal data as you can write. You ask for those emails and you leave. You might let somebody unsubscribe from a newsletter, but you don’t delete their emails. Right? And a much, much more ethical model we feel is in the european union, the G D P R. I can’t remember what that stands for. But the idea is that, um, the people, the consumers, constituents, donors, volunteers are in charge of their data and they get to tell us how they want to be engaged with us, right? They get to tell us that they want to be forgotten entirely from our systems. They don’t want to be on any of our list. They don’t want to be in our systems. And that flipping over of the model we think is very in keeping with being human centered, right? It’s very in keeping with the values that we’re trying to, uh, in view in this whole concept of smart nonprofits, right? That we shouldn’t fear, um, asking people what the value we provide to them is. Right. Do we brought enough value in having their email for them to want to stay with us or are we just turning through again, as we said in the beginning, turning them through systems like the cogs in a great big machinery. So we think the smart tech is going to generate even more data than the last 10 years of digital tech, which is astonishing to think about kind of mind blowing to think about

[00:25:18.86] spk_0:
Because I think didn’t you cite 90 90% of the data that we have is in the past two years?

[00:25:34.41] spk_1:
Yeah, yeah. It is remarkable to explode. And so we need to be, we need to raise the bar on our ethical considerations on the use of data and the relationship that we have with our constituents. They need to trust us more. The fact that the nonprofit sector along with other sectors, the degree of trust is going down. tony is, is not good and we ought to hold ourselves to higher standards of privacy and data protection.

[00:26:52.20] spk_0:
Two weeks ago, Gene Takagi and I talked about that exact subject in a show that I called in nonprofits do we trust? It was just, it was just two weeks ago. It’s time for a break. 4th dimension technologies, your tech is an investment invest wisely. What’s the state of your office infrastructure? Should you give remote or hybrid employees tech allowances or just give them the equipment outright or both or neither. How’s your disaster recovery plan? How’s your backup working? four D. Can help you with all these investment decisions, check the listener landing page tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But you know they go one dimension deeper. Let’s return to the smart non profit Do we know what the impact has been on, on business? Uh,

[00:27:02.62] spk_1:
coming

[00:27:13.65] spk_0:
out of the G D P R has, it, has it had the devastating effect on business that the business community in europe was, was claiming when they were, uh, lobbying against it or trying to, you know, trying to weaken it. Do we, do we know I’m putting you on the spot. Do either of you know, whether that’s had such a devastating impact on european business?

[00:27:25.95] spk_1:
It’s been fine. And, and look, companies, commercial companies here have had to put, uh, more effort into privacy issues when they do work in the european

[00:27:37.36] spk_0:
union,

[00:27:40.59] spk_1:
you know,

[00:27:40.96] spk_0:
California

[00:27:41.82] spk_1:
for Nya are holding people to the same standards now. Um, but it hasn’t had a huge negative impact on business,

[00:27:50.70] spk_0:
you know,

[00:27:51.44] spk_1:
it’s fine.

[00:28:01.23] spk_0:
Okay, okay, now this, this smart tech artificial intelligence we’re talking about, this is widely used commercially, Right? I mean, isn’t this, I don’t know, fundamental to amazon google the 24 hour chatbots that beth mentioned, you know, you see a little about 24 7, the likelihood of that being a live person at four in the morning is very, very small. This, this is, this is ubiquitous in the commercial sector,

[00:28:22.79] spk_1:
isn’t it?

[00:28:23.82] spk_2:
Yes, it is, but I think we’re at this point um, uh, Allison likes to call it the heel of the hockey stick where it’s going to the cross of this technology has come down. It’s becoming democratized and it’s becoming more accessible to non profits of all sizes.

[00:28:41.29] spk_0:
You

[00:28:42.67] spk_2:
don’t have to be nasa to use this.

[00:28:51.56] spk_0:
All right. Now to keep yourself out of jargon jail. You’re gonna have to explain the, uh, the hockey stick on a graph metaphor. So go ahead, tell us what X and Y are and why it looks like a

[00:28:54.63] spk_1:
hockey stick.

[00:28:55.50] spk_2:
Okay. It’s okay. So imagine a hockey stick, right. Or I should do it this way. I’m looking at my

[00:29:02.71] spk_0:
nobody can, nobody can see your hands, but we all know what

[00:29:04.91] spk_2:
happened, but

[00:29:05.98] spk_0:
not sophisticated enough to know what hockey sticks.

[00:29:20.11] spk_2:
It basically shows. And this happens with technology. Um, is that, you know, early adopters use it because it’s very expensive, experimental. It’s unproven. And as it, the technology improve and the cost comes down and it becomes more accessible to consumers and small businesses into organizations. The adoption rate starts to skyrocket. So it goes up. So you see sort of a flat line and then a steep hill or steep mountain increase in

[00:29:35.49] spk_0:
X’s time. And why is technology adoption?

[00:29:39.42] spk_2:
Yes.

[00:29:40.76] spk_0:
Yeah. You’re better at

[00:29:41.91] spk_2:
charts than I am.

[00:29:43.65] spk_0:
Okay, well, you, you, you invoked the metaphor of the hockey stick. You gotta, you gotta be able to stand behind it now.

[00:29:48.41] spk_2:
Oh, I guess I guess I should.

[00:29:50.13] spk_0:
All right. All right.

[00:30:31.21] spk_1:
It’s not just nonprofits adopting this now. tony I would say that it’s all medium and small sized organizations in every sector that now has available to them, technology that they couldn’t afford just a few years ago. And that’s, that’s what the difference is. The technology is a brand new, it’s just become very affordable for smaller organizations. However, as I mentioned before, just because it’s available and just because it’s affordable, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right stuff to grab off the shelf. And that’s the part that’s that’s the impetus for us to write this book. You need to know what you’re grabbing and using, Yeah,

[00:30:42.60] spk_0:
the availability to small and midsize shops, I think is through is throughout your book. Um, let’s tell another good story. The one with the, uh, uh, the repurposing of the school bus routes to deliver food instead of drop off Children during the pandemic because Children were no longer going to school. So they repurposed school busses to drop

[00:30:55.43] spk_1:
off meals.

[00:30:57.87] spk_0:
Who knows that story best.

[00:30:59.76] spk_2:
Yeah. So, you’re, you’re talking about research at Carnegie Mellon University and you’re talking about Pittsburgh school system and

[00:31:07.96] spk_0:
Pittsburgh school system.

[00:32:38.23] spk_2:
United Pittsburgh school district or whatever it’s called. Um, so this was at the very beginning of the pandemic when we were in the shutdown and um, and kids that are in schools that are in poorer areas relied on the school lunch program to get their meals right. And so if schools were shut down and, and, and students were tele community, there’s no way to get this food. So they used a machine learning algorithm to re engineer the must routes to take the food to the kids in the most efficient way. It’s really interesting how during the pandemic, you know, there was a little bit of a silver lining. I know it’s awful. But there was a silver lining for some nonprofits to really push and to innovate. And I think food banks in a way we’re forced to do this. Um, there’s another example in boston of the boston food bank completely automating its inventory and it’s stocking to become a lot more efficient. And at one point they even were experimenting with having robots come in and stock the shelves because most of the food banks, volunteers are older and they were told not, you know, during the very early part of the pandemic, not to, you know, come in because it could be dangerous to their health. Um, and that’s also a great kind of idea story, use scenario to think about to do the threat modeling that we were talking about earlier. So let’s just say for example, food banks. So let’s let’s bring in the robots and have

[00:32:38.99] spk_1:
them stock

[00:32:40.47] spk_2:
the shelves, you know, so, but you also have to think about that volunteers who are coming in, um, to do this type of work. Those were their lifeline in terms,

[00:32:50.89] spk_0:
yeah.

[00:32:51.75] spk_2:
How are they going to feel and how are we going to redesign the volunteer job and how are you going to encourage them to come back in and make them feel safe and welcome into the food

[00:33:02.13] spk_1:
bank. Right.

[00:33:02.86] spk_0:
Less feeling less unless they feel useless and replaced by machinery. And this is all the organization thought of us. And now they now it’s just a bunch of metal replacing us metal and plastic parts. So yeah. Alright. Also being human centered, reflective,

[00:33:59.75] spk_1:
but that that’s that’s the dividend of time, tony if you can say all right, we used to have these uh, you know, two dozen volunteers who came in and were stocking shelves all the time. And now we’ve automated that task. What is it that these, you know, lovely people who wanted to help could do that would be so, you know, deeply human and centered as you say, and uh, you know, in in improving our relationship with our clients. Maybe they could be calling clients. So what else do you need? You know, what else is happening for you or just saying hello to somebody, Right. I mean, there are all sorts of wonderful human things that those people could now do if they want to um that they never had the time to do before. That’s the that’s where this is again, a leadership issue of really thinking about how do we want to use our human capital in the next chapter of organizational development?

[00:35:40.16] spk_0:
Okay, I think that’s an excellent example of the dividend of time that we’re we’re about a half an hour in or so. So let me uh let me try my, my skepticism out on you that we I’ve heard this before, that there was gonna be, there were promises of increased productivity and increased time. I’m thinking of smartphones, we’re going to give us more time and they certainly make us more productive, but I don’t I don’t I don’t see studies saying that we we have so much more time. I see that time being absorbed now you might say, well maybe I’m making your case for you that time being re allocated. Unthought feli unwisely. But I don’t I don’t see people walking around feeling that they’ve got so much more free time since the widespread adoption of smartphones 10 years ago or so. Um Another video conferencing, you know, whatever teams uh zoom, I hear more about zoom burnout than I do about feeling that I’ve got so much more time available because I don’t have to go to meetings. I don’t have to go to the office. Um You know, so those are a couple of the paperless office. That was another paper, the promise of the paperless office was going to be so much so much more efficient for us and I think that was gonna save time because we wouldn’t have to file papers and it was gonna save office space because we wouldn’t need storage and these promises. Um I sound like a whining 60 year old, but these promises have not come

[00:35:44.78] spk_2:
to not

[00:35:46.09] spk_0:
come to fruition in the

[00:35:46.96] spk_2:
past. So I’ll take what I’ll tackle the zoom fatigue thing and, and then Alison can kind of related to smart text. So

[00:35:56.32] spk_0:
I guess I should say uh, it’s not whining. I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeonly 60 year old.

[00:36:00.94] spk_2:
Well you’re not a curmudgeon and you never whine.

[00:36:03.79] spk_0:
All right, Thank you.

[00:36:52.45] spk_2:
So, so if you take zoom fatigue, right? Um, and that came from stanford University and basically what is causing it is the flight or fight response that is going on in our bodies when we see the grid. I mean, there’s some ways to mitigate it. But what happened is is that nonprofits like many businesses all of a sudden were forced to pivot to becoming remote distributed teams. We never really work like that. So the idea was, let’s just all make, get a zoom meeting. Let’s just take everything we did in person and just plop it online. And what happened because everybody was doing this there was, we didn’t really evaluate how do we collaborate effectively. What do we need, what can we do? Like a synchronously so we can make use of our synchronous or real time experience. So we can make meetings shorter. There’s research from Microsoft that shows that if you have stacked back to back meetings without taking a break your level of stress just stays the same throughout the day. And so if organizations were reflective, knowledgeable

[00:37:07.39] spk_0:
and kind of prepared, they

[00:37:16.17] spk_2:
Would have looked at and said, Okay, so let’s look at how we can, you know, stick to a culture of maybe a 20 minute meeting with 10 minute break in between or have a zoom number per day that we know that we’re not going to schedule more than x number of meetings, which would then think to how do we rethink our work? Um So it’s not just the technology, that’s true, the technology doesn’t create the dividend of time. It’s a combination of the technology with thoughtful leadership, reflective leadership as we’ve been saying, that can then change the culture.

[00:37:41.25] spk_0:
Yeah.

[00:37:51.31] spk_1:
And let me let me let me build on that tony So we have an entire generation of digital technology That was intended to make us go faster, right? That was that’s what it has done. We are at a point now, we’re checking your email on average, 74 times a day is quote normal, right?

[00:38:04.53] spk_0:
We’ve gone from uh let’s say facts to email, to texting to to to um slack.

[00:39:36.27] spk_1:
We we we get that this technology, smart tech ai automation is not that technology, it is a fundamentally different kind of technology that’s intended to do things instead of people not to have us do more, But as Beth just said, it’s only going to do that. If we implement it thoughtfully, right, if we end up in the same place where we are checking on the box 74 times a day shame on us. The stuff has the potential to relieve us of so much administrative wrote work that just eats up everybody’s day. And if we can co bott well and have the bots do what they’re supposed to do and the people do what they they’re supposed to do, we can actually re humanize work. But as you know we’re just at the beginning of this process a lot of this is theoretical and that’s again is why we wrote this book instead of jumping in and grabbing the stuff and adding it onto your existing dizziness, frantic nous culture, we need you to stop and think and figure out how to do this. Well you know

[00:40:34.55] spk_2:
there’s some research that’s from M. I. T. Sloan school that looked at the effectiveness of this technology and um and where it is effective is if people don’t just focus on the efficiency of it that is to, okay well we can get all of these tests done way more efficiently because people aren’t cutting and pasting from different spreadsheets. Um But we’re not gonna fill up people’s with more work to do so it’s not to go faster, it’s really to be more effective and so if this technology can be implemented and it can kind of relieve some of that stress and pain of overload then that has an impact on morale and people feeling good about where they work and there is a synergistic impact that the study found that where efficiency and kind of effectiveness, let’s work together. So there’s so that can have more people feel better about their work, they do better, they get better results, they’re less likely to quit, there’s less likely to be turnover and the organization moves forward in a in a better way with better outcomes.

[00:41:09.01] spk_0:
Right, Okay. Alright. And that’s that’s if if it’s adopted with leaders consciously being human centered, knowledgeable, reflective, prepared. Uh and we’re gonna get to trust and empathy. Um All right, well you may have moved me from skeptic to uh cautious optimist.

[00:41:16.14] spk_2:
I was gonna say, what are you still are you still a little uh

[00:41:34.32] spk_0:
you know the history, the history has not has not borne out that leaders have adopted the new technology reflectively thoughtfully and prepared. Lee um It’s just so I’m just basically,

[00:41:36.18] spk_2:
pardon

[00:44:17.51] spk_0:
Me, they never had its 2022. Now they have the book, they didn’t have it when we went from facts to email or email to slack or email the text and text. Alright, Alright. No, no it’s okay. Um so leaders please uh keep listening. It’s time for Tony’s take to debunk the top five myths of planned giving, that’s my free webinar coming up. It’s Tuesday october 18th at 10 a.m. Pacific one o’clock Eastern I say free webinar but it’s not free for everyone. It’s free for you because you’re gonna use checkout code tony T. O N Y couldn’t be simpler. I think you have to put it all in caps too. I’m not sure about that part but do it all in caps to be safe. So I’m gonna be talking about debunking these insidious, pernicious top five myths of planned giving, I hate them, I loathe them, they are loathsome, that’s why I loathe them because they keep people away from planned giving like the one that says plan giving is gonna ruin all your other fundraising. It’s going to take away from your annual gift and your major annual giving and major giving. Debunk. We’re gonna debunk that and for others as well. So join me very simple to sign up. Of course. You go to our gracious host site. We are thoughtfully hosted by N. P. Solutions. So you go to N. P. Solutions dot org. You click workshops, you’ll find me in the list and then when you’re checking out use that code tony do it in all caps and it’ll be free for you. Not for everybody, but for you, I hope you’ll be with me. Let’s debunk these Hateful Top five Myths. That is tony stick to we’ve got boo koo but loads more time for the smart non profit with Beth Canter and Alison fine. Let’s let’s talk some about the leadership. That’s perfect. So you mentioned the three things I really want to talk about trustworthy empathy uh, and curiosity and I have to get this in. If you had an H then you could have spelled out tech trustworthy empathy, curious, high minded

[00:44:18.40] spk_2:
human, human centered,

[00:44:26.89] spk_0:
human centered. You need, you got the T. E. C. In the book. I was looking where’s the H. All right. Uh, what does it look like for leaders to be to be trustworthy? To adopt Trust?

[00:44:34.88] spk_1:
Who

[00:44:38.64] spk_0:
who who’s the best, who’s the most trustworthy explainer of of trust?

[00:44:43.00] spk_1:
I

[00:44:43.18] spk_0:
don’t care. It could be either one. Okay, Allison Trust is yours. We got to go in order and then if we can come up with an H uh centered, but that you already have that in the in becoming a smart non profit That’s that. You already covered that one. So you can come up with another one. Um Herculean, heroic, heroic, Herculean, Right. Trust Alison, Why why is this trust?

[00:46:58.76] spk_1:
Important? So organizations are making a bond with people in their communities, right? We are, we are asking them to come along on a journey with us, uh, to be clients to be donors, to be volunteers, to engage with us in some way and trust is the stuff that’s sticking us together, right? It is social capital. It is thinking that an organization has your best interests at heart, not just their best interests at heart. And um, I feel like for 20 years, so many organizations have been going moving so quickly on this hamster wheel advised by people who make a lot of money off of transactional fundraising and transactional engagement online and have lost sight of the fact that unless and until people out there trust that you are doing the right stuff in the right way, nothing else matters. And we’re all trying to scale way too quickly, tony without really understanding the fundamental D. N. A. Of making sure that we are entirely values aligned from what we want to do to what we’re actually doing to the outcomes. And again, you know, beth and I feel so strongly that the nonprofit sector is such an incredibly special place, right? We are the epicenter of the world for you know, providing human services and doing advocacy work and it is such an incredibly brave, difficult work and yet we still have a ways to go in asking are the leadership of organizations both C suite and the boards to raise the bar to be more transparent uh to to ask more questions about how they’re doing, to measure their outcomes, to uh take care of their people internally and externally better. And so that’s why we put trust so high up on the scale of what we want organizations to be focused on.

[00:47:19.32] spk_0:
I think leaders feel when they’re there

[00:47:24.02] spk_1:
falling

[00:47:24.70] spk_0:
short in in in in in the aspirations that you just described. I think I think folks feel it it’s just but they’re on that hamster wheel and it’s, it’s hard to take, it’s hard to take that step back and and acknowledge what you’re feeling and be introspective as an organization.

[00:49:01.87] spk_1:
Let me, let me, let me describe something though. That’s really important. tony that we as a sector don’t talk nearly enough about. And that’s what Beth and I called the leaky bucket in fundraising. Right? So year one, you get 100 donors by year two, you’re down to 25 of those. You’ve lost 75% of those donors Because you’re so busy filling up the bucket again because you’ve lost 75% the year before and all you’re doing is this transactional fundraising, the email, the direct mail to fill up the bucket again. All of the measures of fundraising success are front loaded, right of did we hit those, you know, revenue targets for this year? Very few organizations are really focused on donor retention and how to increase it. It’s never been at a board table for discussion that I have been at in many, many years, many, many organizations of being on the board and that is where the panic comes in. And it feels terrible to staff and you know, my heart just goes out to all of those people who are in a panic about hitting those revenue numbers knowing that what they’re working with is hemorrhaging donors every single day and that’s where, you know, just in my heart of hearts tony I just want everybody to stop, just stop and take a step back and figure out how to improve your relationship with donors more. So they stay longer with you and you’re not in this panic every day.

[00:49:25.83] spk_0:
Allison, we’re gonna come back to you for for curiosity beth let’s talk about empathy,

[00:49:29.41] spk_1:
I’m

[00:51:40.41] spk_2:
sure. And I think the empathy is, needs to be turned within first before it gets turned outside to the donors to solve um, what what Alison was just talking about. But so empathetic leadership means the ability to understand the needs of others and being aware of their feelings and thoughts. And unfortunately it’s viewed as kind of like a soft skill. Um, and it’s not always linked to performance, um, indicators, right? And so I think it’s really important, especially with what we’ve been through in the pandemic, um, that organizations really need to have clear expectations with their managers to lead in a way that is supportive of, of employees and that supports and contributes to their overall well being and they can do that and still get work done. Um, and I think that like don’t get me started on well being, but um, well being has to be put center and it has to be raised up and given as much importance as fundraising metrics or, or other financial metrics, especially given what we’ve been through. And so this includes checking in training people to like actually observe on their staff and making sure that their, um, you know, caretakers for each other’s well being. And it’s, you know, like a one on one check in isn’t just about, hey, where’s that report? Where’s that proposal? But it’s also how people are feeling what their energy is. Like what their job experiences like what could be improved, which gets us closer to that conversation around technology. So, um, the types of skills and competencies that make for a culture of care or empathy or self awareness and self regulation, adaptive skills, active listening coaching with powerful questions, observing for signs of burnout. Being able to give and receive feedback in a way that doesn’t cause stress, disrupting microaggressions, inclusive facilitation, having those difficult conversations sometimes, which is too nice. But there’s ways to have those conversations that aren’t devastating and genuine perspective, taking. Being able to see it from other people’s points of view. And it doesn’t, I don’t think that makes us weaker. I really think it makes us stronger.

[00:51:54.81] spk_0:
You know,

[00:52:05.03] spk_2:
it’s not a bunch of, you know, reaction when I wrote the happy, healthy. Yeah. Right. We get the, you know, that’s a bunch of hippie crap. Yeah.

[00:52:07.04] spk_0:
I didn’t say that when I talk to you. You

[00:52:08.92] spk_2:
didn’t say that. Of course you wouldn’t say that. You’re too smart.

[00:52:25.83] spk_0:
Thank you. Well, you hardly know me, but thank you. I’ll take it anyway. Um, I know a lot of what you’re describing to is vulnerability. And I think vulnerability is a sign of uh is evidence of confidence that you’re, that you’re strong enough to be vulnerable where lots of people think it’s a sign of weakness that you’re showing, you know, you’re, you’re showing your human side and you know that I think that’s terribly misguided. Um alright, if we’re gonna, we’re gonna, I’m gonna keep you uh not beyond our allocated time. Let’s go to Alison for for curiosity.

[00:52:48.83] spk_1:
Why is it important?

[00:52:50.46] spk_0:
Yes. Why is, why is curiosity a valued trait for leaders?

[00:54:31.33] spk_1:
Uh, you know, the world is moving really fast tony and we have um, a lot of organizational leaders who think tech is not their thing, right? Tech is for somebody else and it can’t not be your thing. If you’re running an organization right now, it’s too important. It’s threaded throughout everything that your organization is doing and you can’t just lean back, You need to lean into it and to do that? You need to be genuinely curious about in our case for smart tech, What is this stuff and why is important and how is it different from the last generation of technology and what could we actually accomplish if we didn’t spend three quarters of our day responding to emails? What is possible out there in the world. And you know, my heart breaks for so many of the nonprofit folks that beth and I talked to who have such good intentions and are so deeply unhappy with how stressful their jobs are or how unrecognized they are by the C suite um or how um pressurized they feel. So it is just uh innately important for organizational leaders to be genuinely curious about, where do we go from here? Right. The world broke two years ago in so many fundamental ways the political economic stress of this moment is wearing people down but we can’t stay here tony we need to go somewhere and we genuinely believe that the family of technologies we call smart tech creates an opportunity to be different in the future to make work joyful and much more meaningful and rewarding and you can only get there if you’re genuinely curious and engaged in understanding the technology

[00:54:58.39] spk_0:
and I think curiosity and empathy are interrelated to curiosity about your people as beth was for all the, in all the ways Beth was describing. That’s

[00:55:08.56] spk_1:
exactly right

[00:55:12.54] spk_0:
alright. Um I don’t suppose the beth I don’t suppose you on the fly came up with an H for to spell out tech for us. Did you?

[00:55:23.89] spk_2:
You

[00:55:24.77] spk_0:
Have that one already?

[00:55:27.02] spk_2:
Humility

[00:55:28.26] spk_0:
Humility is a good one. There you go.

[00:55:29.86] spk_2:
So let’s riff on that humility in

[00:55:31.81] spk_0:
the second edition, you can add, you can add humility and spell out

[00:55:35.20] spk_2:
text and then we’ll footnote and say suggested by tony

[00:55:44.65] spk_0:
Thank you. Yeah, humility. Right. Isn’t that simple? Yeah, related to being empathetic leaders don’t need to know everything, do they?

[00:55:49.85] spk_1:
Oh gosh

[00:55:50.62] spk_2:
no listen

[00:56:15.01] spk_1:
we you know the reason why we wrote the network on profit tony was to take that idea of the hierarchical model of leadership and organizations out of the equation and say the point is somebody else in your network has the answer. You don’t have to have the answer yourself. You just have to know how to go about getting it right and and that of of flattening your organization and your worldview is so important to being able to survive all the uncertainties of what’s happening right now.

[00:56:52.37] spk_0:
Since we started with Allison, Beth I’m gonna let you wrap us up please. There’s so much more in the book. There are use cases, you know, we don’t the book, we can only scratch the surface here. You gotta get the book. That’s the point. You get. They talk about increasing program capacity, fundraising, back office automation, including a lot of talk about human resources. Um you just you gotta get the book which is the smart non profit but beth why don’t you leave us with inspiration and wisdom?

[00:58:30.19] spk_2:
Okay. Um we’ve been through a lot the sector has been through a lot. I mean the world’s been through a lot in the last 22 plus years with the pandemic and accompanying other crisis is and as Allison is outlined and I think we’re we are like at a precipice where we could just either go down the rabbit hole of you know a human capital crisis and spiraling out and people leaving the field and organizations just, you know, stopping business and, you know, leaving lots of people who are vulnerable who need their services. I mean, that’s we can’t go there. We have to pivot. And I think that um, smart tech is part of the tools that can help us get there. But again, their tools, they also need this empathetic leadership that we’ve been talking about and we who can also steer and change the culture to put people first. Um, and um, and I think if we can have all of these things together, working for the organization, the Smart Tech plus the culture plus the leadership, uh, we’ll be able to move forward in a post pandemic world with much better outcomes with happier staff, with staff doing a better job with donors, feeling seen and heard and wanting to, you know, um write bigger checks if you will with clients who are receiving the services that they need and we’re on a path to a better world. It’s not gonna be easy, but uh, we believe that non profits can do this.

[00:58:48.89] spk_0:
That’s beth cantor at Beth Kanter and Beth Kanter dot org co author Alison Fine at a fine and Allison Fine dot com. The book is the smart non profit you can find it in either of their two sites,

[00:59:00.00] spk_1:
Beth

[00:59:00.35] spk_0:
and Allison, thank you so much. Thanks for sharing

[00:59:03.70] spk_2:
genuine

[01:00:00.00] spk_0:
pleasure next week. Eric Sapperstein returns after many years. Let’s talk about waking up excited and going to bed fulfilled. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech You find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C O and by fourth dimension technologies I. T. Infra in a box, the affordable tech solution for nonprofits. tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant four D. Just like three D. But they go one dimension deeper. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff showed social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein, Thank you for that. Affirmation Scotty, you’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.