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What the Fundraising
265: Future-Ready Fundraising: Leading with AI and Ethics with Joe Manok
00:45:39
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Foreign.
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Zefy. I have been excited to learn about Zefy and what a game changer it has been for so many organizations. Plus, the platform is 100% free. They even cover credit card and transaction fees. You can set up donations, sell tickets, and manage your donors all in one place. And it only takes 15 minutes to get started. Start fundraising today at Mallorykson.com backslash that's Mallorykson.com z e f F Y.
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There's a lot happening in the world around us, and it almost always comes back to fundraising. So you're running a small nonprofit or running the largest university on the planet. You have like the same thing. Someone added a zero to your goals, or doubled your goals, or added the 20% to your goals because the pressures to raise more money that we can keep our institutions running is only getting higher and higher and the world is moving faster and faster.
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Hey, my name is Mallory and I'm obsessed with helping leaders in the nonprofit space raise money and run their organizations differently. What the Fundraising is a space for real and raw conversations to both challenge and inspire you. Not too long ago, I was in your shoes, uncomfortable with fundraising and unsure of my place in this sector. It wasn't until I started to listen to other experts outside of the fundraising space that I was able to shift my mindset and ultimately shift the way I show up as a leader. This podcast is my way of blending professional and personal development so we, as a collective inside the nonprofit sector can feel good about the work we are doing. Join me every week as I interview some of the brightest minds in the personal and professional development space to help you fundamentally change the way you lead and fundraise. I hope you enjoy this episode, so let's dive in. Welcome everyone. I am so excited to be here today with Joe Minoc. Jo, welcome to what? The fundraising.
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Thank you, Mallory, for having me.
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I mentioned when we were jumping on that I feel a little bit of imposter syndrome getting to have this conversation with you because I'm just so. I'm such an admirer of what you are building and doing in the AI space and the advancement space and bringing those worlds together. So why don't you start just giving everybody a little introduction to you, your background and sort of what you're working on now and where that has, like, come from. Like, what's landed you here.
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Let's start by clarifying that I also have an imposter syndrome because I know you helped create fundraising AI and you just had a Conference with thousands of people and companies talking about that space. So we'll have a mutual admiration conversation in this podcast. I grew up in Beirut in Lebanon during the civil war, and I had no money to go to college. So I had no intention to think about the college experience or the luxury of thinking about the college experience. And someone from the fundraising office at the American University of Beirut convinced me that there are things called scholarships and I can actually apply for college and what have you. And I started in computer science, and to make ends meet, I started an Advancement and I never left. I fell in love with the concept that someone I never met ended up funding my scholarship. He was from New Jersey. He died in the 1950s, and thanks to his and his family's generosity, I got to be here today and talk to you. So by the time I graduated, I worked for six years in Advancement Services at the American University of Beirut, aub. And then I made the decision to move to their Frontline team. And at that time, you had to make a decision, you want to stay in Advancement Services or you want to move to Frontline? And I moved to Frontline in the New York office and I worked in Major Gifts, and then I went to MIT and I worked there for the Principal Gifts team for around like eight years. And I was managing half of the Principal Gifts team there. And then I came to Clark and on three years ago, and I'm in the Advancement Team at Clark. I'm the vice president. And this is the first time in my life I see that my decision to separate and having to choose between being a frontline fundraiser or being an Advancement Services just merged with now feeling like I'm bilingual. I have a computer science background, passionate about AI, but at the same time, I can equally understand what it means in the advancement world and what are the things to use it for and actually stay away from, to keep. To keep our conversations more human and more honest and more straightforward.
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B
So you're a DOT connector.
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I see myself like that. But yeah, I kind of, yeah, I do like it connected.
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I love that. My husband, too, is a scientist by training, a chemical engineer, and now works on the business side around improving drug pricing. And so he also, like, there's a similar theme. And obviously I'm fusing fundraising with now the technical side. So I, I love this. And I do feel like AI actually opens up more of these multidisciplinary spaces too. Before we jump into the AI part of it, I'm curious just for you, like, as an Advancement leader, what are some of the biggest challenges that you're seeing in like, university advancement in general, in supporting your fundraisers and like managers experience, like, what's happening right now.
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Yeah, there's a lot happening in the world around us. And yeah, it almost always comes back to fundraising. So you're running a small nonprofit or running the largest university on the planet, you have like the same thing. Someone added a zero to your goals, or doubled your goals, or added the 20% to your goals. Because the pressures to raise more money so that we can keep our institutions running is only getting higher and higher and the world is moving faster and faster. And we know from your work and from work of our common friend Nathan, that we're in a generosity crisis. So the more we're heading in the opposite direction, where goals are going in one direction and people are heading in a different direction, there is a lot of pressure on the talent, on attracting and retaining the best team members and like actually making them future ready so that if they decide to go somewhere else, they can actually succeed in their new role. And we're not just using the tools and the resources we had like Excel, which were introduced in the 1980s. And at the same time there are people who are stepping up and they're hungry for transformation. The three things I'm seeing is more demand on fundraising, more demand or need for well trained staff members who are respected and treated with respect and appreciated. And at the same time, donors who are craving for transformation or change they can actually impact and see as opposed to just funding business as usual.
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Yeah, I'm curious, like one of the things I've been worried about a lot and we think about and practivated all the time is the like, manager experience in particular. And just like, how many of these managers are getting stuck at the intersection of fundraiser turnover and sort of like speed to onboarding and training needs, managing their own portfolios, really being there to support their team members and now support their team members with a lot more dynamic conversations than like ever existed before. I mean, I've heard more in 2025. Like, I've never talked to a donor about X before and now I am, you know, so I just feel like that's just gotta be putting advancement leaders and like team managers in this like pressure cooker situation.
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I love how you described it. It feels like a pressure cooker and you feel like you always have to think of what you're missing or what you're not defaulting on, but you have to focus more on. I personally struggle with that almost every day. And we're testing around a couple of things in that space. The first thing is in my personal calendar, I'm trying to look at different components that you mentioned and dedicate a day for them so that at least I'm being more thoughtful of how my agenda is filling that day and that at least I'm not missing one of these components, either the managing or the conversations or talking to donors or talking to our stakeholders. Internally, it's still work in progress, but it's like, one notch better than last year. And on the hiring part, we're struggling. We're based in Worcester, Massachusetts, and even when I was at the American University of Beirut, we struggled with the geography, being slightly far from an international airport or from a place where you have, like, 20 other universities or what have you to attract and retain the talent without them having to relocate, or for them to feel like it's a seamless transition for them or to provide them with a meaningful onboarding experience. So one of the things we tested last year and, like, now we're in month 16 in it, is we hired five fundraisers, all at the same time. We gave them an experience that you all start as if it's an academic program. You all start on June 1st. You're going to have an internal coach, an external mentor. You're going to have a professional development experience for five years that starts with fundamentals like of the nonprofit sector, an advanced certificate in major gifts and then an executive certificate in philanthropic fundraising to look at trends like generosity crisis, what's happening internationally in giving, what's happening in regulations, what's happening with wealth transfers and what have you. And on year three of that experience, they get automatically promoted if they get to do certain things during the first three. So it's kind of like taking everything people were struggling with, from someone cares about me in my job to I have a mentor or someone who's helping me with my career. I have a professional journey that, like, kind of moving in a certain direction that I know. And it's clear to me that I'm not a victim of a budget cut, that I was supposed to get a promotion, and now I have to wait three more years because there's a recession and that I have a professional development experience that is unique to me or things that I need. So we started with five. They just completed their first year, and we're introducing technology for them with one of our partners, we work with Evergroup, and instead of managing traditional portfolios of 150 to 250 names, they're each managing 1100 names. And that for a small institution is going to help us almost qualify. Anyone who's given $5 plus and anyone who has the capacity give 20k plus. And then after we did that for those 5200 names, now we're trimming their portfolios to get to a place where they can actually manage it. So we use AI to help them figure out, like, who to talk to. But when they're talking to them, they're sending handwritten notes, they're giving you a voicemail. It's all human to human interaction. And a lot of it is like actual printed material going to your house. But to do that in an efficient way, they're doing like eight touches with six to eight touches with each person. And they're using technology to actually enable them to do that faster than me. Like staring at an Excel file for an hour and a half trying to figure out where to start.
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Yes. Well, I feel so aligned with what you're talking about. I often joke, like, with practivated. I'll say, like, it's AI to improve real human connection. Like that. It doesn't have to be either or. And what does it do that allows us to be able to connect more deeply in more real ways with real people, as real people. So talk to me about that, like in your AI journey, in the way you've sort of investigated or think about different ways of enabling your leaders and your team. How do you think about. And then we're going to talk about all the resources y' all are offering the world around this, but just start smaller, like for you guys, for your team. And how are you thinking about that line between technology and humans?
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Yeah, it all started from, like, I had no intention to use AI. And the reason is we have a CRM that I'm not going to mention the company's name. Like, I'm not trying to take a stab at their product or their work, but we had a product like a CRM and we had a for like probably 20 years at that time they created it was like the best on the market, but still looks like Windows 95. And we just moved right before I joined three years ago, we just moved to the kind of web version of that and that cloud version was announced in 2013. So as a small university at Clark or at the American University of Beirut, I'm always looking at a technology that's well in years old. That's what I can afford. At mit, we had a similar experience because as a large university, you have to Wait until a campaign is over so you can do that pit stop and change your systems because you can't have the luxury while you're racing to raise billions of dollars to stop everything and do a process that would take six to 12 months. So I never worked in the middle, where you get to upgrade your systems and you have enough money to kind of make ends meet, mean. So when we were planning for the campaign, we worked one of, like the top consulting firms in the US and we were like fine tuning for three variables. How can I fine tune technology, fine tune my budget, and fine tune human resources. So human resources, tech resources and financial resources. And we really did great. I thought we did amazing. Obviously, it was my plan and the board reviewed it. The president was like, working with us throughout the whole experience. And then we got to present it to the board and it was heavy on human, like hiring more fundraisers, heavy on the human experience and not doing much with technology, like keeping an eye on ar. And then the president asked me, literally, he's like, are you going to be proud of this campaign when it's over? And I went in a very technical mode. I was like, it's going to be double the amount and half the duration. That's a forex campaign. Don't worry, I'm going to be extremely proud of it. But he said, like, but is this going to be also the best version of a campaign that we can afford right now? And he said, take your time to think about it. If you think it is, let's execute. But before we start executing our plans that we all worked on, let's just pause and just think about that. And if it's a yes or no, I don't care, we can go ahead. So at that time I went to a conference, just similar to your experience, starting fundraising AI. So I went to a conference where everyone is asking that question. And it was the first time it hit me that my background is computer science and advancement. So when we came to AI, to answer your main question is we came to IT and how to enable the fundraisers. How can we give the best experience we can for people since they're used to the Amazon experience when they buy things, they're used to getting things in minutes, they're used to having. Technology is kind of out of the equation. It should be a default at this point. So it felt like things are moving really fast for us to get one software or one answer. And we ended up creating the advancement cloud. So it was a lab for us to experiment with different things. Try different tools and keep up with technology. And it's an opportunity for us to prepare our team and others to be future ready. It takes the form of an online course for free, or a micro credential they can take with the School of Professional Studies or for our team. We do our own internal training and tools that we're using. But it genuinely started from the president's question to say, is this the best version of ourselves, and are we giving our donors the best stewardship or the best cultivation we can? And the answer was, absolutely not. When I got to see it from that perspective.
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Wow. Okay. All right.
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He's not an easy boss to hang out with.
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Oh, my gosh. I mean, I was thinking, what a tremendous leader. Like, my first thought when you said that is to hear, I've got your back, I'll support you. But I'm also here to ask the hard questions and to allow you to throw away the plan. And I just. I actually feel like in the age of AI, we need so many more leaders like that, because I can't imagine everything that you putting that proposal, that plan. And it is so easy at that point for leaders to just either green light it, because there's already been all this, like, you know, costs to putting that together. And to just say, like, let's ask this question, like, in this moment before we put in a whole bunch of other resources. I just love that. Anyway, it's. Love that leader, whoever you are.
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The president of Clark, he's genuinely someone that inspires the hell out of me. Not because he's my boss. He's very difficult as it was. He asked those questions. I have to, like, throw everything back to, like, go back to square one.
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But, yeah, wow, Amazing. Well, okay, so this brings me to an interesting, like, question, sort of as you're thinking about. So you're starting to bring these pieces together, the human enablement, the AI components of it, and then there's all the ethical concerns. Right. So it's interesting because I feel like there's so many layers to how we think about AI when it comes to fundraising. There's the AI that enables the fundraiser. There's the AI that automates something to the donor. There's the way the ethics related to the fundraiser enablement. There's the ethics related to the donor touchpoint. There's the ethics related to the underlying technology and the environmental, global, social concerns associated with that. So how do you, first of all, as you're starting to ask these big questions, just not get paralyzed in the levels of Nuance here.
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The first question that I had to struggle with, like, when I started, because the paralysis goes in either way. You see a tool and you're not sure if it's ethically okay, and you see an ethical framework and you're not sure if it's going to get you to actually get anything done. And unlike going to the cloud 15 years ago, we didn't have those thoughtful conversations back then, or at least I didn't do that in two organizations I moved to. And one of the things that happened in one of my previous jobs is we were looking at due diligence and we're looking at, like, frameworks around what is a gift that we would accept, how we'd accept that gift, where do you draw the line on donor interference and what have you? And we ended up with, like an internal framework. And the first thing I learned is that framework doesn't work for other institutions. It's very institutional specific. So places like fundraising, AI and your work there kind of help us get like an overarching umbrella. But then for each institution, they have different bars or different pathways they have to put that relates to their culture. So the first thing I did, I went on the lowest scale and the highest scale, I wrote down my own personal experience with this. Like, what I am accepting, what I think is a red line for me as a person. So I wrote a personal position statement. And that's something that stays with me. I don't share it with anyone. I update it only once. And so far I've been through to it. I think the only time I violated it is when I created an AI double of myself. And I said that I would never use it with the donors, but I used it in a training course. But aside from having one AI bubble of myself, I stay true to that. And in it, AI double goes into my personal values that I personally wouldn't use it, but it doesn't go into the unethical overall behavior. So in other words, as a leader in advancement, if someone on my team or a colleague of mine wants to use it, I will actually help them and enable them to use it, because that's their personal choice. Now, the things that are decided at the highest level, the institutional level, we went directly to the board of trustees. We went to the starting point was going to the board and saying, we need from you three things. You're the fiduciaries and the donors and the alumni defined for us like kind of, are you okay with us using AI or not? And we got the mandate that we put in our advancement policy to, like, allow us to use AI tools with two caveats. That none of the tools we get to approve ourselves. So currently, if I want to use a CRM, I get to approve that proposal myself. We get, like, a bid. We have a committee internally in advancement, and we get to pick the best product. We get, of course, finance to weigh in. If it's something related to human resources, HR would weigh in, and it would weigh in. In this case, every time we're using an AI tool, we give it away to a group of administrators and people who represent the faculty, and collectively, they decide they're comfortable or they think Clark is comfortable with using that tool. So we get to scout tools, make the best case for them. But similar to gift acceptance, it's not something that lies with us. So that protects for the tough questions and the gray area. And sometimes you see disagreements on some tools, and we put it on hold or we decide to go with, like, the things that are easier. And then once a year, because we're still, like, within the same framework of administrators, once a year, we have the board of trustees, the advancement committee, review all the tools that used and kind of run an audit on that. And if there's something that they think there is a risk, they will run it by the risk and audit committee and make sure that they're comfortable with it or they're tracking it. So we did that, like, personally, at my level, and we started with the board, and now, like, kind of everything in between has been set up over the past two years from staff readiness, their own values, because if one of them has an issue with one of the tools we're using and they don't think all of us should use it, we need to have a very long conversation on that, because that's a tool I'm forcing them to work on, and I can't do that. So I need to make sure that every single person joining the team is comfortable with the tools or that I'm arranging for an alternative for them to fit their values.
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Okay, so you're hitting on this really incredible tension, I think, the relationship between values and ethics. I think that a lot of times we are too quick. And I'm not saying that the ethical side of it is not really critical, but I think oftentimes we feel a value conflict, and we say this is an ethical issue with AI. How do you. Because I think that example of the. I want to call it a doppelganger, but it's not.
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You know, he's way Better than me. He has less accent and, like, that.
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Doesn'T make him better. Oh, no, please. Nobody wants that. No, no. I'll take the real Joe any day. But I'm curious, like, how do you. Because it sounds like that comes up on your team, like, if they don't feel a personal value alignment, like, how do you ensure that something doesn't become that it's clear that. Okay, we hear you. That this. There's a value like component here that we want to talk, we want to create space for, and it doesn't elevate it to an ethics conversation around the technology. How do you separate those things?
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So far, we don't have a framework for it. And I loved how you put them as values and ethics as opposed to like, like the way you clarified it or like you kind of frame them. I really love that I'm going to start using it more frequently and think about it from that lens. One of my favorite books is this guy behind me, Ron Shea. It's called Know what Matters. There are lots of frameworks that I use for that I literally use. Like, I have it behind me because I read the chapter again once a week. And one of the key things, doing anything, like, he's the founder of Panera Bread and Ovompan. He's like the main investor in Tate and Kava and what have you is he looks at the concept essence. So trying to. And it took a lot of time, a lot of energy to create a concept essence for the Advancement team. It's like, what kind of brings us together, what kind of experience people should feel when they meet us, what are our shared values? And when we're hiring someone, you want them to be, like, aligned with that. And then we can disagree on the ethical conversations because what you think is unethical or I think is unethical. It's like you go back to the Supreme Court on things that are legal, even legal issues that seem like black and white. Sometimes you have to arbitrate or have someone mediate and get you to an answer that we collectively have to live by, at least for a period of time. So when we're having conversations, if I feel like there's more than one person who, like, have an issue with it, sometimes I just put the whole tool on hold. But when it feels like it's about values, I always assume that if those are your values that are being, like, affected, you're not going to be yourself uncomfortable working here. So I have to pause more than if I'm making an ethical case about the tool and you're making a counter argument. And then we have the mechanism we both presented or I can present it on both of us fighting and then it goes to that committee and they can decide for flag because remember, we're not making those decisions for ourselves. We're making them on behalf of an institution and we have a mechanism now to have that. So the values part I would lose more sleep on than the ethical part because the values part is how you, it impacts your well being as a person, while the ethical part, it's a decision. Sometimes we have decisions to be made in an institution. The same decision. If you go to another institution, they might accept it or reject it based on their values and their shared experience and what happened to them in the past two to three years.
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Okay, all right, I'm going to force myself to not ask a follow up question here because I want to make sure that we get to. Because not only, not only have you been leading all of this at Clark, but now with global philanthropy, AI and the work that you are doing at Clark to support the use of AI in advancement globally, it seems is there's so much and I'm really excited about this assessment tool that's coming out that you just put out. And I actually think it ties really nicely into what we're talking about here because it involves this matrix of readiness and ethics and so tell everybody a little bit about it.
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Yeah. So the way it came to life, like it's an AI assessment too. The way it came to life is I really hate spending my time at conferences, whether speaking or attending, even though I get to understand the value of it when you actually are there. So whenever I'm planning, I try to avoid them. But then when you're there, you see the value of being with like minded people and having conversations and what have you. But one of the things I noticed recently is like I've been telling our story more and more than usual. And part of it was if I don't get anything out of AI, I'm not affiliated with any company. I don't make money out of this. But if more people are using it, then the more we're having newer people join our team, they're more likely to be AI ready as opposed to we're going to be at some point losing team members who are AI ready and replacing them with colleagues that we need to spend time to onboard them on AI. So it started from that. And then every time we're at a conference or writing about this or posting something People is like, where do I start? Or I'm way advanced than you. There's like at least six or seven organizations that are doing phenomenal work and they're more advanced than us in different ways. And I'm sure there are a lot more, but those are the ones that I know, and they will still ask the same question. It's like, what do you think we should do next? Because of Jack, they ended up, I think, I don't know if you've seen, like, the framework itself. We designed it like, in a very similar way than like a product readiness or even defense readiness. When they have DEFCON 1, DEFCON 2. The idea is to make it as simple as possible that there are four or five stages, four on the readiness, like AI readiness in terms of data, your team, et cetera, and five or four ethics. And you can see where you are like, you're in ad hoc mode, or you're like fully integrated ethics, where it's part of every conversation, every tool. Every time you're thinking about AI, you're kind of thinking about how the ethical part of it plays, plays out. And then we realized that, like, okay, if you're in like stage two, you can move to stage three. So stage two is defined. Those are the things you need to do in stage three. And then at some point we decided to like, plot it. And this is where we got to see that actually if you put you're on like AI Readiness 3 and you're on FX1, then you're low on ethics and high on AI tools. So you're in a quadrant that you're moving faster than the guardrails that you should be putting in. So you're in a very high risk environment. If you're very high on ethics and you're not moving fast enough, you're very idealistic, that's fine. But you're not moving enough as fast as you could be to be future ready, which is the quadrant that we aspire to be at. And the lowest quadrant is when you're low on both, you're vulnerable. And then the question became, but how do I know where I am? It's like, okay, we ended up with this AI assessment tool that asks you 50 questions. That 25 of them are around AI readiness and your data and your team and what have you. And 25 questions around some ethical related environment or environmental questions around ethics. And at the end of it, you'll get your exact score on ethics out of five. Like, you'll be like, say, 2.8 out of five and you'll be like 3.1 out of four. And it will tell you where you are now, what does that mean to you and what's like an expected 90 day journey for you. It's like what is the immediate next step? And it could be you move one step on readiness or one step more on AI ethics or that you pause a little bit to solidify your wins or what you've done so far, like socialize it more, test it more and then like kind of in 90 days figure out what you want to do next.
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B
Okay. I'm kind of scared to ask this question publicly on because it has implications for practivated, but I'm really curious so I'm going to do it anyway. So with Practivated, for example, all of the we don't take PII information inside. There's no sensitive donor data and it's all internal. Right. There's no training models, there's no anything like that. I'm curious about how you all think about the line because I think I've been a little bit surprised because of the lack of AI readiness perhaps or over indexing on fear. I'm not even going to say ethics, fear. They're like certain things that like we'll hear sometimes like oh no, we can't use that because like we don't use AI with donor data. And I'm like, cool, neither do we.
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A
No, no.
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B
But the existence of AI is enough to like activate or trigger these sort of layers. And I know like I love your ethical review process and how that gets, you know, sent up. And I heard what you said about the CRM is a decision that your team makes. So if it's a CRM that now all of a sudden has AI inside of it, but it's not touching anything external. I'm just curious like as you think about that matrix.
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A
Yeah. So your instance, like you get automatically approved because you're encapsulated environment and you're not sharing data with ChatGPT or GROG or like other models. So for something like you, it's a closed environment. We're not sharing sensitive donor information, it's automatically approved. So if I may like just share two examples.
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Yeah.
- [31:29]
A
My health insurance is with Harvard Pilgrim. So that's public. I'm saying, I'm just thinking through like both of them are public instances and my 401k is with Tia Cref. When we started the AI conversation, both of them were hacked. So all my medical record was hacked or was vulnerable. It's an internationally Known company, it's not owned by Clark, but like we're a client. And my investment portfolio and how I think about my 401k, which is small amount but still my pattern of how I move things around, it's there. Both of them are not related to me using AI. I'm not getting AI recommendations on me benefiting to see that actually those symptoms I'm getting on a regular basis for this particular infection or disease or, or whatever you might have is actually a rare disease that only one in a million people have. An AI model can predict that based on the millions of people who have the same insurance or are on the same platform. And I'm not getting any AI related investment recommendations. What's happening is my data is on the cloud and someone stole it and now they're using AI to better understand me. But I'm not getting that courtesy or the luxury of using those AI tools myself. So our fear of AI have got us to a place that actually if you're using a CRM or anything that's on the cloud, if you're worried that like Google is going to use my Google Drive and model it, like even if I don't trust them, I couldn't put my data there. That's the cloud question. That's not an AI readiness question. So that's one. And the second thing that I notice is you see like data from two years ago, I think, or a year and a half ago from bcg, Boston Consulting Group, where they talk about like half of their team did the survey where they did half of their team use ChatGPT? I think four at the time. And the other half did not use it. And they tell you about 20% more efficient and 15% better quality and what have you. I forgot the exact numbers, but was within the range of 10, 20% on each. Different. And then you see a similar survey done this April by Procter and Gamble, completely different industry, same methodology. Half of the team used ChatGPT and the other one didn't use it. And in some cases an AI enabled human, a human who has AI capabilities or AI tools they can use, are almost two FTEs. So when I'm evaluating the ethics of using a tool, I sometimes also evaluate the ethics of not using it because I'm a nonprofit. And if I can give you double the efficiency or I can do something like I can do double the work with the same stuff that I have and give you double the experience or steward your money in a better way, you deserve that treatment. This is like Public trust as opposed to like, I'm trying to make more profit or I don't want to take that risk. It's like, yes, those are very important and I would never take a risk with other data. But also when I'm evaluating if I should use AI or not, I should look at the ethics of not using it.
- [34:33]
B
I mean, I think that I really appreciate that, like, framing, because I do think it's been interesting. I got involved in fundraising AI because I was very afraid of AI. Like, I never thought I would be where doing what I'm doing today. And I would say that I'm doing it with a very hefty amount of skepticism, fear, discomfort, all of those things. And I think it's been really interesting because my background and sort of like nonprofit leadership has been more in the, like, it has been in the environmental space for years. And it's been really interesting watching my community's reaction to me embracing AI. And I get emails and every week, like, from people very concerned about what's happening to me. And the thing that I'm always saying to folks is, like, listen, first of all, AI is here and it is going to change everything around us. And I think there are a lot of ways that we can decide. Like, I own a car too, and it happens to be a 2013 hybrid, and I'm not NASCAR racing, but I am using my most responsible version to do what I need to do to make the world a better place. And I worry that the binary way that sometimes we're thinking about, which is why I love this framework so much, because I worry that the binary way we're thinking about it is like having a bunch of people think that they can keep their horse and buggy when highways are being paved. And we're not going to even have access to access to the infrastructure around us if we don't start to find ways to intentionally and ethically engage 100%.
- [36:24]
A
I love how you framed it because also we were once in a conference and at least like three or four people were concerned about the climate aspect of it. And I agree with them, like, that's a heavy cost we need to look at. But then I asked, like, how many others are also concerned? 90% of people raise their hand. Then I asked how many people walked to this conference. It was in New York. We all used like, not private jets, but like, we still flew in, didn't have to be there in person. We could have asked each other to record it and send it on like a vhs so we don't we save or CP ROM to save, also using zoom. But like, when we're doing video conferencing, that takes a lot of power to, like, turn the videos and send it and transmit it. When we're doing webinars, we're making that decision. When we're deciding to go in person and light up buildings and use public transportation or private transportation, we're making that decision. So to your point, like, it's new technology, people are going to evaluate it as if it has to be either perfectly idealistic or don't use it. I look at it from the perspective of market. If 90% of the market is not the nonprofit sector and they're going to use it anyway, then if we stay out of it and not be part of the conversation, then it's going to be designed for the market or for the big companies or not take those ethical considerations into account. I would love to believe I don't have evidence, but I would love to believe that places like fundraising, AI is a better place because of people like you who are skeptical or worried or coming in with questions. And the best thing we can do right now is to ask those questions. There's at least two questions you asked today. I need to go back to them and think through from a different lens or a different perspective. And the more I'm listening to those conversations and great podcasts like yours, like, you take notes and you reevaluate some of your thinking, and if you feel you're moving too fast, you can pause. But we cannot not use technology because of that. To your point, we can, like, just go back to farming. And like, everything else is, even having a cow is harmful for the environment. So maybe we can all be vegetarian and not connect with each other. And I go to that fundamental basic mode, which is fine as well, but I personally can't be part of that.
- [38:38]
B
Yeah, right. People who are concerned about me, I haven't eaten meat since I was 11 years old. So you can take that into your evaluation. But I.
- [38:47]
A
You can take those carbon footprint. Like, I love that.
- [38:54]
B
I'm offsetting my AI use with my vegetarianism.
- [38:59]
A
I love that.
- [39:00]
B
But I think that this is, like, these are the nuanced conversations we have to have. Life is filled with tons of choices. And as like, going back to the very beginning of this conversation when we were talking about, like, what are advancement teams up against right now? Right? They are asking to do more with the. Being asked to do more with less. You know, donors are asking for more. And I think this comes back to the core of it also, like, yeah, I'm not gonna get on a horse and buggy or move to the woods in the middle of nowhere. But you know what? I do want more human connection. I want more conversations like this. I want more like laughter in person with people. I do want more analog life. And I actually think that technology is a way that we get deeper connection in person and touch points. And our donors want that. I believe fundraisers want that. I think when fundraising feels better to us, it feels better to our donors. And so I just think, like, we have to get out of this like it's technology or human and be like, how does technology bring the best parts of our humanity forward?
- [40:08]
A
I can't agree more. And I think that's going to be the debate over the next five years until at least we settle a little bit on our view of this new technology. And then it's going to keep moving really fast. And the tougher questions are going to be probably five years from now, what do we do when the machines are doing most of our work? And I had that conversation with ChatGPT for a few hours the other day and it was a very engaging conversation, but a little scary. It's like, so what do you do when you have artificial general intelligence? So the machines are starting to be self aware and doing much more complex things and much more complex math and, and what have you. And at some point we need to figure out, like, we might end up with having universal income for guaranteeing that everyone who's gonna lose their jobs, that they have like the basics, that people are trained to use this technology. And that's why we're hoping to be doing that first. And like, at least people who work with us and our alumni, people in our space are catching up as much as we can get them to catch up. But at some point the tougher questions are going to be like, how do we maintain that human to human connection? Because we know what happens when people just have money or even not have enough money, but not have a job or a purpose. So if we're heading towards radical automation, with 10% of us as Americans unemployed, we ended up with the greatest recession in 100 years. So we could get to those numbers in three to five years just because of technology moving, it's not because the housing market crashed and we can get those jobs back. So we need to start training our environments to be future ready and people like you are helping us get there. And I really hope you keep broadcasting that message so that more of us get the right training and the right opportunities to actually get up to speed with this technology.
- [41:58]
B
Well, thank you for saying that and thank you for the work that you're doing. I want everybody, we'll make sure this is dropped in the show notes, but I think this assessment tool like Run Don't Walk to do this, because I think that question, like you said, where do I start? How do I think about where I'm at? How do I even benchmark where I'm at? I think because so many people are operating in silos, maybe not even with cohesion in their institution, like getting some sense of where they're at and what's next for them or for their organization. Just, I'm going to take the assessment as soon as we get off of this.
- [42:35]
A
And so just like with many things in AI, this is like one of the things that will get better over time. So I'm hoping that this is version one. We're already starting to work on version two as well.
- [42:44]
B
Well, I'm so excited. I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing, and I'm so grateful for the questions that you're asking and the openness with which you're sharing your own journey and your own challenges and opportunities. I just think there's so much for folks to learn from everything you're doing as a leader, everything Clark's doing. So just thank you so much.
- [43:06]
A
So grateful, Mallory, for hosting me and also for an amazing show. I'm sorry for the audience that they're going to have a terrible episode with me. Usually the quality is much better and I love, like, almost every single episode is amazing.
- [43:20]
B
It's perfect. Your quality is perfect. Okay. Real Joe. All day, every day.
- [43:26]
A
Okay. All right.
- [43:30]
B
Thank you.
- [43:31]
A
Thank you.
- [43:37]
B
I hope today's episode inspired or challenged you to think differently. For additional takeaways, tips, show notes, and more about our amazing guest and sponsors, head on over to Mallorykson.com podcast and if you didn't know, hosting this podcast isn't the only thing I do every day. I coach, guide, and help fundraisers and leaders just like you. Inside of my program, the Power Partners Formula Collective. Inside the program, I share my methods, tools and experiences that have helped me fundraise millions of dollars and feel good about myself in the process. To learn more about how I can help you, visit Mallorykson.com PowerPartners last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to to encourage you to share it with a friend you know would benefit or leave a review. I'm so grateful for all of you and the good, hard work you're doing to make our world a better place. I can't wait to see you in the next episode. Fundraising is hard.
- [44:39]
A
Every donor conversation carries pressure, and most fundraisers are expected to just figure it out through trial and error.
- [44:47]
B
That's why we built Practivated, the first ever AI powered donor conversation simulator made just for fundraisers. It's a safe, judgment free space to practice your pitch, refine your storytelling, and.
- [45:00]
A
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- [45:04]
B
Because conversations move missions forward, with Practivated, you and your team can practice anytime, get real feedback instantly, and walk into donor meetings ready, not rehearsed, but prepared.
- [45:16]
A
See how practice changes everything? Try practivated today at www.practivated.com and start building confidence. One conversation at a.