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Hey, you. It's Rhea Wong. If you're listening to Nonprofit Load On, I'm pretty sure that you'd love my weekly newsletter. Every Tuesday morning, you get updates on the newest podcast episodes. And then interspersed, we have fun special invitations for newsletter subscribers only and fundraising inspo, because I know what it feels like to be in the trenches alone. On top of that, you get cute dog photos. Best of all, it is free. So what are you waiting for? Head over to riawong.com now to sign up. Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I'm your host, Rhea Wong.

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Hi, guys. Incidentally, I learned this recently. You know, the last bit of business on the plate is called La verquenza in Spanish. It's like, the shame. No one wants to eat the shame. So, fun fact, you can share Laveriguenza. All right, we're here. We're here to have some fun. I just want to level set a little bit here. Okay? Raise your hand if you have more than enough staff at your nonprofit to get all the work done now. Okay? Raise your hand if you have staff so much money, you don't even need to worry about fundraising or giving Tuesday. Wow. No one's raising their hand. Okay, raise your hand if you have spent so much time that all you do, all day, every day, is build relationships. Like, your calendar is packed with golf meetings and coffees and site visits with all your top donors. Literally. Oh, oh, we got someone in the back. Love that. Love that. Good for you. Here's the thing. The vast majority of nonprofit fundraisers I talk to have been told the work is building relationships, right? What's all about building relationships? The truth is, it's really freaking hard to build relationships when you are eyeball deep in admin work every day of the week. Am I right? Okay, picture this. Monday morning, you walk into the office. I'm going to build so many relationships this week, it's going to be crazy. Guess what happens. You're putting out fires. You're dealing with inane emails. You're sitting in meetings that frankly should have been in email, and you are not living your best fundraising life. Then you get to Friday, you're like, I actually didn't get anything done this week. I answered a lot of emails, right? But I didn't actually get to the work of building relationships with my donors. The only relationship I built this week was with my barista. So here's the thing. Time, or should I say lack thereof, is burning you out. It is making you impossible to live with. Your partner doesn't want to hear it again. Your therapist is sick of it. Your best friend doesn't want to hear you vent about it again. But the thing is, you got into this work because you care about the mission, right? You got into this work because you believe in human relationships. You believe in changing the world. And instead, you're drowning an administrative. And I know this because this was me. And this is the story of fundraisers. I talk to every day of the week. Too much to do, not enough time, not enough staff. Didn't get to the real work of building relationships with humans who have money to help other humans. Who fills me here. All right. I am in the right room. Very good. Okay. So today we are going to help you create some time to release yourself from the drudgery. And when you release yourself from the drudgery, you get to do things that move the needle on revenue. It means that we are spending time to develop human relationships with other humans. We're going to have time to think and time to breathe and time to strategize and time to create. Today, we are going to talk about leveraging AI. Hopefully you all know that this is what you signed up for. And what we're going to do is delegate to the AI the time that you are spending doing drudgery. Maybe not all of it, but some of it. Because if the work is about relationships, we need to engage with humans. Let the robots robot so the humans can human. And despite what Elon Musk might tell us, we still need humans to create relationships and to have community and to connect. But before we get into all of the fancy AI, which I know we're excited about, let me tell you a little bit about how I ended up here. So picture this. I was a frontline fundraiser. Is everyone here a frontline fundraiser? Like, raise your hand. Yeah. Cool. I mean, I would argue everyone's a fundraiser. Another story for another day. Anyway, I was a 26 year old executive director in New York City of an educational nonprofit. And my first day on the job, I did two Google searches. The first was, what is an ed dupe? And the second was, how do you fundraise anyone else? An accidental fundraiser out here? Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna. If you're an accidental fundraiser, raise your hand. I mean, you're my people. Hello. Okay. Hello. My accidental fundraisers. Now, my learning has come a long way since then, but when I started back in 06, which is a long time ago for the young people in the room, There was no YouTube, there was no Google search, and there was certainly no AI. So over the last seven years I have made my business coaching fundraisers and gosh, I wish I had had AI back then because when ChatGPT first came out, my mind was blown. So imagine instead of staring at a blank page for days to get inspired for my year end campaign, I could have a draft in minutes. Instead of trying to guess at how to frame the ask for a major donor, I can have AI develop the archetype and give me a donor script. Instead of feeling all weird and nervous about a major donor conversation, I can use AI to practice ahead of time and get feedback. Mine, balone. And the craziest thing. And I appreciate that Christine told me this AI is the worst it's ever going to be. Right now it is only getting. It's like a cyborg, it just learns. Eventually it's going to take over the world, but until then I'm going to enjoy it. And so when AI first came out two years ago, it didn't come out, it went mainstream. Two years ago, I decided to lean all the way in because I saw the potential of how it could change the world. It feels a little bit like the dawning of the Internet right now. But let me be clear. I'm not pro AI for the sake of AI. I am pro AI because I want us to be productive, to free up our time, to lean into our humanity, to lean into our intelligence, to lean into our creativity. So close your eyes if that feels safe to you. I just want to like imagine with me for a moment, imagine a world where you walk into the office that same Monday morning. Okay. Instead of the overflowing inbox with the collection of random emails, your AI has sorted and starred the emails that need your attention and auto replied to everything else. I'm seeing some faces, they're like, ooh, auto reply. Fantastic. Instead of scrambling to prep for that funder meeting, AI has taken all of the past conversations, created an agenda, created talking points and suggestions about where to take the conversation next. Right? Instead of trying to remember what happened in the last staff meeting or a one on one. Anyone else have that? You're like, what are we talking about? I don't remember. AI has taken all of the data assigned to DOS and given you a dashboard to track progress. Instead of dreading your year end appealing, AI and I know Christine's already done this, AI has created two possible campaign themes along with a project plan and possible emails and social media posts. Isn't that amazing? It's all possible. It's already happening. But before we jump in to AI with both feet, I think there are a couple of things that are standing in our way that we should talk about. There are absolutely legitimate concerns that we should have about this technology. First, ethical concerns, totally legit, right? We should be asking questions like, who is getting the data? What data are they getting? Where's the data going? What is it training? Who's responsible for the data lakes in the first place? What bias exists in the data? And the human folks who decide the algorithms? Is the data being accessed ethically? Are we adhering to copyright laws? How are we making sure we're not stealing ip? We haven't even talked about the environmental concerns of the amount of water and power it takes for the data centers. Who gets polluted and displaced in those situations? Right? These are real questions that we should be asking ourselves as ethical leaders. 2. Fear of hallucinations and AI slop so how many of you have seen these ridiculous videos going around of capybaras jumping through windows? Or have you ever read someone's LinkedIn post or profile with a bajillion em dashes and you're like, Yep, that's AI slop. Or the other day I had the experience of putting a presentation together and it gave me this. Sorry, I know it's hard to read. Trust me, it is a ridiculous email. It sounds great though. Essentially it says, wow, where do we even start? Your record breaking $47 million gift of 2017, the one delivered by carrier pigeon during a solar eclipse, remains one of the most talked about moments in one goal history. So this is an extreme example, but I'm sure that there have been instances where you've used AI that has completely hallucinated a story or an example. We want to make sure that we have humans that are actually reviewing stuff. The fear, and I think it's a legitimate one that we should have about making stuff up, is that it erodes trust with our team, with our donors, with our community. And then finally, let's talk about we don't even know where to begin or what use cases there are. Is anyone out here overwhelmed by all the AI that comes online every minute of the day? I am. I'm just like, what is happening? Okay, full admission. I have been diagnosed with sos. You guys, what is sos? Shiny Object Syndrome. Every new app, every new AI tool, every new platform, I am here for it. Imagine how excited my team is when I have a new idea every five minutes. It's great. They love it. But the thing is, I will be the first to admit that AI has not really lived up to its expectations. When we first saw AI, I think we were sold a bill of goods, that it was a magic wand, that all things would be solved, right? That I wouldn't even have to think about things. I could just delegate it to AI. The truth is, I don't think that we are quite at a point where AI works autonomously, though I think we can be getting close. I think of AI right now as kind of like something you get at Uniqlo. It's serviceable, but it may not quite fit in all the right ways, and it needs some zhuzhing up. I think we need to think about using AI with discernment, because here's what happens when we use a new technology without our eyes wide open. Some of us have learned the hard way. Let's talk about the Facebook. So remember back in The Wayback Machine 2002, all of us were using the Facebook. That's a term for you young ones out there. It used to be called the Facebook. Anyway, we were really naive back then, right? We were all posting pictures of our lunch. We were updating our profiles every five minutes. We put in all of our information without thinking about it. We gave them our birth dates, we gave them our names, we gave them our emails, we gave them our friends names. We unfriend, we told them who we were dating, we told them what we were doing. We friended, we unfriended, we liked, we hearted. Remember when the update status came out? It's complicated. And everyone's like, oh, it's complicated. So exciting. We were really dumb back then. And I remember my mom back then was like, why does anyone care about your lunch? Like, aren't you worried that you're putting all this data out there? And at the time, I was like, oh, mom, you're so old school, you don't understand. Everybody is doing it. So many, many, many data breaches later, we can say mom was right. Have you ever heard that term, that if you can't spot the sucker at the table in the first half hour, then you are the sucker? So how many of us have become suckers at the table that Zuckerberg built? And now they own the data and they're using it to sell us everything from perimenopausal vitamins to Labubus. In other words, stuff you don't want or need. So what's the solution? AI is not a magic pill that will fix all your problems or. Or make you taller or find you a boyfriend, though they are working on that. AI is a tool that must be used with discernment. As I say, with great power comes great responsibility. So to the question of ethics, it's critically important that we keep asking questions of AI. Now, every new technology has pros and cons, and it's critical that leaders like us who lead with our values are part of the conversation and create responsible guardrails. How many of you have AI use policies in your organizations? Raise your hand if you have an AI use policy. Raise it high. I'm curious. Okay, so looks like some of us do. At the end of this session, one of your homework pieces is is you're going to take a free tool that is in your booklet and you're going to go back to your organization to create an AI use policy. For those of you who do have AI use policies, I would use the same tool to go back and revisit. Because the technology moves. When you're developing an AI use policy, here are a couple things I want you to consider. A, is it consistent with our organizational values? B are we fanatical about protecting personal information? So within the AI, you should not be putting in personal data like names or birth dates or addresses or anything that could be used to identify someone? And C, do we always have a human in the loop for content creation? Now, I know that there are some of us, maybe not in this room, but there are some of us who've decided to address the evils of AI by leaning all the way out. Now, obviously that is a personal choice. Though you're probably using a lot of AI without knowing it already. Like, how do you think Netflix knows about your true crime binging habits. But when technology progresses without the participation of people like us. What do I mean by people like us? People who are ethical, people who are mission driven, people who think about things like bias. Then the tech devolves. This is a moment for us to lean in. This is a moment for leadership. The tech and the world do not benefit if we lean out. We need to create a seat at the table or the tech bros win. And I don't know about you, but I don't really want the tech bros to keep winning. As for hallucinations and data slop, it's imperative that humans always remain in the loop. I don't care how good AI is, it still has not been able to determine what what is good and accurate. So everything that is passing through your nonprofit via email, via social, you have to teach people to be discerning about what they're posting finally, as for the not knowing where to begin, we're going to address that right now. So I want to do a quick audit and help me out here. If you're like, holding your hand like this, I actually needed to up high because I can't really see very well. Um, all right, so we're gonna do a hands up audit. 0 to 5. 0 is what even is AI. 5 is I'm building my robot army and anywhere in between. Okay, ready? One, two, three. Hands up. Hold it high. Okay, we got like, oh, we got a robot army over here. That's cool. Four. Looks like we're tending about three or four. Okay, cool, cool. Thank you. I'm here for you. All right, so the thing is, new tools and platforms come on the scene every second of the day, so trying to stay on top of it will literally make you crazy. It's like being a kid in a candy store and trying to eat all the candy. You're just going to end up puking into the toilet. Okay, today we're going to be using ChatGPT. Some of you might be Claude people, some of you might be co pilot people. There are lots of LLMs you can use. LLM stands for large language models in the AI arms race. I find that the LLM differences tend to be pretty nominal after a while. But if you decide after this, I'm a cloud person, via con Dios. I'm here for that. You can use some of the strategies and prompts that we're going to use with ChatGPT in whatever LLM you're using. What we're going to do today is we're going to get our feet wet with AI to solve specific problems in your fundraising shop. Now, I know some of us are building robot armies, so this might feel a little old hat. In that case, I would invite you to enter with a beginner's mind to see what more you could learn. And for some of us who are newer to AI and using AI, lean in. We're just playing. It's not that serious, Right? If you're sitting next to someone who is maybe a beginner and you feel like you can help them, please do so. We're out here, this is a workshop. We're out here learning. Because the truth of the matter is this is a new technology. All of us are beginners, right? This is like. This is like a caveman walking out of the cave for the first time and seeing the sun and be like, oh, big fireball in the sky. We don't really know what to do with this fireball. Yet now, regardless of where you are on your AI journey, if you decide to never use AI again after this or you want to be the second coming of Sam Altman, the truth is, AI has the potential to change lives. And here's the thing. Imagine if we get this right. Imagine if the only thing you did today was found a tool that saved you 15 minutes a day. Well, 15 minutes a day. I did. Math means 65 hours over the course of a year, which is roughly 2.7 days. So what could you do with an extra 2.7 days in your life? Could you actually, I don't know, talk to donors? Could you actually find time to have real conversations? Could you find. Find time to think without worrying that you're falling behind on all of that important admin work? Could you take a vacation? Could you go to your kid's soccer game? Could you finally learn how to play the trumpet? I don't know. Whatever it is you do with your precious life, I hope that you do it to enjoy the messy human experience of being on this planet with other imperfect, messy humans. As far as I know, we only get one bite out of this apple. And as Mary Oliver once said, what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? And I'm pretty sure the answer is not more emails. So we're going to turn this vision into movement today before we get started with the tools. And I know a lot of you are anxious. I'm sure some of you have already downloaded the custom GPTs I prepared for you. We're going to go analog. We're going to do an analog audit of where your pipeline is leaking, because I have a sense that a lot of you may feel like something is not quite working in your system, but you're not quite sure where the problem is. So before we start working with the GPTs, we actually have to be clear about the problem that we are solving. From there, what we'll do is a quick tutorial of ChatGPT for those of you who need a little extra primer on how to use CHAT gbt. And then we're going to take the custom GPTs and solve the problem that you have identified in your donor pipeline. Does that sound good? Yeah. Here for it. Okay. The bottom line is that I don't take for granted that you are all in this room. I know it is a busy time of the year. You're probably up to your eyeballs and giving Tuesday end of the year stuff. So my goal is to make this a worthwhile moment in your life. Anyone else go to conferences and you end up with like a stack of notes that you never look at again. And you just get back to the office like, well, now I have more work, right? That's not what we want to do here today. We want you to walk away with something that you can use tomorrow. Because if this business is about relationships, let's. Let's build relationships today in this room. My goal is I want you to get maximum value and I want you to lean in.