Podcast: Top Nonprofit IT Stories of 2025

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Senior staff shared these thoughts on the biggest and most overlooked nonprofit IT stories of 2024 and what they are looking at in 2025.

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Carolyn Woodard: Hello, and welcome to the Community IT Innovators Technology Topics Podcast. I’m your host, Carolyn Woodard, and this is our traditional year end episode. So every year, I ask our senior staff to give me some reflections on the past year in nonprofit IT. This year, I asked them to give me something about AI or something not about AI or both. And you’ll see my colleagues have shared with us some tips and tricks and some tools that you may not be aware of that are a game changer or promise to be very important in 2026.

Some of my colleagues also reflected on the longer arc of 2025 in cybersecurity, in intentionality about matching your tech tools and IT infrastructure to your business needs as a nonprofit. Some reflections on AI tools and adoption.

And I also just want to make sure that you know that we stand with you in all of the challenges that the nonprofit sector has faced this year politically. I hope that you can take some rest and relaxation and refresh in this holiday time of year with your loved ones. And that we’ll all come back and it’ll all still be there in January when we come back to work. So if you’re listening to this over the holidays, all the very best from Community IT to you.

Alexandros Benjou: Hello, my name is Alexandros Benjou, and today I want to share some thought on AI and its role in the nonprofit sector. Nonprofits have traditionally been slower to adopt emerging technologies, and that’s understandable. Budgets are tight, priorities are mission driven, every investment needs to show clear value.

But what’s exciting is that over the past year, I’ve seen a noticeable shift. Nonprofits are paying attention to AI. Even if they’re not diving in headfirst, they’re testing the waters, and that curiosity is a big step forward.

Why does this matter? Because when nonprofits engage with new technologies, it drives innovation, not just for that organization or their organization, but for the entire sector.

And for us, as technology partners, it pushes us to learn faster and deliver solutions that create real impact for them.

Now, while many of my clients are still in the exploratory phase, my focus this year has been on preparing them for what’s coming, especially the security challenges that AI introduces. AI isn’t just opportunity, it’s also a tool for bad actors. Threats like AI-driven phishing, deepfake attacks, automated social engineering are no longer theoretical. They’re active.

So, we’ve prioritized building stronger security practices to protect organizations before they scale AI adoption. That means three things.

Education and awareness.

We’ve worked hard to inform leadership and staff about emerging AI threats. Tools like KnowBe4 have been invaluable for training teams to recognize and respond to risks.

Strengthening foundations for clients, ready to engage with AI.

We’ve optimized their Microsoft and Google environments, configuring tenants, enabling secure integrations, and assuring compliance so they’re prepared for an AI-driven workflow when that time is right.

And strategic readiness. Beyond security, we’re hoping nonprofits think about how AI can add value, whether it’s automating donor engagement and proven data analysis or streamlining operations. The goal is to make AI adoption intentional, not reactive.

The bottom line, AI is here. Nonprofits are paying attention. That’s exciting because it means the sector is evolving. And we get to play a role and shape in that future safely, strategically, and with impact.

Sawa Gebru: My name is Saba Gebru. I am the VP of Support Services here at Community IT, and I’ve been here for a little over 18 years.

Today, I’m going to reflect on AI and how AI is related to the nonprofit organization. AI can help nonprofit organizations with planning and automating tasks to improve efficiency. In the meantime, AI tools need to be checked for security and privacy. What’s the policy? What’s the security and privacy policy that the AI tool that’s being used?

There are free tools out there, as well as paid tools. One that comes in mind is the note taker to help out with meeting notes and follow up tasks. And that’s great. And there’s a lot of things that have been discussed during meetings. And it is very important to understand where the data is stored and what the policies are, whether it’s paid or the free version. So I think that is very crucial to understand as meetings. There are a lot of sensitive information that be discussed.

The other thing is also, as I mentioned earlier, AI can help with automation, and can help with improved operations, and it needs to be reviewed. Proper planning is important, what AI is needed for, do we have AI policy, how are we going to benefit from this AI policy that needs to be implemented? What is the AI addressing for the nonprofit organization?

So that’s one thing I would say that is critical that nonprofit organizations, when selecting any AI tool, whether it’s for automation, or for data analysis and anything else, it is important to plan, to ask important, crucial questions, about how the data is being used or kept where it needs to be, basically with stored.

The last thing I would say is that AI is important, AI is everywhere, AI is talked about all the time, and it’s also very important. Nonprofit organizations need to think about their cyber security and make sure that their data is protected and in a good place.

Steve Longenecker: This is Steve Longenecker. I’m the Director of IT Consulting.

For AI, I want to talk about Microsoft Copilot. One of Microsoft’s superpowers is that it provides a suite of services that are really well integrated. Those individual services may not be best in class, but their integration makes up for it, and that’s the value proposition of Copilot. It’s supposed to be super well integrated into the larger Microsoft 365 stack. It can already see the data in your email, SharePoint, OneDrive, etc. You should be able to ask it questions about that data and get good answers without having to do anything more.

My experience of that in 2025 is that it comes up short, and I really have been frustrated by it. There might be different reasons for that. There’s those permission guardrails that Microsoft promises might be causing problems. Also, it turns out that Copilots are actually different. There’s different Copilots developed by the different product teams. Your Excel Copilot might actually be different from your SharePoint Copilot or your Teams Copilot.

An experience I had just the other day is sort of a case in point. I was asking Microsoft Teams Copilot to find me a link to the SharePoint library associated with the Microsoft Team that I’m a member of, and it found me files in that library, but it didn’t find me the link to the library, and I pressed it. And Copilot’s final answer was, I can’t directly pull the live SharePoint link from your environment because I don’t have access to your tenant URLs. However, the link you need is documented in the Microsoft 365 target path column of the file. So, it told me how to get the information, but it didn’t tell me the link itself. I was just left wondering why if that integration is not as a firm as it promises to be, then what is the value of Microsoft Copilot compared to other AI platforms? So that was a frustrating thing in 2025. I’m going to explore other AI tools in 2026 more, and that will be an interesting comparison.

I’ll also note that another Microsoft superpower, besides their integration, is that they iterate enough until their products are good enough. And I do think that that will happen. I’m sure that Copilot will get better and better and better. But it was pretty unimpressive for me in 2025.

The other topic that I thought I’d mention in this recording is how much better Microsoft 365 Authentication has gotten. It’s been a slow and steady improvement. So in some ways, these are things that you don’t notice because it’s just getting better, a little bit better all the time.

At Community IT, we use Microsoft 365 as basically our IDP, it’s called, as our single sign-on source of authority for almost all of the apps that we log into. And it’s just gotten so easy, and it’s also so secure that I wanted to give it a shout-out. I log into all of my work apps, and those are all being keyed off of my Microsoft 365 identity. And I authenticate using Windows Hello for Business on my laptop, and on my Android Pixel phone, I use passkeys. I’ve registered that device, and then there’s passkeys that go off of my facial ID or my fingerprint biometrics information. And this is really secure.

That very common these days, adversary in the middle trick where you’re tricked into authenticating a device without on the Internet doesn’t work if you’re using Windows Hello for Business since that, the device is out there on the Internet isn’t already registered, and Windows Hello for Business works on the registered devices.

If I lose my phone or my laptop, the only way to get in is to have my phone or laptop because those are the registered devices. If I lose them, I’d just report it to our internal IT folks and they would de-register the device. And in that time between losing it and them de-registering it, the bad actors wouldn’t have access to my biometric data. Or you could use pins if you don’t want to use your biometric data. All of which is to say that it’s just simple, and it’s secure, and I love it.

And I think any organization should enable Windows Hello for Business if they haven’t already. And if they’re using Macs, they should configure the Mac OS equivalent called Platform Single Sign-On. It’s great, it works well, and it’s secure. And those are all important things in this day and age.

Carolyn Woodard: Next, we’ll hear from Eric Solce, who is one of our IT Business Managers. The IT Business Manager position is a kind of account manager, but so much more. They have business experience and a technical background. Eric actually owned his own MSP supporting small local businesses in Louisville before joining Community IT. So here’s Eric.

Eric Solce: One thing that nonprofits should know about AI is to review the terms of service and privacy policy for any product you are considering approving for use. It’s essential to understand how the AI company is utilizing your data and with whom they are sharing it. Confirm they will not use your data to train their LLM and ensure they are not selling your information to advertisers or giving it to third parties unnecessarily.

One thing that is not AI that people should be aware of is the cost of RAM has been increasing and you will likely see higher prices when purchasing new equipment. The price increase is being driven by the increased memory usage of AI in RAM and DRAM chips used in video cards for AI applications. Micron, one of the three leading producers of RAM, is ending its production of the consumer line of memory. Over the past 90 days, the cost of memory has doubled or tripled in those cases. Expect to pay more for laptops in 2026.

Nuradeen Aboki: Hello, I am Nuradeen Aboki, Senior Consultant at Community IT. And as we wrap up 2025, I want to spotlight a game changer for the year ahead, Microsoft 365 Archive for SharePoint and OneDrive. If you are ready to make your organization’s data cleaner, more compliant, and cost effective, this is for you.

Let’s get real for a moment. We’ve all seen stories fraud, old project sites gathering dust, OneDrive’s multiplying, and version bloat slowing us down. It’s not just a headache for IT. It drives up costs, makes searching a chore, and even holds back AI tools like Co-Pilot from delivering their best.

But here’s the good news. Microsoft 365 Archive lets you move inactive SharePoint sites into cold, compliant storage. You keep admin oversight, search, and governance, but clear out clutter from daily collaboration. That means fresher, more relevant content for Copilot, and smarter results for everyone.

Why does this matter? Archiving separates what’s active from what’s historical, so your summaries and AI outputs aren’t polluted by old drafts. Governance stays strong with retention labels, legal holds, and e-discovery, and admins can always find what they need.

As we look to 2026, here are five steps to get your data Copilot ready.

First move is to define your data life cycle. Decide how active data transitions to inactive when it’s archived and when it’s deleted.

Secondly, detect inactivity. Set up policies to flag dormant sites and notify owners.

Thirdly, archive at the site level. This keeps metadata permissions and admin settings intact. Just note, private Teams channels aren’t supported yet.

The fourth move is to optimize OneDrive cleanup. Departed users’ OneDrives can be auto archived during unlicensed periods. So set those retention policies as soon as you can.

Then lastly here, the fifth move is to review and reactivate as needed.

Archiving is cost effective and bringing data back is easy when you need it. Let’s talk savings. Archives cost less than active storage. Some nonprofits are seeing up to 75% savings. But always check Microsoft’s latest pricing before making big moves.

In summary, as we head into 2026, nonprofits that embrace lifecycle automation and governance with Microsoft 365 Archive will enjoy cleaner workspaces, smarter co-pilot outputs, and lower costs.

My advice, start small, pilot with few sites, measure your savings and search quality, then scale up. Thanks for joining me on this year-end journey. Here’s to a more organized, efficient, and AI ready 2026.

Carolyn Woodard: Next, we’ll hear from David Dawson, Senior Engineer at Community IT. David enjoys working with clients that are making a difference in the community and internationally. David has been with Community IT for 24 years and is a treasure on our team. He’s someone that we can all turn to for those advanced questions, and he takes escalations from the help desk.

So here are David’s thoughts on AI in nonprofits, at his clients that he works with, and also reflection on some of the challenges nonprofits are facing this year.

David Dawson: Hi, Carolyn. Here’s my two cents about what happened in 2025 and what to look forward to in 2026.

Of course, for 2025, the story the whole year long has been about AI. And I think I did check in with clients every now and then about how they’re using it, because I’m really just curious. And I’m seeing a lot of people are tinkering at the edges. Individual people or individual departments are using it for everything from rewriting things and summarizing things to, I heard about an HR department that’s analyzing and sifting through piles and piles of resumes. So that was kind of interesting.

From what I hear, it’s really what I call tinkering at the edge, tinkering because nobody has built it into their workflows formally and nobody is, and I don’t think that a lot of people are paying for it yet. And I think these are just going to, this is sort of the adoption curve that we’re going to see. And I think maybe in 2026, we’re going to see a lot more people using it, maybe more formally, maybe more people will be buying licenses.

And then maybe people will be figuring out how to do two things. One is how to implement it into their formal processes, and how to really write policies around it as well, figure out how they want to use it, and sort of discussions about that.

Specifically, other things for nonprofits. I think in 2025, I started off this year really worried because it seemed like the Trump administration was having this war on nonprofits, closing USAID, and I just didn’t know how far they were going to go. And I think that sort of the existential concerns were very present at the beginning of the year, and I really hope that nonprofits can really find their footing in 2026.

So that’s it for me, and that’s my two cents. AI adoption curve, that’s only going to grow, and relief that we made it through another year without devastation in the nonprofit sector.

Matthew Eshelman: Hello, my name is Matthew Eshelman, and I’m the Chief Technology Officer at Community IT.

When I’m looking back at some of the tech trends and innovations in technology in 2025, I think my first thought is actually not about technology at all. It’s about intentionality and focusing on what you want to do as an individual and maybe what you need to do as an organization.

I think in the past year, we’ve really seen a lot of organizations take on some new initiatives that probably should have been done a long time ago, such as record retention. But at the end of the day, the solution or the issue that they’re trying to address is not really a technology problem at all, but it’s one of organization governance, of process, and the technology is certainly there to support it. But those changes that are being made are really rooted in getting organizations to talk about what they do, and to really distill down at its most fundamental level, what it is that they really need to keep a hold of and retain. So from a technology perspective, the more things change, you know, the more things stay the same.

And, you know, while AI certainly is attracting the lion’s share of the news, from the marketing dollars to the research information, I think organizations need to pause and not focus on what technology should we use to make our work more effective, or, you know, in my line of work is in cybersecurity, not what technology is going to allow us to be more secure, but really focus on what are the essential processes that we take on as an organization.

And then once we figure out what do we do, or how are we doing things, then we can think about how to secure them, how to automate them, how to speed them up, how to make them more reliable, and what technology do we need to do or to put in place to help support that.

Because the fact is that no matter what the innovative technology that’s out there, starting with the technology first is not going to give us the outcomes that we need.

I think it’s really important for organizations to focus on business goals, objectives, who’s involved, what are the stakeholders, what are we trying to accomplish? The technology can come to support that.

I really do think AI is going to be revolutionary in terms of what it allows organizations to do. But focusing on the problem to solve first, as opposed to what technology do we need to have in place, is going to be the… The organizations that figure that out are going to be the most successful.

You know, I think a lot of the buzz around AI in the nonprofit world in terms of being able to report grant information or generate these reports much more quickly, maybe also highlights that that information is not as, I don’t know, robust, reliable or critical as people think it is, right? If we’re being asking our nonprofit clients to generate a lot of busy work, to generate all these different requests and fulfill funding reports, maybe it’s not that valuable. We need to focus on the actual outcomes of the organization and meet organizations where they’re at and support and fund their mission to truly be successful and have transformational impact.

I hope that this finds you well, and I wish you the best as we wrap up 2025, and look forward to the promise of a new year in 2026.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Podcast: Top Nonprofit IT Stories of 2025

Senior staff at Community IT share what happened in nonprofit IT in 2025: AI and non-AI. What tips and advice have you missed?

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Top Nonprofit IT Stories of 2025

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Transcript coming soon

Webinar: Nonprofit Tech Roundtable 2026