Jen Frazier, Kate Dreyfuss & Ben Freda: Responsible AI Adoption
We continue our coverage of the 2026 Nonprofit Technology Conference (26NTC), with a panel that helps you find the low-hanging fruit for AI at your nonprofit. They share their 5-Step framework for deploying AI in small, thoughtful steps. They’re Jen Frazier, from Firefly Partners; Kate Dreyfuss at New Music USA; and, Ben Freda with BFC Digital.
Chris Rosica & Bethany Friedlander: Ethically Using AI
Chris Rosica and Bethany Friedlander share 5 strategies to create compelling web and social content with AI, keeping in sight ethics and risks: Ideation; targeting; optimization; repurposing; and, staying human. Chris is from Rosica Communications and Bethany is at New Bridge Cleveland.
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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 I’m the pod father of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be forced to endure the pain of ende or Titus if you inflamed me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate, with what’s up. Hey Tony, I’m on it. Responsible AI adoption. We continue our coverage of the 2026 nonprofit Technology conference with a panel that helps you find the low-hanging fruit for AI at your nonprofit. They share their five-step framework for deploying AI in small, thoughtful steps. They are Jen Frazier from Firefly Partners, Kate Dreyfus at New Music USA and Ben Freda with BFC Digital. Then Ethically using AI. Chris Rossica and Bethany Friedlander share 5 strategies to create compelling web and social content with AI, keeping in sight ethics and risks, ideation, targeting, optimization, repurposing, and staying human. Chris is from Rossica Communications, and Bethany is at New Bridge, Cleveland. On Tony’s take 2. Tales from the gym. Meet chatty Sam. Here is responsible AI adoption. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 26 NTC. You know that that’s the 2026 nonprofit technology conference that all these smart tech folks and and tech users, this is not strictly a conference for tech employees, tech tech professionals. This is also for all professionals who use technology. So unless you’re still using index cards as a CRM, you are using technology. odds are. You’re using Microsoft 360 most likely, so 365, 365 or 360? 365, 365. It’s all it’s every day of the year, Tony, every day. Well, it could have been 360 degrees. I did take 5 days off. All right, yelling. It could have been 360 degrees, degrees of a compass. I was a Boy Scout. Now you’re mocking the Boy Scouts. I am. We haven’t even, we haven’t even introduced, all right, I’m gonna, I’m shutting our mic off. That’s it, we, we now have two panelists instead of three. All right, so we’re at the 2026 nonprofit technology conference in Detroit at Huntington Place. With me now were going to be Jen Frazier. She’s no longer, but she’s she’s no longer a guest, but she’s still CEO and founder of Firefly Partners. Also Kate Dreyfus, director of communications at New Music USA, and Ben Freda, president at BFC Digital, almost like BFD should have been BFD Digital. Big fucking deal. That’s right, VFC, man. Whatever. There’s still time to change it. I mean, he changes that stuff all the time, so, alright, uh, and their topic is low hanging fruit, clearing a path for responsible AI adoption. At your organization I I I trimmed off at your organization. I think that’s understood, but low hanging fruit, clearing a path for responsible AI adoption. um, Jen, you’re you’re the best person I think to give it just an overview of the topic, please, please, yeah, so I think right now obviously lots of folks are excited and a little bit overwhelmed by. Sort of the idea of AI and what can I do with this amazing kind of new technology that has come roaring into our lives and so what we wanna do is just give a quick overview for folks about how to take some of the overwhelm and to really just boil it down to some pretty concrete simple steps to get started so we have a. A nice 5 step framework that um Ben and I, well Ben really developed and Ben and I’ve been using with organizations to sort of help them just really take all these ideas and all the sort of hype all the crazy and boil it down and get simple and get clear within. Inside your organization and take some concrete steps because there’s so much that is possible and so we really just wanna make sure that people are like how do I get out of like you know I’m in I’m paralyzed with the overwhelmed and get out of that space and really start taking some steps forward. All right, thank you. We’re gonna turn to uh Ben then since. We have a 5 step. We have a 5 step framework. We got a step by step roadmap, and then, uh, Kate will figure out, we’ll see how you, so it looks like 2 consultants and a and a client. Is that, is that essentially the, OK, OK. The client, the client is flanked. She’s a bit, um, she’s flanked. She can’t get out the center of the universe. Kate is sitting in the middle between Jen and Ben. Oh, Jen and Ben. Oh, I just, I just that it all works out. All right. Uh, alright, so Ben, why don’t you wanna acquaint us? Why don’t you just like take off the five steps and then. We have we have time to go into, but just tick off our five step framework for AI adoption, uh, that, that is a low hanging fruit, the low hanging fruit, that’s what we’re focused on. So we’re, you know, so many of our clients ask us how do we start, right? Because they’ve heard all about this AI stuff. How do you start? And so we’re trying to give people a real simple sort of process to follow, just the simple stuff. We’re not asking people to do big projects. We just want them to dive in to start to feel like they can get some workflow improvements, some efficiencies. So there’s really 5 things you gotta do. Gotta do them real quick. Let me see if I can remember them. If I can’t, Kate has done this in her real organization for in real life. So rather than it being all theoretical, she can give us the real down low, but that noise is Ben slamming his hand on the table for emphasis. We have to admonish Ben, stop, stop doing that. I like to add a lot of extra junk noise. I’m usually doing this that’s quiet, so yeah, she shakes her hands. I just hands by her head. That’s fine. That’s a lot of fuzz. OK, 5 steps ready. So I can do it. Number 1, learn. Spend 2 hours getting all your staff up to speed on the basic, uh, basics of what AI is, what it’s good for, what it’s not good for, OK. Number 2, jam sessions. Just brainstorm with people about their own jobs, not about AI, but about their own jobs. What do they hate doing? What’s annoying? What. Makes them groan when they think they have to do it, right? Step 3, toss every idea you’ve heard into a big list. So, step 3, big list. Step 4, prioritize, right? So, look at everything on that list, figure out what’s high effort, low impact versus high impact, low effort. Prioritize according to that. Step 5, pick your top 23 things and write up a 1-page description of it. Blueprint, what is it good for? Why are you doing it? What might the technology be involved? What, what technology might be involved in doing it, then you run with the top 23. That’s it. OK, all right, we’re gonna turn to Kate. What, what, what was uh new music USA facing before the, the innovation that uh that uh BFD go with it. I love it. I love it that BFC and uh and Firefly brought to you to the new music. Sure, so New Music USA, we are a national. Nonprofit organization that focuses primarily on grant making for musicians and arts organizations and we’re a team of 10 people do grant making to individuals, yes, individuals, ensembles, venues, and we also provide mentorship opportunities as well. So where we were, uh, I think some of our team was using tools like chat GPT on their own but without any guidelines or real understanding of how to use it. And our connection with BFC is they helped us build our website about five years ago and BFT BFT, yeah, as of now, as of now it’s over, but um I’ve been, I’ve been working with Ben and his team since I joined the organization in 2023 and uh Ben and I were just chatting about. AI in general and he offered a training for our organization back in the fall of 2024 so we all got together and just had a learning session with Ben about what large language models are and how they work and I think in the beginning we were all quite intimidated and we just didn’t know where to start. We know that these tools are important and that. Everybody is going to be using them and everyone is starting to use them now, but it’s, it’s hard to know where to start, especially if you are, you know, a team of 10 with lots of competing priorities and tasks. It can feel overwhelming so that’s, that’s where we started just, yeah, let’s start with, uh, with the, the first step in the framework. Let’s stick with you, the, the brainstorming. Uh, how did, everybody, everybody did everybody contribute? Was it so, so, uh, Ben and I worked together to basically decide which members of our team would make the most sense to, to brainstorm with. So we chose myself, director of communications, we chose my colleague Nathan, who’s our communications associate who manages our social media, and we chose our development manager Valerie, who does all of our institutional grant writing. And these were the 3 people we felt could. Identify tasks that are repetitive that require grunt work where simple AI tools could help just alleviate some of the the burden of repetitive tasks simple tasks very simple because we’re after low hanging fruit here yes we’re and we’re not trying to replace anybody’s jobs we’re trying to just cut back on repetitive tasks that take a lot of time. OK, uh, so Jen, um. Jam session number 2, step number 2 in the framework is, uh, I believe is that the jam sessions or that’s jam sessions. That’s right, jam sessions. So after brainstorming, then jam sessions. What, what’s, what’s the difference between a brainstorming session and the? I mean, that’s basically the same except for jam you’re eating, obviously. No, I’m just kidding. Um, did I, did I mix up the framework? Step one is step one’s learn, learn. Oh learn. Oh, see, well, you’re all suffering with a lackluster host and Kate, Kate, Kate was too polite to say. You’re wrong. Uh, step, step one is not brainstorm. All right. Step one is learn. So step one, alright, so, OK, they did the learning. She said they, they talked to Ben. They got some training. That was the biggest thing like what is this and what does it do and what does it not do? Once you have that framework, then you can have your jam session because then you’re like, oh, OK, these ideas are percolating. But to Ben’s point. You’re not immediately diving into OK how is all that stuff I just learned gonna help me you actually stop and come back and go, what’s going on in my job? What do I hate doing? What are the things that I take like this this sort of grunt work, the repetitive task what’s stuff that I’m like oh my god, I hate sitting down with a blank slate looking at. Um, emails I need to go right back to all my grantees. I know they’re gonna be, it’s the same stuff every time, but it takes me a while to find everybody, do the things, write the note to everybody, whatever. I have to go research. I have to go dig through papers. I do whatever that’s like a lot of just sort of like, uh, I hate that part of my job. So you don’t even really get into like, can AII help me with this yet? Like Ben said, you’re just really like, let’s talk to everybody about their jobs. So the jam sessions are more about like, hey, let’s just actually talk about your day to day and what’s the stuff that’s sort of is a drag. That’s your jam session. I know it doesn’t sound like a jam session, but it is because it’s, it’s also very cathartic because you get to like talk it out with your, with your teammates and be like, Oh, this is kind of a drag, and you’re like, Oh dang, OK, great, I can help with that. But let’s not get to that yet. Let’s just say, tell me what you actually literally don’t love about your job. Just get it out. It’s good therapy. It’s get it out, and then you can be like, Great, I could probably help you with that. OK. And, and it’s new Music USA, so a jam session is, is appropriate. It could be even every day. Alright, um, OK, so now we have our big list. We’ll go back to Ben, back to Ben on the end. Um, what, what’s, what’s our big list, uh, step look like? So big list, there’s the normal way of doing this and then there’s the technologically you get like an A plus way if you do it, which is to use AI to help you. With you, OK, we don’t even wanna go there necessarily normal. The normal, the normal way is to listen to, to people in jam sessions and any time an idea comes up, hey, I wish, I, I hate, like Jen, you know, like Jen said, I hate writing emails to all my grantees because they’re all the same. There’s there’s a little bit different thing in each one, which is kind of annoying. You write that down, that’s all. Write it down and make a list and so as you do that by the time you’ve done these jam sessions you’ve hopefully got a list of, you know, 1520 things on it. So that’s the base, that’s the normal way, OK? If you want an A plus in AI stuff, OK, OK, the AI version would be to go to, you know, a quad or something like that. Record all the meetings, by the way, that’s the key. So record the jam sessions, then you download the transcript, right? And you’ve got all the words in the transcript, and that’s all these AI tools work on. They just work on words. So you’ve got all the words in the transcript. You take the transcript, dump, dump it into cloud or JJBT, whichever one you wanna use, doesn’t matter which one, and you say. Hey, I’m doing a jam session, and the purpose of this jam session is to find everyone’s grunt work, right? The things they hate doing, the repetitive, the road stuff that maybe AI might help with, and can you read through these transcripts and pick out ideas that you find? There you go. So you could do it the computer and the AA plus plus plus way is to do it both ways and then combine them and compare, yeah, compare and combine. OK. Do we know yet whether all the items on our On our, on our, uh, big list are are AI achievable? We do not know. We do not know, and a lot of times they won’t be exactly. So that’s what the next, so then you go on to the next step, right, the prioritized step. So I don’t want to skip ahead on my steps. OK. Where, where is there anything more you want to say about, uh, about step three? The, the, the big list? No, I don’t think so. I mean, we covered the big list, list, how, how, how many items do you remember? What, what was your, so, or between, so, so Ben met individually with me and my two colleagues, and between the three of us we came up with a list of 15 possible use cases. Give us a couple of examples of. Sure, uh, well, the easiest one is an AI note taker, um, but things like, so we publicize our grantees on our website to do that we have to create a lot of profiles for each grantee, so like 150 profiles per year in WordPress, so very simple repetitive task that takes a lot of time, that’s one, an AI writing partner for social media strategy is another example. Let’s see what else one more if you can think of one, sure, uh, a knowledge base for grant metrics. So basically loading all of our existing grants into cloud and then making it easier for our grant writer to find metrics from past grants and update them just to save a lot of time. OK, all right, cool, uh, now we’re prioritizing Jen. Why, why don’t you, uh, lead us through this, I think that, you know, honestly that’s a big one where you, I mean, again, the list that you’re making usually isn’t like, well I’m gonna do this in cloude or I’m gonna do this in whatever you just say like I really hate it when you’re, you’re. She’s already gone through all the steps, but when you’re first doing it, you’re usually just saying, God, I really, I need to, I need to go back through all of our past grant applications or I wish I could go back through all my past, you know, applications and pull really great information out of that. God, I wish there was a way to do that. Then you figure out that AI could do that so like we said, there’s usually a list of things you have to go through them and figure out which ones are actually going to be kind of the most AI. Friendly, you know, like these are gonna be the achievable, but back to Ben’s point, you’re literally looking at like high impact, low effort, so you have your think of a little grid. You’re like impact over here and effort over here and one is X and one is Y, right? So you’re looking at high end so you then as a group you kind of map them out and you go how many people in the org will be impacted if we implement this solution that’s gonna be a high impact solution and it’s actually not gonna be that hard obviously rolling out. AI note taker is like the lowest effort thing you could possibly do, and it will have a huge impact on everybody in the entire organization if you roll it out properly so that’s the easy like boom boom it’s it’s a it’s a double win, you know if you go, I wanna create some fairly complicated custom, you know, thing or whatever you’re like oh that’s a high effort and it’s only really gonna impact maybe one or two people on the team. We’re gonna put that in the let’s get to that later list so that’s where you, you make a grid and you put you plot all 15 things out on that grid with some maybe some help from then your consultants because that you’re like I don’t know how difficult this is to implement and so that’s where really the. The folks who’ve been doing this work can kind of jump in and be like, oh, that’s actually a pretty high effort. It’s not, uh, I know all the, all the marketing says it’s really easy, but actually that’s gonna take a little bit more time than some of these others. So helping a group sort of sift those things onto the grid, it’s easy to sort of pick out the top 23 if you’re ambitious, maybe 4, of those high impact, low effort. How long is this 5 step, uh, framework take to work through at an organization that has like New Music USA 10, you said 1010 employees. OK, so how long did it take you? Well, it’s still very much in progress. I mean, you know, like, like everything, it’s a matter of, uh, prioritization so I mean. You start then, when did we start? Was it we really started in earnest in the fall, right? Yeah, so it’s been 8 months or so, yeah, roughly 6 months, yeah, I would say about 6, yeah, yeah, maybe even less. And now you’re at the point where you’ve got your list, yes, so we are now starting the implementation phase. We, we have our, our top 4 that I alluded to, and we’re gonna start with implementing 2 of those 4. OK, so you’re at the top 2 to 3, uh, and the blueprint. You’re in the blueprint phase. What’s, what’s this blueprint all about, uh, Ben? Well, the blueprint blueprint is supposed to be more detail on each idea, and you want to capture, uh, what you’re what you’re trying to replace. So what is the pain point that you’re trying to replace? So what is the thing that people hate doing? That AI is gonna do, um, how’s it gonna do it for you and hopefully a little bit about how it’s gonna be implemented again, you might need some contractor help or, you know, do some research on this, but a lot of times it’s gonna be, hey, we just have a custom prompt that we’re gonna put into a cloud. Other times it might be, hey, we need to connect Zapier with in a. AI system or something like that. Um, but you just want a page or two on each idea and the reason you want that is so that you can take it and hand it to somebody to implement for you. So it’s either maybe somebody on your team or in your organization or it’s somebody you need to hire from outside, um, but it’s like at least a sort of a concrete, you know, not just what this why this exists and what it’s gonna do. But a little bit about how, how it should be done as well and if I may add, I think the blueprint is also very helpful if you’re in a position where you need to get leadership buy-in for implementing such a tool. Nonprofits are slow to adopt to new technologies which is, uh, and I mean arts nonprofits I think are even slower in many cases. So, um, you know, having this blueprint was extremely helpful. I was able to send it to our CEO and say. These are 4 tasks that we can undertake. This is how much time it’s going to take to implement them and how much time it could save us in the long run. yeah, yeah, exactly, and, uh, metrics like this are so important and the blueprint really helped establish those and helped me get leadership buy-in so and then it’s uh implementation. OK, OK, um, you’re gonna talk some about ethical issues around AI, I believe that’s what, that’s what you’re, uh, responsible adoption, there’s a little bit of responsible adoption, yeah, flesh that out for us. I mean, essentially we, there’s, I think we kind of because we only have a 30 minute session we can’t touch on everything, but we do talk about, um, at the beginning a little bit of just about again like backing up to saying like we understand. There are a lot of considerations to go into using these technologies um there’s a lot of um focus right now on the environmental impacts of data centers and things like that so um and. The politics or the. Ideologies of the folks who run the various uh companies that do um the large language models that we’re using right now, the generative AI that most folks are using, so mostly we just wanna bring um some of those ideas, uh, to the fore. We don’t have a lot of time in our session to talk about it, but we can do a whole other, I mean, I’m sure there are other sessions at the NTC this year about the ethics, um, around. Using the tools so it’s also there’s a lot of thoughts about like uh what does it still mean to be the original creator of something? What does it mean now when all the ideas of all of humanity are basically in a giant robot machine and it’s you can spit it back out of you so there’s all these different sort of ethical theoretical ideological considerations, environmental, all these things and it’s just important for us to help people understand. In the learning part we very much say go to some learnings that actually really dig into some of these things if you don’t know about these things already you should educate yourself and then. Like in a session I had on my untangled a couple weeks ago, it was like talk about these things as a group inside your organization. She drops the name I did the podcast. I did, but she did it so obliquely that it’s, probably not even noticed. I just called it out, of course, but man, it’s called, it’s called Untangled. Brian Miller and I were talking about exactly these things to do before you get going, which is to say as an. Organization, where are we with our values and what kind of, um, you know, organizations do we want to work with whether it’s the AI tool or the vendor that you know prints our posters or whatever we need to think about that as an organization you probably already have those conversations about other vendors or other folks you wanna partner with your AI tools are no different, so it’s like how do we want to take our ethics and our values and make a values aligned decision about what tools. We’re going to use and how we’re going to use them as an organization. I like your analogy about working with other partners, consultants, partnering with other nonprofits. I mean you would, you would consider their, their values. You would, uh, you should do the same here. This is, this is a partner. That’s, that’s, that’s a great analogy. And let me, let me add one thing about our framework. We’re about to wrap up now. I want to thank Jen Frazier, Ken, no. I got him. He’s got him. He got him. He’s like, wait, what? I was like, Oh, my mic’s off. I think I turned it off. It happens every time. Please, please, um, so framework wise, by the way, you can actually download our framework from our session notes from our session if you want. We have a little framework handout. Ethics is captured in part 5, OK, which is the blueprint and execution phase. As you do that, you want to, every time you implement a new tool, you wanna update. This thing which you should have called an AI use policy for your organization and so the process of creating one of those should hopefully capture your ethical stance on this stuff you should consider what you wanna use, what you don’t wanna use and put that into your AI use case or AI use policy. Every time you finish, you hit, you know, step 5 and you start executing on your ideas, you wanna go back to the AIU’s policy and add whatever tool that you’ve created or adjust what you have in that policy to reflect the tool that you have adopted or the thing that you’ve created. Can we spend a couple of minutes on the environmental impact? I mean. The environmental impact is unavoidable as soon as you start entering prompts and then massive data centers are churning through your prompt and going through their quadrillions of bits of data and so the the. The environmental impact is unavoidable from, from, from the get-go. If, if you are uh aligned with. The, uh, you know, sort of climate change mindset and that climate change is a is a is an issue for your, for your nonprofit, even if it’s not your work, but it’s part of your values, then, then you have a, you have an unavoidable. How do you reconcile that conundrum that you do that’s uh, you know, a dissonance. Yeah, so, so this is how I think about it. Everybody should think about it in their own way, do their own research, figure out, which is a terrible phrase to use, but do research, figure out how you feel about it. So. The way I think about it is there are environmental trade-offs about everything we do, so drive a car, right? You should probably if you can take the bus, take public transit, not contribute to climate change, right? But there are good things about cars. There are ambulances, for instance, which can take people to a hospital, so it depends on. What you’re using it for, right? So do you wanna use AI to write yourself jokes to make you laugh before bed? Probably not. Are you using AI to change the world in a better way, uh, and that’s gonna be super impactful then you know you wanna think about it. The other thing to think about is the context of the environmental, the actual, you know, the actual data about what. How, how the, the data centers impact the environment is a bit opaque. That’s I think the biggest problem with using these tools is that we actually don’t really know how much energy they use and how much water they use. It’s hard to extract that information from the, you know, the systems that are in place. On the other hand, we do know that Google’s largest data center last year. Used as much water as the average golf course in the United States. That’s the golf course. So what’s more useful? What’s more you know, what contributes more to the world? I would argue, you know, a data center, but maybe not, you know, it depends on your perspective. If you’re a golfer, maybe not, but it’s, I think about all the golf courses on the planet and the. Places also where golf courses are. Let’s go with Palm Springs or Arizona. Same thing. It’s like ridiculous amounts of water that goes into a very luxurious, I think, um, elite elitist, yeah, elitist sport that’s very expensive, blah blah blah. So there’s that, there’s, um, the environmental impacts generally right now are, um. Water consumption is the biggest thing and obviously um but there’s other impacts about like where are they building the data centers who are who’s actually staffing the data centers what people are what folks what’s happening in that community a lot of folks are actually fighting. The building of data centers in their local communities and things like that. So there’s, you have to kind of like dig into it. But to Ben’s point, it’s very hard to find this information. They like to hide it from you as much as they can, but there are different ways. So I’ll just drop another name. There’s an organization here called Change Agent, which is an open source, uh, based and very, uh, uh, an AI tool that’s just like, uh, Chach BT or Cloud, but. They’re built from and within the social sector so shout out to those guys they will give you a rundown of how they are combating the environmental impacts of the data centers that they’re using to process their stuff and so they do a lot of carbon offsets they they do a lot of work internally as an organization to already think about this and combat that so they’re again because they’re from the space they’re already thinking about this and they’re like hey. We know this is a problem we have ethical problems with it, but yet we also see huge benefits from organizations being able to use these tools, so they’re a good one to also just look at if you’re considering AI tools. And Kate, I’m gonna give you the closing word, but how did the New Music USA reconcile the the environmental impact with the, the return on investment that you that it expects to enjoy from. I think using the uh yeah picking up the low hanging fruit with AI sure I mean I think the way we’re thinking about it is more in terms of you know these tools are here and are going to be broadly used and adopted by most organizations and most people so our take on it has been how do we learn to use these tools that are here as responsibly as we can use them. All right, perfect way to start. That’s, uh, to end. That’s uh Kate Dreyfus, director of communications at New Music USA. With Kate is Jen Frazier, CEO and founder at Firefly Partners, and Ben Freda, president of BFC Open Peren BFD Close Peren Digital, whichever you prefer. Now, the name of the company is BFC Digital. Ben Freda. All right, Jen, Kate, Ben, thank you very much. Thank you and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2026 nonprofit Technology conference. It’s time for Tony’s take 2. Thank you, Kate. We have a new character in our ensemble at the gym. Community gym that I go to. Uh, this is Sam. Now, Sam, uh, is the gentleman who invited me to sign Jerry’s birthday card. Remember Jerry, who I don’t know, but I recognized him when Sam told me where he sits because he sits at the same bike every single time and he’s turned 91. I signed his card. That was Sam who invited me to do that, not because Sam knows my name, but just because he sees me a lot. So, he invited me to sign. Sam is, uh, Sam is interesting. He’s very. Uh, talkative. Um, he’s, he’s, I think he’s north of 80. He’s got a, this great shock of white hair, all pure white hair, slender, tall. I believe he was in the military. I think I’ve heard him say through the years that I’ve been going, I, I, I, he was in the military. You may have even flown, like a navy, maybe a navy pilot or something, a navy flyer, not necessarily pilot, it could be backseat, some aircraft, but Um, I have to, I have to get a little more bearing on, on Sam. So I just, but I just learned his name. That’s why I’m introducing you to him. I didn’t know who he was, but I heard, uh, him introduce himself to someone else. Yeah, he’s, he’s, he’s chatty. Um, like, he walks around to the different stations and different machines and people and, I don’t know if he’s interrupting, but he’s, he’s imposing. You know, he wants to talk about, he talks about sports, he talks about politics. Uh, he talks about, uh, town stuff, like, you know, events that are coming up, you know, like we had, uh, we had, uh, Saint Patrick’s Day last month, festival, things like that. But he’s, he goes around and he’s, uh, he, he, he is slender, but it’s not because he works out a lot because he’s, he does more walking in the, in the fitness center than he does actually working out at machines or weights or anything. Uh, he’s, um, He, uh, he, he likes to, he likes to tell stories and talk to people. So. That’s Chatty Sam, very nice guy. Well, if you can put aside the food aside the fact that he’s imposing on everyone’s workouts. He doesn’t impose on mine. Uh, and because I’m on the elliptical, or I’m down on the floor and I’m panting as I’m doing my planks and so, plus you’d have to bend down to talk to me. So I’m inconvenient. But, uh, he talks to a lot of people, unless you’re, I noticed, unless you’re on the treadmill, the treadmill, he, uh, he avoids. But if you’re at any of the machines, or even on the bikes, He comes over for a chat. It’s a little much, a little much, uh, I believe. That’s Chatty Sam. And that’s Tony’s take too. Kate So do we know if the guy ever got his birthday card? Oh, Jerry did get his birthday card. Yes, but it was about. 2 weeks late, because he didn’t come in at the same time Sam was coming in with the card. So by the time they got together, it was about 2 weeks after. Uh, Jerry’s birthday. It’s still the thought that counts. Absolutely, absolutely. And he’s probably still, I’m sure Jerry’s still scratching his head. It keeps him up at night. Who’s the person who signed Jim Rat? Who could that be? Who’s Jim Rat? We’ve got just about a butt load more time. Here is ethically using AI. Welcome back to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of 26 NTC. That’s the 2026 nonprofit Technology conference. We are all gathered, all these technologists and technology users in, uh, Detroit, Michigan. With me now are Chris Rossica, CEO and president at Rossica Communications, and Bethany Friedlander, president and CEO at New Bridge Cleveland. Chris, Bethany, welcome. Thanks, Tony. Thank you. Pleasure. Have you both. Your session topic is 5 tips for ethically using AI to develop compelling website and social content. Chris, I’m gonna ask you to just give us a high level overview to start us off. Sure. Our room was pretty packed with mainly nonprofit executives who were really based on the title of our topic looking for ideas and how they could use AI to generate content uh whether it’s for their for an article or a blog, how to repurpose that content for social media. Also, how to leverage earned media coverage, say, um. An interview with Bethany Friedlander from Newbridge and take that interview and turn it into say an e-newsletter for stakeholders so it was really about utilizing AI in ethical ways of course but utilizing it to really integrate. And diversify marketing communications so it’s less taxing on staff to do that work and it makes it more feasible to do the work that in the past may not have been a priority based on. Resources resource limitations and lack of qualified personnel to, to do that work. All right, thank you. That’s ideal. Thank you for that, um. Now, uh, Bethany, are you a, a client of Rossica Communications? Is that the relationship here, client and consultant? Yes, we actually met at South by Southwest EDU. We sat next to each other at a breakfast and have developed a really strong relationship, um, primarily working on elevating the story of New Bridge Cleveland. We’re a smaller nonprofit. Uh, and so, uh, looking to frame that story, how do you become not a nice to fund but a must fund, and how do you do that, particularly bringing national money into Cleveland, which is not a place where a lot of national money finds its way actually we have a very robust local philanthropy but not nationally. OK, and, uh, before working with, uh, with Chris and Rossica, what, what, what was your experience, if, if any, with artificial intelligence using. I think we were probably in the same place a lot of nonprofits are, which was, is this cheating, right? We’ve, we answered the same grants 15 years in a row with the same questions. They’ve never changed the application. Um, is it cheating to use AI? And I would say no, we have our own blinders on about the language we use to discuss ourselves, and I think it’s important to have an opportunity to have that looked at, challenged, and improved. OK, um, Chris, why don’t you, uh, walk us through, you have. You have 5 strategies of uh of uh ethically using AI for web and and social content. Can you talk can you just tick those off and then we’ll talk through? Sure, sure. So the ways that you can use AI include positioning and messaging. And help frame to frame the story. Uh, the second is for repurposing. Content for stakeholder communications. Uh, the third way or that you can utilize AI is to help you expand your website content, and that includes articles, thought leadership articles on your site. The 4th is to utilize these tools to help you. Be more searchable online. So AI search today, Tony is huge and. Many nonprofits were struggling, are struggling or still struggling with search engine optimization. Now you have AI search and how do you rank, how do you rank in AI search? So that was another key topic we spoke on and then the last is really creating your brand persona and how do you stand apart? How do you differentiate your organization? OK, OK. Um, around the, uh, the, the ideation, you know, thinking about the brainstorming, how you might have started using AI at, at, at New Bridge Cleveland, Bethany, what did you, was there a brainstorming session or, or meetings or like how did you decide where, where the, the. The best use cases would, would be to begin. Uh, so a number. So first of all. So, a lot of different opportunities, right? So one of the biggest for me was how do you choose character limitations and grants. So you can write the most eloquent answer in the world and if it doesn’t fit within 250 characters, so it’s fantastic as a tool to take you and edit as an editor. Also, to, um, help you brainstorm, so the opposite, right? So sometimes I know exactly what I wanna say and I’m not saying it in a few enough characters and sometimes I don’t know what I wanna say at all and so I can start in a very casual way throwing ideas and and I and words into into AI and then getting back the brainstorming that then I can then further refine. Chris, any, any thoughts on this ideation phase? I think that. Having AI really get to know you and what you’re all about is critical and Bethany’s done a great job of doing that, of educating the AI of prompting it, of having it really explore what her brand is all about. Most websites today aren’t up to date with people’s messaging. Why? Because all organizations evolve. All nonprofits are, are evolving. The landscape is very it’s challenging right now because federal funding has been cut across the board. And how do you stand apart and diversify your funding mix, right? And that’s one of the things that New Bridge has done a great job with it’s. Really giving AI all of the information and they’ve also updated the website too recently with very current messaging um again many fall behind in that area, not just nonprofits but across the board corporations too as well so that’s something that I’ve seen really pay dividends to Newbridge and Bethany I’m sure has a lot. To say about how she works to inform the AI and really let it get to know her. So I throw every email that I write into it with the quote uh with the prompt of make this better. I may or may not use the change, but every time I do that it’s learning my language. It’s learning my phraseology so that then when I ask it to create something new, it’s creating it more and more frequently and tighter and tighter closer to my own voice. We’re also a fairly complicated nonprofit in terms of how we do the work, and that’s been a challenge since our inception to explain to funders and so. Allowing, uh, myself to engage in a dialogue with AI to say which parts of this are the most resonant with the uh with the with the audience that I’m trying to get to and not. And understanding that it really only matters that it’s heard, it doesn’t matter what I’m necessarily prioritizing, so letting it do some of that work for me and acknowledging that I may not be the best lens, we’re very close to our work. I don’t think there’s a nonprofit here who isn’t deeply passionate about their mission, deeply resonant. That can be a huge limitation to your success because it puts huge blinders on you and the language you use to describe your work. That’s interesting, yeah, yeah, um, when you’re, uh, when you’re uploading everything, including your emails, are, are you, you, you’re doing this to a, to a learning base that is unique to, uh, to Newbridge? It’s not, this is not in the public domain, right? Well, and that’s a funny question because I am giving it a tremendous amount of power and information that it can use then to improve other nonprofits, right? But I think it’s still worth it to have that refinement. To, um, and I would say now, uh, I would say about 85% of what it writes. I clearly hear my own voice. I, I no longer question it does not seem like a foreign entity, but that’s also because I have my own account. I don’t let anyone else use my account, so it’s only getting input from me. It’s not getting input from the entire organization. OK, OK, but, but it is one of the public models. Yes, it is, it is. OK, and so that doesn’t, I mean, every email, maybe not every email literally, but you know if it’s 95% of your emails or even 75% of your emails, that that doesn’t bother you that. That they’re now in the, is it right to say they’re in the public domain? Well, they’re they’re they’re in the domain that that this large language model which what what do you use? chat, OK, that chat is learning from that doesn’t, I mean that that doesn’t trouble you. It does. I suppose suppose somebody does a prompt write me an email in Debbie Friedlander’s tone to. To uh have her director of finance write a check for $50,000 to, to my company. I mean, yeah, no, I think it’s a fair question, and we had a great audience member who wouldn’t talk about like the ethics of all of this, and I think it’s incredibly important. I think where my head’s at right now is a 15 person staff. With a $2.5 million dollar budget that has to be raised like clockwork starting July 1st of every year and right now the benefits outweigh the liabilities, I care deeply about my participants and making sure that no private information about my participants is ever included in those emails. I would never do that. Uh, I would also never put an email in that had any private information about a funder or an arrangement with a funder, but if we’re talking about, um, you know, conversational emails where I’m talking about Newbridge and. Every day I have 10 opportunities to describe the organization. They don’t all land equally and so being able to run it through that and recognizing. I think it’s elevated the language and I mean my proof is, is that it’s elevated our status in Cleveland. It’s it’s increased the number of tables that we’re sitting at. It’s increasing the number of dialogues we’re participating in, and I think ultimately that pays off. That’s interesting. So you, you, you’re seeing those kinds of outcomes, prominence in the city, absolutely. Being a thought leader and I mean you can only be a thought leader if your thoughts are well organized and I don’t know that that’s something that naturally we all do particularly well and heard and heard and heard otherwise you you if your thoughts are well organized and nobody reads them, that’s called a diary you know. It’s not what you’re aspiring to, right, uh, OK, no, but you’re right, there’s risk and there’s, and you are enriching something that you’re never gonna get back, so you have to hope that your returns coming in another way, and I think right now benefits outweigh liabilities. I, I can’t say that that’s gonna be true forever, OK. Uh, Chris, say something about the, the AEO I call AEO, artificial engine optimization. You, you said earlier a lot of nonprofits are still working on SEO, but that, that really has been, uh, overtaken. Uh, it’s almost an anachronism now because of the, because the artificial engine, the AI engines are generating summaries that don’t, don’t lead to your website. How do we overcome this? Well, certainly their new environment. There are a lot of It’s pretty simple and straightforward ways of understanding how AI works. And it’s not really reverse engineering either. You can look at who is ranking for certain key phrases so if you put in workforce development, healthcare workforce development organization in Cleveland. We better come up first. You better come up first. Exactly. This relationship is not working otherwise. Exactly. You’ve been admonished. Yeah. So if You put in a cer a certain key phrase depending on where you’re located and. The service. The geographic surface area that you’re serving, right? You can be a national organization most of the time though, national organizations have a local presence, right? So the very the telltale signs are, you know, are you ranking in AI search results and if not. Look, scroll down and then you’ll see people who are searching AI also ask and then you’ll see some additional key points. So you’ll know the important, that you’ll know the ways people are searching in AI for answers. After you understand that, then it’s time to modify your website and the content on your website to create. Summaries, really succinct summaries and Q&A’s or FAQs that address those questions that are being asked on a regular basis. So that’s, these are just some very basic, uh, ways of beginning to appear in AI search results. There are some other things that are a little bit more technical. So if any of your listeners have questions about that, we’re very transparent and very willing to share with them those specifics so if they have a web developer that’s part time or an agent, a company that’s working for them, we can steer them in the right direction and let them know what they need to do so they rank in AI search responses. OK, OK, um. Bethany, how about, uh, expanded web content? You, I guess this is a, this is generating website content for you as well as social, right, as well as social content. Yeah, so before we met, Chris, we had no social media presence. I just didn’t have anybody. I feel, well, let me take a step back. I think it’s really important if you’re gonna add anything to your organization you need. To be doing it consistently, so having, you know, a Twitter account if you’re tweeting tweeting or Xingxing I guess Xing once a month is is irrelevant so I never had the staff to do it. Chris has showed us how we can take content that we put in one place and use it in multiple other places in a really simple way and so we’ve greatly expanded our footprint and I think um it’s really about. It’s not, it’s not about eliminating work, it’s about doing work smarter. And so I think we were in the phase of just we can’t, and now it’s we can and we can do that smarter. And is that AI related? It is. So explain how you took, you can take like one of my articles and then so Bethany was featured on Medium or Authority Magazine’s Medium platform. Millions of people have exposure to that, but how do you know if the right people are. You know, tuning into the website and seeing Bethany’s uh bylined article or op ed piece. So what we did is took use utilizing AI took that interview with Authority magazine, turned it into a blog post that went on to New Bridge’s website, turned it into a LinkedIn social post, uh, all in an automated fashion that saved so much time, and there’s no. It’s in the, the information. The article was in the public domain to begin with. It’s on Medium.com. So I understand the question you asked earlier, Tony, about sensitivity and do you really want to give it confidential information and 99%, I mean, almost all of what we do is not that at all. We’re, we’re, we’re very wary of doing that and I concur. I get the sense that you feel you, you have some concerns about that. And we have the same concerns. I know Newbridge does too, but in this area. That article. Now it’s turned into all this content for different channels and it’s all unique content. Same holds true not only for the earned media coverage, but for an article, a thought leadership article that is written for the Newbridge website, that can be turned into a media pitch. Well that can be turned into a um into social posts for all your social channels and then we use AI on an ongoing basis to take one social post that we write and turn it into social posts for all of uh nonprofits channels um so it’s unique content but it’s still conveying the same message. You, you had your session already, right? Yeah. So what are some of the questions you got that struck you that are memorable? So we, we asked them a question which was to put, uh, a simple question into whatever uh AI they’re using, which is what movie star is my organization and. Um, and I do that and I talk about that because it allows you to see how you’re being seen. It’s the language you’re using. So interestingly enough, overwhelmingly in the room, everybody got Tom Hanks, and the, and the inclination was, oh, then AI is not that smart, it only has one actor, and my response is no, that’s because we’re all talking about our organizations in the same way. We’re all talking about ourselves as kind, good people. Now, interestingly enough, Newbridge doesn’t come up that way. Newbridge comes up as Viola Davis, and that’s partly because we talk a lot about trauma, resiliency, and grit. And if you wanna talk about somebody who embodies that, Viola Davis really embodies that. So my suggestion to people is if you don’t like what you’re getting back, then think about how you’re talking about yourself because we’re really much more complex than just being good. By the way, Rossica Communications is George Clooney, so which, which was a shocker, by the way. Clooney. OK, now I’m thinking of Alec Baldwin. Yeah, I was thinking of the personal side of Alec Baldwin. No, George Clooney. Now that, yeah, so are you happy with that? or very happy, yeah, OK, yeah, great under pressure. He always seems to be great under pressure. His persona, right? His acting persona, very consistent. You can rely on him, yeah, those types of attributes, yeah, does similar kinds of roles too. Yes, right, OK, leading man, very good. OK, uh, what’s, what’s another question you got that might be interesting folks? So we also ask, uh, what’s something about my organization that’s confusing or might be misunderstood by funders. Again, something that you may not see, it may be a huge blind spot for you, but can help you with clarity and then also what is the number one thing we could be renowned for? What can we be world best at? So I think. Um, asking it those questions, it’s not, I mean, it, it’s not foolproof, but it does give you a sense of how somebody who’s not with you every day might respond to you, think about you, and what they might be left with is an impression. If it’s not the impression you want them to be left with, change the language you’re using. Yeah, Tony, we always say perception is reality. And how are you effectively. Demonstrating the value you bring to the stakeholders that you serve and if you’re not differentiating your organization and if you’re not. Saying things that truly resonate with those stakeholder groups, then you’re missing a huge opportunity to, to improve communications in order to serve more people that you’re looking to serve. How about we leave it there. All right, thanks. That’s Chris Rossico, CEO and president at Rossico Communications, and Bethany Friedlander, president and CEO at New Bridge Cleveland. Chris, Bethany, thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for being with us and thank you for being with Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio coverage of the 2026 nonprofit Technology conference. Next week, we’ve got more on AI from 26 NTC with AI for the rest of us, and your AI acceptable use policy. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you, find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martinetti. The show 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. OK, um, a little note here. We, when you, we’ve got more, the way you said more made it sound like it’s, it’s too much. It was, it lost the effect that we’ve got, like, we’ve got more. All right, you didn’t, I’m I’m exaggerating. You didn’t do it that much, but just, we’ve got more on AI. Please, just do next week for me. Next week, we’ve got more on AI from 26 NTC with AI for the rest of us, and your AI acceptable use policy.
