New to AI for Nonprofits? Start Here.

A guide from Community IT Innovators

Artificial intelligence is everywhere right now, and the conversation can feel overwhelming. This page is designed to help nonprofit leaders and staff cut through the noise and find what they actually need to know. At Community IT we are nonprofit technology practitioners with 25 years of experience helping organizations like yours make thoughtful technology decisions. We are curious about AI, learning alongside you, and here to help you make sense of what AI means for your nonprofit organization.

Use this page as your starting point. Each section below links to resources, including many from Community IT and some from trusted outside sources, to help you go deeper on the topics that matter most to you.

What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

Artificial intelligence is not a single thing. It is a broad category of technologies that allow computers to perform tasks that previously required human intelligence, including recognizing patterns, making predictions, and generating content.

You already use AI every day. Your GPS finding the fastest route home is AI. Netflix recommending what to watch next is AI. Your email spam filter is AI. Your phone unlocking when it recognizes your face is AI. What has changed in the last few years is that AI has become dramatically more capable, more accessible, and much more visible, especially with tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.

It helps to understand the progression of AI types:

Resources to learn more:

Why Does AI Matter to Nonprofits?

You may be thinking: we have not decided whether to use AI at our organization. Whether or not your organization formally adopts AI tools, AI is already affecting your work.

The tools you already use, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, Canva, Zoom, are adding AI features in every update, often by default.

Your staff may already be using free AI tools like ChatGPT on their own, whether or not there is a policy.

And the communities your organization serves are being affected by AI in healthcare, education, workforce development, housing, criminal justice, environmental policy, and virtually every sector where nonprofits work.

Even if your official stance is “not yet,” your organization and your sector will look significantly different in two to five years because of AI. Understanding what that change looks like is not optional. It is part of your leadership responsibility.

Community IT resources on this topic:

Build Your AI Literacy First

Before your organization makes any formal decisions about AI, we recommend getting genuinely familiar with what you are deciding about. This means experimenting with the tools, not just reading about them.

AI literacy does not mean becoming a technical expert. It means understanding enough to ask good questions, evaluate what you are seeing, and make informed decisions. The U.S. Department of Labor has defined five core areas of AI literacy: understanding AI principles, exploring AI uses, directing AI effectively, evaluating AI outputs, and using AI responsibly. These are practical skills, not abstract concepts.

Resources:

Can You Use AI and Keep Your Values?

This is one of the most important questions in the nonprofit sector right now, and there is no universal answer. Every organization will need to work this out for itself.

What we have observed is that a hard yes/no position on AI is difficult to sustain in practice. Your staff are making small decisions about AI tools every day, whether or not there is a formal policy. The more useful question is not “should we use AI?” but “how do we use AI in ways that are consistent with our mission and values, and how do we decide together?”

That means having open conversations across your organization. It means being honest about what you do not know. It means building in transparency with your constituents when AI is involved in work that affects them. And it means revisiting your decisions regularly, because this technology is changing fast.

Community IT resources on this topic:

Ethics Frameworks for Nonprofit AI

Several organizations have developed frameworks specifically to help nonprofits and funders think through the ethical dimensions of AI adoption. Rather than prescribing specific tools or policies, these frameworks give you a structured way to ask the right questions for your organization.

Resources:

How Do You Make an AI Policy?

Creating an AI policy does not have to be a massive project. The goal is to give your staff clarity on what is expected and to create a shared foundation for the decisions they will face every day.

A good starting point: download our free template, adapt it to your organization, share it with staff, and plan to revisit it every six months. AI tools and best practices are changing quickly enough that a policy you write today will need to be updated frequently.

No time to gather everyone to discuss this in depth? Even a short meeting with a one-page description of your philosophy and principles around AI will give you a starting point, and something to refer back to as more decision points come up.

Key topics a nonprofit AI policy should address:

Community IT resources:

What Can I Actually Do With AI?

AI tools fall into two broad categories for nonprofits: productivity tools that help your staff work more efficiently, and mission tools that directly affect how you serve your community.

Productivity Uses

These are typically lower-risk starting points. Think drafting emails and communications, summarizing long documents, creating first drafts of grant proposals or reports, generating meeting notes, brainstorming, creating social media content, and analyzing data.

Mission Uses

These are higher-stakes conversations. Examples include using AI to screen clients or applications, using AI in direct service delivery, using AI-generated analysis to inform program decisions, or using AI to communicate directly with the people you serve. These uses have greater potential benefits and greater potential risks.

You are the subject-experts in what your nonprofit does. What have you always thought your organization could be doing if you had the time, staff, technology, or data? AI may help check some of those constraints off your list, so your staff can really seize an opportunity or deliver deeper human-centered services.

Community IT resources:

What Are the Risks, and How Do You Manage Them?

AI tools are powerful and also imperfect. Understanding where the risks are highest helps you use these tools more safely.

The highest-risk situations include:

A useful rule of thumb from nonprofit tech consultant Peter Campbell: use AI tools to create things you already know enough about to verify. If you cannot tell when the AI is wrong, that is a signal to proceed carefully.

Community IT resources:

How Do I Choose AI Tools That Align With My Values?

Not all AI tools are created equal. The companies behind them make choices about how they train their models, whose data they use, how they handle your data, how they handle privacy, whether they compensate creators, and how transparent they are about errors and limitations. For nonprofits whose missions are tied to equity, justice, and community wellbeing, these questions matter.

AI companies do not make it easy to understand their business. It can be a struggle to understand the basics.

Questions to ask when evaluating any AI tool:

Community IT resources:

Ready to Get Started? A Simple Checklist.

If you are new to AI at your organization, here is a practical sequence to work through:

About Community IT Innovators

Community IT Innovators is a 100% employee-owned managed IT services provider exclusively serving nonprofits. For 25 years, we have helped mission-driven organizations make thoughtful, sustainable technology decisions. We are not AI vendors. We are your IT colleagues, curious about what AI means for the sector we care about and committed to helping you navigate it responsibly.

Questions? Contact us.

This page is updated periodically. Resources are reviewed annually; links older than two years are refreshed or retired.

Is Your IT Partner Meeting the Moment?

As your organization navigates challenges, you deserve a support team that is as committed to your mission as you are.

Would you like to see how our human-centered approach can stabilize your IT environment? If you have questions about how to align your technology with your mission, we are here to help.

Community IT has been serving nonprofits exclusively for 25 years. We offer Managed IT support services designed for organizations that want a partner, not just a provider. For a fixed monthly fee, we provide the proactive planning and ongoing IT strategy you need to ensure your technology is always an asset and opportunity, not a liability.

We think your IT partner should be able to explain everything clearly, without talking down to you or using unnecessary lingo. If you’re ready to gain peace of mind and clarity about your IT roadmap in our challenging environment, let’s talk.

As advocates for using technology to work smarter, we’re practicing what we recommend. This article was drafted with the assistance of AI, but the content was reviewed, edited, and finalized by a human editor to ensure accuracy and relevance.

Photo by Venti Views on Unsplash