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In part one, Matt explains the AI continuum from assistants to workflow help to autonomous AI agents. He goes over the difference between “freemium” AI and enterprise AI and goes over pricing tiers for nonprofits. In part two, Matt and Carolyn go over ways to tell you are logged in to your official account or not, the importance of continuous and iterative staff education, and how (and why) to get started creating AI policies to share with staff.
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How to Use AI Tools Safely for Nonprofits
with Matt Eshleman, Chief Technology Officer
Confused about how to keep your nonprofit data safe and still use AI tools?
Matt explains how to use AI tools safely and securely at your nonprofit.
If you don’t know the difference between using a “freemium” tool like Chatgpt and logging on to a more private enterprise tool at your organization like Copilot, or Gemini if you use Google Workspace, then this webinar is going to help clarify that for you.
We hear a lot about “make sure not to share your sensitive data with AI learning models,” but how do you know how to use them safely, and how do you check on the terms and conditions, and where do you begin?
Matt demystifies how AI enterprise tools work and gives you some questions to ask at your own nonprofit to get the conversation around AI implementation and policy going.
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.
Presenters:
As the Chief Technology Officer at Community IT, Matthew Eshleman leads the team responsible for strategic planning, research, and implementation of the technology platforms used by nonprofit organization clients to be secure and productive. With a deep background in network infrastructure, he fundamentally understands how nonprofit tech works and interoperates both in the office and in the cloud. With extensive experience serving nonprofits, Matt also understands nonprofit culture and constraints, and has a history of implementing cost-effective and secure solutions at the enterprise level.
Matt has over 22 years of expertise in cybersecurity, IT support, team leadership, software selection and research, and client support. Matt is a frequent speaker on cybersecurity topics for nonprofits and has presented at NTEN events, the Inside NGO conference, Nonprofit Risk Management Summit and Credit Builders Alliance Symposium, LGBT MAP Finance Conference, the Tech Forward Conference, and ITC Conferences. He is also the session designer and trainer for TechSoup’s Digital Security course, a member of NGO-ISAC, and our resident Cybersecurity expert.
Matt holds dual degrees in Computer Science and Computer Information Systems from Eastern Mennonite University, and an MBA from the Carey School of Business at Johns Hopkins University.
He is available as a speaker on cybersecurity topics affecting nonprofits, including cyber insurance compliance, staff training, and incident response. You can view Matt’s free cybersecurity videos from past webinars here. Matt is always happy to help nonprofits get smarter about how to use AI tools safely.
Contact Matt: https://meetings.hubspot.com/meshleman
Transcript Coming Soon!
Some resources shared in this webinar:
If you aren’t familiar with it – here is the website to Change Agent AI. Built by nonprofits for nonprofits. https://thechange.ai
Google Notebook LM is a very useful Small Language Model that uses only what you put in.
Here is a new tool that helps evaluate AI tools for nonprofits specifically. https://nonprofit-ai-tools-trust-directory.mtmapps.now Run by folks who do the AI classes for Tech Soup. They show the criteria they use and their analysis/vetting is specific toward nonprofits using these AI tools.
Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI By: Karen Hao (My favorite among the computer books)
The scariest “doomer” book: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI – Yuval Noah Harari (forthcoming 2025) — Contextualizes AI within the broader trajectory of human information networks (Five Books).
I found this Linkedin post that was very useful breaking down how you can turn off the model sharing https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/60-second-ai-privacy-fix-kim-snyder-ehude/
My favorite “notetaker” is Fieldy.ai
I like Fathom and Zoom’s notetakers better than Otter
Acceptable AI Use Policy Template: https://communityit.com/template-acceptable-use-of-ai-tools-in-the-nonprofit-workplace/
Ethical AI framework for thinking about AI adoption/implementation at your organization: https://communityit.com/webinar-nonprofit-ai-framework/
Department of Labor documentation on AI Literacy (pdf)
Reddit Q&A with Matt of registration and webinar questions we couldn’t answer during an hour webinar: https://www.reddit.com/r/NonprofitITManagement/comments/1rekaqk/qa_how_to_use_ai_tools_safely_at_nonprofits/
Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash