August 2025 How to Nonprofit AI with Brenda Foster slides (7MB)
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Vanguard Communications’ Chief of Innovation Brenda Foster shared tips and practical advice on getting started using generative Artificial Intelligence AI tools at your nonprofit in a way that matches your mission and values.
Learn how to prompt, when and how to use AI tools, and when not to.
Learn how to evaluate the outputs and feel good using AI at your nonprofit.
Chances are you and your colleagues are already using it for some things, and wondering how to use it better, or whether you should be using it at all. Your organization may be ambivalent or aghast at AI, have already embraced it, or be unsure where to start. You may have colleagues that are using AI for everything and others who won’t touch it.
Brenda Foster is a PRSA-NCC Hall of Fame inductee who has specialized in nonprofit communication for decades.
In this webinar, she shares tips and best practices on improving your AI prompts for communication success and explores situations where AI can improve the day-to-day job satisfaction for nonprofit staff. You can hear more from Brenda in our podcast discussion of AI tips here.
In this webinar learn how to prompt, when and how to use AI tools, and when not to. Learn how to evaluate the output and ensure that your team feels confident and comfortable using AI to make their jobs more interesting and to better support your mission.
As with all our webinars, this presentation is appropriate for an audience of varied IT experience.
Community IT is proudly vendor-agnostic, and our webinars cover a range of topics and discussions. Webinars are never a sales pitch, always a way to share our knowledge with our community.
Learn how to create an AI Acceptable Use Policy here. The nonprofit sector is deeply concerned with ethics, accountability, the environment, and systemic change. Learn more about ethical AI frameworks here.
In addition to serving as Vanguard Communications’ Chief of Innovation, Brenda Foster is a communications researcher and strategic planner who has shaped direction and messaging for numerous successful national nonprofit and government campaigns. A former broadcast journalist, Brenda is a sought-after producer and speech, script and media writer for clients and spokespeople that include celebrities, CEOs, farmers, caregivers, advocates and youth. Brenda loves to learn, and has been playing around with AI to help herself help her clients, and is inspired to share her insights and advice with nonprofits to help them adopt these tools too.
Carolyn Woodard is currently head of Marketing and Outreach at Community IT Innovators. She has served many roles at Community IT, from client to project manager to marketing. With over twenty-five years of experience in the nonprofit world, including as a nonprofit technology project manager and Director of IT at both large and small organizations, Carolyn knows the frustrations and delights of working with technology professionals, accidental techies, executives, and staff to deliver your organization’s mission and keep your IT infrastructure operating. She has a master’s degree in Nonprofit Management from Johns Hopkins University and received her undergraduate degree in English Literature from Williams College. She was happy to learn more about how to nonprofit AI with Brenda Foster.
Reddit Q&A and resources from the webinar:
Change Agent AI: Advance your mission with ethical AI designed for causes and campaigns.
Washington Post: AI Climate Costs Efficiency (20 free articles a month for non-subscribers)
Q: Is there a way to upload a standard set of prompts that are remembered by the AI product?
A: Some tools let you save “custom instructions” or prompt libraries. You can ask your tool the best way to have it remember your prompts, along with other custom instructions (like no Oxford commas, for example). You also can create a short “context kit” doc — your mission in 10 words, tone, brand do/don’ts, key facts. Copy and paste it each time to remind the tool of your working environment.
Q: How do we best protect confidential or personal information?
A: Don’t put sensitive data into open/public AI tools, including legal, medical, financial or proprietary information. Use closed (usually subscription-based or enterprise) tools when privacy matters. Always trim identifying details and set an AI policy so your whole team knows what’s safe. Think of it like email: if you wouldn’t send it unencrypted, don’t paste it into generative AI.
Q: How many AI platforms do I need to subscribe to for a small nonprofit?
A: Probably just one. Start small, find a tool that meets your needs (like content drafting, translation or scheduling), and only add others if you find a new reason. Think of it like office software—you don’t need six word processing programs, you just need the right one for your workflow.
Q: How can we be sure that the AI tool we are using is legitimate?
A: Stick with providers you’ve heard of or that have nonprofit users already. Be sure their policies are clear about data privacy. If you can’t find reviews, policies or a real support channel for a particular tool, that’s a red flag.
Q: When should AI not be used?
A: Don’t use AI when accuracy is critical (legal advice, medical guidance), when personal trust is central (trauma counseling, personal testimonies) or when you’d risk exposing sensitive information. Also skip it when the work is inherently about your organization’s unique voice. AI can draft, but only you can tell your story.
Q: How can AI help me run my nonprofit adult literacy center?
A: This is where AI really shines. Are there tasks you will never get to that could ultimately benefit your constituency? Are there times when you aren’t available where AI could fill in? Some ideas:
Q: What impact do you see AI having on the strategic communications workforce?
A: As with every revolutionary innovation throughout human history, AI will fundamentally change the way all of us work. It’s up to us to set the parameters for what AI should take on and what’s best left to humans. Routine materials drafting will become faster, but the real value of human communicators will be in providing strategy, storytelling, and ethics. Only humans with human experience and empathy can truly understand how to communicate to humans. At the same time, we need to get smart on AI quickly by becoming skilled at prompting and verifying facts, serving as editors that ensure messages stay authentic, and leading on ethical use, making sure tech doesn’t harm communities or devalue human creativity. In short: AI makes communications more efficient, but humans remain essential for credibility, empathy and strategic judgment.
Q: We are a small nonprofit without the capacity to continually research and vet new AI tools. What resources are there to help vet tools for privacy, ethics, etc?
A: I hear you. Honestly, we’re in the same boat. We try to keep our eye on the news (try Axios daily AI newsletter) for tools that are worth testing, but we really just pick one and go with that until the buzz on another one causes us to move on. It’s the same as the decision you have to make on what social media platforms to be on. You can’t do them all–and shouldn’t.
For in-depth, longer form reporting, Wired is doing good work.
Q: How to assess if/when to invest in a paid version of GenAI?
A: If you think your need to process information that is proprietary or private outweighs the cost of a closed system, that’s the time to dive in. Some are only $15-30/per person per month. Even though that can add up, it certainly is worth the time it saves on those tasks.
Q: Since I am just starting out, which AI platform would you recommend? Or which platforms do you think I should explore?
A: It really depends. If you want to do mostly writing, I would try Claude. It is the best platform for that and research. Otherwise, I would start with ChatGPT. It’s the most robust, well-rounded platform, so it allows you to experiment a bit more and learn about what generative AI can do. OpenAI (ChatGPT’s parent) has pricing for nonprofits.
Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash
Wednesday September 17th at 3pm Eastern learn how to use Change Management to rescue a nonprofit technology project with Debbie Cameron.
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