In the first part of this two-part conversation, Carolyn Woodard and Mimi Yeh, Engagement Director at PTKO, and George Danilovics, Vice President of Information Technology at AHIP, walk through an AI maturity model designed to help nonprofits move from pilots and experiments to AI that is genuinely embedded in how the organization works: quiet, boring, and everywhere.

The conversation opens with a striking data point: 80% of nonprofits are already using AI in some form, yet 90% of nonprofit professionals still feel unprepared to fully leverage it.

Mimi and George use a five-stage maturity model that moves from ad hoc, experimental, systematic, strategic, and pioneering - to help organizations find where they are now and what intentional progress looks like. The heart of the discussion is the systematic stage, where AI stops being someone else's project and starts becoming part of the organizational DNA. As George puts it, the destination is a world where AI is as unremarkable as email.

This episode covers:

The five stages of AI maturity and how to identify where your nonprofit currently stands.
Why the experimental stage is necessary but not the destination, and what it takes to move past it.
What the systematic stage looks like in practice: defined goals, shared prompt libraries, documented best practices, and governance that evolves alongside your AI use.
How strategic AI adoption shifts the question from what tool should we use to how should we organize ourselves to get the most value.
Why reaching the pioneering stage is not the goal for most nonprofits, and why that is perfectly fine.

Resources Mentioned

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