WEBVTT 1 00:00:03.590 --> 00:00:07.110 Neon One Webinars: Hey everybody, it's exciting to see you all log in. 2 00:00:07.420 --> 00:00:18.410 Neon One Webinars: Started a little early, and I was hoping that you all could do me a favor. Could you, if you are here, please let me know if you can see me, hear me, and see my screen? 3 00:00:18.840 --> 00:00:36.989 Neon One Webinars: I would appreciate it immensely. One of the fun side effects of fully remote work is that, oh, good. Thank you, Julietta. There's not a coworker to, like, stick their head in my office and give me a thumbs up, so I really appreciate that. 4 00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:51.590 Neon One Webinars: We are going to get started here pretty quickly, but in the meantime, do me a favor and let me know, where you're tuning in from. Let me know where that is. I am in sunny Central Florida, it is extremely hot. 5 00:00:51.950 --> 00:01:05.359 Neon One Webinars: I always like to think that the minute it flips over to September, that the weather is going to start cooling off, and I am wrong every year, so… Kentucky, Delaware… I bet it's starting to get nice up in Delaware. 6 00:01:08.210 --> 00:01:10.479 Neon One Webinars: Very cool. Very cool. 7 00:01:13.550 --> 00:01:20.319 Neon One Webinars: If we're lucky, the traditional Florida thunderstorms will not hit until after 8 00:01:20.450 --> 00:01:33.519 Neon One Webinars: After this session, last time I did, a webinar, there was quite an impressive clap of thunder that everyone got to experience with me. Oh, Ashton tuning in from Alaska, nice and cool up there, I bet. 9 00:01:33.780 --> 00:01:41.779 Neon One Webinars: I… I'm envious of your cool now. I am impressed by your resilience in the wintertime. I am always… 10 00:01:42.090 --> 00:02:01.769 Neon One Webinars: a little intimidated by super, super cold temperatures. That is probably because I do live in Florida. I experienced a minus 14 in Chicago one time, and that felt extremely personal. That felt like that was aimed at me specifically. Ted, tuning in from Ontario. Welcome, Ted. 11 00:02:04.980 --> 00:02:06.490 Neon One Webinars: Alright. 12 00:02:09.570 --> 00:02:14.390 Neon One Webinars: I'm gonna give everybody a couple minutes to log in, and then we'll go ahead and get started. 13 00:02:21.810 --> 00:02:31.950 Neon One Webinars: Actually, while we wait, one of the things I'm going to ask in a little bit is what you are currently using AI to accomplish at your organization. 14 00:02:31.950 --> 00:02:46.880 Neon One Webinars: If you are using any kind of AI tool, generative, predictive, Agentic, whatever, could you let me know? I'm gonna try to get a grasp on what y'all are actually doing, so I can kind of tailor my recommendations to you a little bit. 15 00:02:46.940 --> 00:03:01.070 Neon One Webinars: I, for example, use it primarily to speed up the content creation process. So, I use a lot of generative and chat stuff. I, like Melissa called out, grant writing and social media text suggestions. 16 00:03:01.200 --> 00:03:05.789 Neon One Webinars: Huge fan of the fact that she sorted suggestions there. 17 00:03:05.970 --> 00:03:22.560 Neon One Webinars: I've done that too. I gave, an AI tool a large piece of content, and then asked it to suggest, specific topics for social media posts, which is really cool, and actually really effective. It came up with some things I hadn't thought of. 18 00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:29.110 Neon One Webinars: Charles is using it to write grants, analyze donor patterns, and social media. Cool, cool. Social media is a big one. 19 00:03:30.810 --> 00:03:40.969 Neon One Webinars: create board presentations, Charles, that's a really good one. I'm actually curious, do you use it to create the, the slides themselves? I… 20 00:03:41.120 --> 00:03:43.720 Neon One Webinars: Love using, like. 21 00:03:43.970 --> 00:03:57.709 Neon One Webinars: AI tools to help me think through structuring presentations, but I have not successfully used those tools to put together slides that look nice. Everything it gives me is really not what I'm looking for. 22 00:03:58.770 --> 00:04:11.339 Neon One Webinars: Oh, Claude has been creating nice slides. I'll have to experiment with that. I have been making slide decks for so long and can do it so quickly that it takes as long for me to, like. 23 00:04:11.680 --> 00:04:16.910 Neon One Webinars: polish slides through prompting as it does to just create them myself. So, thank you for sharing that. 24 00:04:17.560 --> 00:04:34.499 Neon One Webinars: Alright, everybody, it is 1 o'clock. I want to go ahead and get started. Thank you for being here. I know that, especially now, as we're getting into, like, the beginning of the year in fundraising season, I know that your time is super important and very valuable, and I really appreciate you being here with me. 25 00:04:34.500 --> 00:04:42.240 Neon One Webinars: We're gonna jump into this, this topic on how to get better results from the AI tools that you're using, but I want to go over some quick housekeeping things. 26 00:04:42.240 --> 00:05:02.789 Neon One Webinars: If we haven't met yet, hello, my name is Abby. I am a researcher and speaker here at Neon One, and I've been really passionate about understanding what donors want from the nonprofits they support, and what you can do to kind of deliver those experiences to them. Today, we're going to talk about a slightly different topic. We're going to talk about 27 00:05:02.880 --> 00:05:17.920 Neon One Webinars: artificial intelligence, the technology, and how you can get some better results from it. I am actually delighted to see that so many of you are already using these tools, and I'm excited to learn from you, even as I share what has worked, worked for me. 28 00:05:18.320 --> 00:05:29.030 Neon One Webinars: Just a quick note, today, we're really talking about artificial intelligence tools in general. We're not talking specifically about tools in Neon One. 29 00:05:29.030 --> 00:05:43.360 Neon One Webinars: That said, we do have some AI-powered tools that are coming your way. We are being really intentional about testing them thoroughly, working with nonprofits to test them, and then we will start making them publicly available. 30 00:05:43.600 --> 00:05:54.819 Neon One Webinars: That said, if you are a Neon One user and you have questions about that, let me know, and I mean, the biggest thing I can tell you is just to keep your eye out for feature announcements. 31 00:05:54.820 --> 00:06:16.970 Neon One Webinars: But, if you are not a Neon One user, everything that we're going to talk about here today applies to you, too. Everything we're going to talk about is high level in general about how to approach this technology. We're not going to dive deep into a product or feature specifically. So, just to set some expectations there, everything that we're going to talk about today is applicable to everyone, regardless of the system. 32 00:06:17.060 --> 00:06:30.879 Neon One Webinars: That you're using. You have probably picked up, especially if you were one of the folks who logged in a little early, I like talking to you, and I love it when you talk to me. So I'm gonna ask you to talk to me in the chat. 33 00:06:31.020 --> 00:06:45.759 Neon One Webinars: It makes me feel like I'm not speaking into the digital void. That said, do please talk to me if you have something to share. I learn from you as much as I share what I've learned, but that does mean the chat can go really fast. 34 00:06:45.760 --> 00:06:53.830 Neon One Webinars: So, if you have a question that you want to make sure I see, if we have time at the end, I'm going to look in the Q&A box. 35 00:06:53.830 --> 00:06:59.259 Neon One Webinars: So use that Q&A box to ask questions, because the chat… as much as I try to keep my eye on the chat. 36 00:06:59.360 --> 00:07:02.630 Neon One Webinars: It can move fast, and I don't want to miss what you have to say. 37 00:07:02.990 --> 00:07:11.820 Neon One Webinars: Okay, so before we get started, I want to just kind of figure out where y'all are on using AI-powered tools, get your comfort level. 38 00:07:11.860 --> 00:07:22.469 Neon One Webinars: And then, so I'm gonna ask, actually, a couple questions. The first one, though, is how do you feel about how AI is working for your organization right now? 39 00:07:22.470 --> 00:07:39.010 Neon One Webinars: I probably fall somewhere between David and Luke. I've gotten into a pretty good groove of using a couple of tools to do things like, turn webinar transcripts into blog articles. You'll see a blog article on Neon One's blog in a couple days, based on this session. 40 00:07:39.220 --> 00:07:55.650 Neon One Webinars: I automate some of my really tedious workflows, so I don't have to spend a ton of time, like, moving data around or formatting things. I know a lot of you are using AI to kind of, build your social media content. 41 00:07:55.680 --> 00:08:08.380 Neon One Webinars: But I know also that there is a lot of stuff that I don't know how to do yet. So how… one, how do you feel about how these tools are working for you? Creating a blog from a transcript is an interesting idea. 42 00:08:08.390 --> 00:08:13.620 Neon One Webinars: Charles, it's really cool, and I'm gonna go into a little bit how I do that using these tools. 43 00:08:13.620 --> 00:08:30.209 Neon One Webinars: The other thing I was gonna ask, if you haven't already shared what you have been doing with AI, I would love to know. I'm a writer, and I'm a… I do research, but I'm… so I mostly use AI to, like, double-check me on data analysis. 44 00:08:30.440 --> 00:08:38.419 Neon One Webinars: Or, I use it for a lot of writing or content repurposing. I would love to know what you all are doing. 45 00:08:38.419 --> 00:08:53.070 Neon One Webinars: Oh, Judy Interesting has been doing, research on specific topics. That's really interesting. I, I've only recently started using those tools. I've started using Perplexity to do some research. 46 00:08:53.070 --> 00:08:56.779 Neon One Webinars: That has been quite handy. I've had mixed results. 47 00:08:57.010 --> 00:09:13.320 Neon One Webinars: With using it to do… with other tools to do research, but, I also come from the generation where I learned how to use encyclopedias, so I know I'm very much in my comfort zone when I'm doing research by hand. 48 00:09:13.450 --> 00:09:29.399 Neon One Webinars: Okay, as those responses roll in, I want to talk about why this is important at all, and why I want to get a feel for how you are using it. And the reason I wanted all these things is because of a study put out by a company called Virtuous that I thought was really interesting. 49 00:09:29.510 --> 00:09:40.370 Neon One Webinars: They found that 92% of nonprofits are actively using AI, but only 7% are seeing any real strategic results from those tools. 50 00:09:40.390 --> 00:09:57.469 Neon One Webinars: And that disconnect can be extremely frustrating, and I'm actually curious if that resonates with you. Are you experiencing something… something similar? Are you using it, but you're not really seeing, positive improvements? How is that… how is that going for you? 51 00:09:59.500 --> 00:10:12.960 Neon One Webinars: These tools can be super interesting, but only if you know exactly what you want to accomplish with them. And frankly, that's true for any tool. It is not the case exclusively for artificial intelligence. I think this is true for any tool. 52 00:10:12.960 --> 00:10:25.839 Neon One Webinars: If you don't have a solid plan for how you're going to use a tool, and how you're going to use it to make a difference at your organization, you may end up making more work for yourself, or you may spend more time on tasks than you really need to. 53 00:10:25.840 --> 00:10:38.379 Neon One Webinars: I've certainly done this, we all probably have. I got all excited about, the potential of a new tool. I jumped into it without really thinking through how I was going to use it, and I will just tell you. 54 00:10:38.380 --> 00:10:50.419 Neon One Webinars: Transparently, the first several times I tried to use an AI tool to repurpose a blog article into different pieces of content or whatever, it did a terrible job. It was a mess, and I spent a ton of time fixing it. 55 00:10:50.420 --> 00:11:08.799 Neon One Webinars: I love that some of y'all are using it to capture meeting notes, and Angela, I love this. We use it to provide answers to questions from our community. It uses our content and gives citations to our own content for them, and I love the note about citations there. That is absolutely critical. 56 00:11:09.710 --> 00:11:27.329 Neon One Webinars: If… if you are experiencing this disconnect, if you are feeling like you are using these tools, but you're not necessarily getting the results that you were looking for, there are lots of reasons that that can happen, but there are lots of steps you can take to change that dynamic a little bit. 57 00:11:27.430 --> 00:11:39.430 Neon One Webinars: this is true, again, this is true of any tool, not just AI, but we're going to focus on AI tools today. So I want to go over some of the steps that you can take to prevent that from happening, and then, full disclosure, I've kind of alluded to this already. 58 00:11:39.470 --> 00:11:56.870 Neon One Webinars: All of these are steps that I take, and the people on my team have taken ourselves, so I'm not even… I'm not talking to you as an AI expert right now. I'm hoping that we can have a collaborative conversation about steps that we can all take to use these tools to make our lives easier instead of creating more work for us. 59 00:11:57.080 --> 00:11:57.940 Neon One Webinars: Okay. 60 00:11:58.130 --> 00:12:22.000 Neon One Webinars: First thing is to come up with a game plan, and if… it sounds like a lot of you are already doing this, and I love that, so I hope that you share this with other folks on your team, too. This sounds extremely intuitive, but if you are like me, you may actually have skipped this step, especially in the days, like, the early days of AI. Do you guys remember when ChatGPT launched? 61 00:12:22.090 --> 00:12:25.849 Neon One Webinars: The frenzy around this technology was 62 00:12:25.910 --> 00:12:37.670 Neon One Webinars: pretty hard to escape. I think it still kind of is hard to escape. And the push to get people to adopt these tools was so prevalent that a lot of folks, myself included. 63 00:12:37.670 --> 00:12:46.010 Neon One Webinars: Started looking for ways to use the tools instead of evaluating the work we were already doing, and then discerning where the tools would fit. 64 00:12:46.300 --> 00:12:50.580 Neon One Webinars: So, I'm gonna close my door because my Roomba is about to join the party. 65 00:12:52.970 --> 00:12:59.929 Neon One Webinars: So, I had talked with… speaking of robots, the Roomba's making my life very interesting today. I had talked… 66 00:13:00.020 --> 00:13:14.170 Neon One Webinars: folks like you who are in similar positions. So if you are like me, if you got a tool and then you looked for a way to use it instead of having a problem and finding a tool to be the solution, you are in great company. 67 00:13:14.170 --> 00:13:21.410 Neon One Webinars: So the first step to getting a great result from any tool is to put down the tool, if you already have it in your hands. 68 00:13:21.410 --> 00:13:28.380 Neon One Webinars: And then have a conversation with the folks at your organization about what you actually want to accomplish. 69 00:13:28.410 --> 00:13:36.660 Neon One Webinars: So, talk with other people on your team if you have one. Out of curiosity, how many of you are working on teams, and how many of you are kind of solo shops? 70 00:13:36.900 --> 00:13:39.120 Neon One Webinars: I'm actually really curious about that. 71 00:13:39.360 --> 00:13:55.599 Neon One Webinars: So, talk through what problems you want to solve, what outcomes you want to make possible, and then choose a tool. Emily's got one employee, you've got a team of seven, seven, four, okay, we got a good mix. 72 00:13:55.900 --> 00:14:02.980 Neon One Webinars: This is very cool. We've got all other volunteers, solo, distant team members to help. Okay, we have a really good group. 73 00:14:03.610 --> 00:14:20.580 Neon One Webinars: So, those of you who are working solo have a lot, a lot more hats to wear, and I am sure you will get a lot of creative ideas about how you can use these tools to, kind of accelerate your work so you can focus on more meaningful things. 74 00:14:20.800 --> 00:14:36.429 Neon One Webinars: moving from, how can I use AI in my day-to-day work, to what problems do I want to solve, and can I use AI to help me do that, is a subtle shift, but it is a really important one, and it was a huge game changer for me, if I'm being honest with you. 75 00:14:36.480 --> 00:14:55.250 Neon One Webinars: And that all kind of sounds quite vague, so here's what I mean. So, when ChatGPT first hit, I read a lot of hot takes about how it was coming for my job as a writer, and how I was going to fall behind if I didn't use it. So, one of the first things I did is I signed up for an account shortly after it went live. 76 00:14:55.590 --> 00:15:12.479 Neon One Webinars: And then I realized I didn't actually know what I wanted it to do for me. It wasn't until later, after I had sat down and thought through my day-to-day work, that I realized that ChatGPT was not the tool that I needed. I needed something different. 77 00:15:12.480 --> 00:15:26.910 Neon One Webinars: So, first, think about what you actually want to achieve. If you want to speed up the process of content creation, like, if you want to do what I mentioned, and you want to turn a webinar transcript into a blog article. 78 00:15:26.910 --> 00:15:27.740 Neon One Webinars: Or… 79 00:15:27.740 --> 00:15:38.689 Neon One Webinars: A lot of you are using AI for social media content, like, if you have a blog article and you want to spin up different Facebook posts that point to it, something like ChatGPT may be the best tool for you. 80 00:15:38.790 --> 00:15:46.530 Neon One Webinars: But if you want to understand your donors better, ChatGPT is not going to be the right tool for you. Something like the tools in your CRM might be better. 81 00:15:46.530 --> 00:16:04.290 Neon One Webinars: If you want to improve your website performance, you have a number of different options. You could use, something like Gemini to evaluate a page and make suggestions about how you can make it perform better, or you may have a built-in tool in your CMS, and you may want to use both. 82 00:16:04.350 --> 00:16:13.029 Neon One Webinars: It really depends on what you're doing, and the tool that you choose for a specific job may not be the tool that you have right now. 83 00:16:13.860 --> 00:16:30.759 Neon One Webinars: once you and everyone on your team, or once you, if you're one of our solo practitioners here, are working on the same goals, you can work together on making your team much more effective using these tools. So this is, frankly, this is something that I did with the people on my team, we all did this together. So. 84 00:16:30.830 --> 00:16:35.159 Neon One Webinars: First, we started working together to figure out what our day-to-day jobs looked like. 85 00:16:35.350 --> 00:16:46.730 Neon One Webinars: Then we figured out where we could maybe use AI tools to speed things up, and as importantly, we decided where we did not want AI tools to be involved at all. 86 00:16:46.830 --> 00:17:06.090 Neon One Webinars: So we decided that the biggest opportunity for us was to use an AI tool, we used an LLM, to take content we had already written and then turn it into different content formats. Those of you who are doing social media content planning are doing something very similar to what we did. 87 00:17:06.310 --> 00:17:18.440 Neon One Webinars: So once we knew what problem we wanted to solve, we started comparing notes on what worked for us and what didn't. And I hope that you guys are doing this, those of you who are working with teams, I hope that this is happening for you. 88 00:17:18.930 --> 00:17:35.119 Neon One Webinars: There are 3 writers, we all started comparing notes on what worked and what didn't. We all decided together to… this was a little while ago, we decided to train our individual tools on Neon One's brand and style guidelines. You can do that for your organization. 89 00:17:35.120 --> 00:17:41.110 Neon One Webinars: And then we trained them also on our individual writing styles. What that helped us accomplish 90 00:17:41.220 --> 00:17:51.189 Neon One Webinars: was create content that was closer to a finished product than just our untrained models could produce. So that ended up saving us a lot of time. 91 00:17:51.280 --> 00:18:05.820 Neon One Webinars: Now, that was a couple years ago, and that was when these tools first started becoming available. As these tools became more common, our company decided that they wanted to provide tools to us. So we moved from having our own personal accounts 92 00:18:06.080 --> 00:18:22.710 Neon One Webinars: To moving into a company-owned account, and that means we have better trained tools, we can repurpose our content more quickly, we can train it more effectively, and now we have a pretty effective way to create content and repurpose it in a way that doesn't 93 00:18:23.480 --> 00:18:37.380 Neon One Webinars: we don't have to worry about plagiarism, because it's all content that we've done ourselves, and we are able to spot check each other much more frequently. So, as we went through each of these steps, we saved more and more time, and we got better and better results. 94 00:18:37.530 --> 00:18:53.650 Neon One Webinars: And these are really practical steps that you can take at your own organization. Now, I want to know, actually, have you done any of this? Those of you who are working with, volunteer board members I see Ted works with, or got other volunteers, distant team members, closed team members. 95 00:18:53.650 --> 00:18:59.060 Neon One Webinars: Are you kind of doing this? Are you comparing notes, or is everybody kind of operating in their own… own realm? 96 00:18:59.110 --> 00:19:08.499 Neon One Webinars: I'm curious about how you guys are doing that. It's only really been in the last few months that, that the writers at Neon One have all been… all been using the same tool. 97 00:19:09.090 --> 00:19:24.070 Neon One Webinars: As you're kind of operationalizing this, as you're moving from independent usage to more cohesive, operationalized usage, you're going to start making decisions about the tools that you want to use and how you're going to use them. 98 00:19:24.070 --> 00:19:37.010 Neon One Webinars: But, and this is really important, and this is a hard conversation to have at a tech company, because everyone here loves tech, it is really important to understand when you are not going to use AI. AI is not the right tool for 99 00:19:37.010 --> 00:19:38.510 Neon One Webinars: For every instance. 100 00:19:38.670 --> 00:20:03.379 Neon One Webinars: So talk through this, and then have these conversations regularly, because as you guys… I see a lot of… or I see folks that are all kind of operating in their own realms. As you all start bringing everything together and having these conversations, your goals and your needs are going to change, and you guys are gonna learn from each other. So have these conversations frequently, because everybody will be a lot more effective, and 101 00:20:03.380 --> 00:20:12.050 Neon One Webinars: The experience that you and your supporters will have will be a lot more cohesive if you're all kind of working together and having these conversations regularly. 102 00:20:13.040 --> 00:20:28.880 Neon One Webinars: Now, here is, my favorite, my favorite part of this topic. The next thing you can do to get the best possible results from any of this tech usage is to take steps to protect the trust your community puts in you. Out of curiosity. 103 00:20:29.140 --> 00:20:42.600 Neon One Webinars: How do you all feel emotionally if you see an email or a blog article that you know is generated entirely by AI and not really touched by another human person? 104 00:20:43.090 --> 00:21:01.129 Neon One Webinars: I had this happen to me regular… er, recently. I got an automated email from, I think it was my eye clinic, and they… it was obviously an AI-generated email, and they had gotten some of my information incorrect, and I immediately trusted them a little less. 105 00:21:01.130 --> 00:21:09.329 Neon One Webinars: Because, I mean, it was quite an egregious mistake, in the information that they sent me. So, it might sound a little dramatic. 106 00:21:09.330 --> 00:21:14.269 Neon One Webinars: To talk about preserving trust when we're talking about a technology tool. 107 00:21:14.490 --> 00:21:22.979 Neon One Webinars: However, the same thing that can make artificial intelligence as a technology really valuable, its ability to 108 00:21:23.140 --> 00:21:36.990 Neon One Webinars: write things for us, its ability to automate things for us, its ability to help us make decisions, can also make it very dangerous. It's dangerous because successful fundraising relies on the people in your community 109 00:21:37.120 --> 00:21:44.390 Neon One Webinars: Feeling personally connected to your cause, to the work that you do, and to the community that benefits from your work. 110 00:21:44.540 --> 00:22:00.200 Neon One Webinars: So, when donors encounter situations where that sense of trust is eroded, that can have a negative impact on their willingness to get involved by donating or other ways. So, and I wanted to call out that Emily put in here. 111 00:22:00.490 --> 00:22:14.679 Neon One Webinars: Emily is annoyed when it appears to be all AI and no personal touch, and then Lorraine called out a concern about donor privacy, and this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say that we need to be intentional about preserving trust. 112 00:22:16.240 --> 00:22:27.310 Neon One Webinars: And I love that Linda called this out. Whether it is a person or AI, critical thinking and review of information is key for me to accept it or not, and I think that is a perfect segue into what I want to talk about here. 113 00:22:27.580 --> 00:22:38.279 Neon One Webinars: As you adopt, again, this is true of any tool, but especially this type of tool. Any technology is important to a vet, but especially AI technology. 114 00:22:38.280 --> 00:22:48.500 Neon One Webinars: Keep in mind that any tool you adopt, AI-powered or not, should help you reinforce the personal connections that your community has to your organization and the community you serve. 115 00:22:49.040 --> 00:23:05.430 Neon One Webinars: Any tool you have should reinforce those connections. They should never, ever replace those connections. And I love that so many of you have called that out. There… you can absolutely use this new technology to build these connections, but you need to be intentional about how you do it. 116 00:23:05.570 --> 00:23:09.939 Neon One Webinars: So, anytime you consider whether or not a particular tool 117 00:23:10.470 --> 00:23:21.319 Neon One Webinars: is the best option for you to complete one of your tasks. Run through this quick mental checklist. I… you… I've been doing this for a little while now, and you're gonna get to the point that this just happens automatically. 118 00:23:21.400 --> 00:23:35.130 Neon One Webinars: Are you making personal connections with your community more effectively because of this use case, or is it kind of preventing personal connection? Is it going to cause friction? Is it going to cause that annoyance or concern that some of you have cited? 119 00:23:35.750 --> 00:23:51.189 Neon One Webinars: Are you going to be able to accomplish this job while keeping your donor's information safe? That is absolutely critical right now, especially because everyone is very aware of donor privacy and just data privacy in general. 120 00:23:51.430 --> 00:23:59.820 Neon One Webinars: Are you going to be able to ensure that everything you accomplish with this tool, or create with this tool, is trustworthy and factual? 121 00:24:00.780 --> 00:24:19.450 Neon One Webinars: If you cannot guarantee that you are protecting your donors and the connections that they have to your cause, AI isn't the right tool. And I know that that sounds kind of funny coming from a lady that works at a technology company, but the real power of this tool is freeing you up to focus on those personal connections. So anything that 122 00:24:19.600 --> 00:24:25.410 Neon One Webinars: It's detrimental to those personal connections should be… should be not done by these tools. 123 00:24:26.200 --> 00:24:33.490 Neon One Webinars: Alright, and checking the chat, you guys are on it. Alright, great. So this is what it looks like in practice. 124 00:24:33.730 --> 00:24:52.940 Neon One Webinars: for example, and this speaks directly to Lorraine's comment about donor privacy. Donor data should never, ever go into something like Claude or ChatGPT unless you're paying for a, like a… what is it, enterprise and business account. The reason that is safe 125 00:24:53.100 --> 00:25:07.279 Neon One Webinars: is because when you are paying for a business or an enterprise account, you can opt out of having your data train their models. So, if you are… everybody… a lot of you have mentioned that you're all kind of operating personally. 126 00:25:07.280 --> 00:25:17.360 Neon One Webinars: Do not put your donor data into those… into those tools without… or unless you're… unless you're paying for those upper-level, 127 00:25:17.390 --> 00:25:30.570 Neon One Webinars: upper-level packages. What you can do instead is you can use, you can maybe put a rule in place. You can summarize a donor's history, but we'll only ever use 128 00:25:30.570 --> 00:25:49.319 Neon One Webinars: the tool in Neon CRM, and if you are not using Neon CRM, you may have a different option for this. If you're not using Neon CRM and you don't have a donor journey kind of tool in your system, look for ways to take notes about your donors' interactions with your nonprofit without 129 00:25:49.320 --> 00:26:00.329 Neon One Webinars: Sharing data like their name, their address, their payment information. Strip all of that private information out of your report before you use a different tool to analyze it. 130 00:26:00.330 --> 00:26:18.320 Neon One Webinars: Something else you may say is that we need to ensure that every statistic we include in our impact report that we're drafting is accurate. So what you can do is you're going to compile all of the statistics you want to include in your impact report, and then, when you use a tool like Cloud or ChatGPT to create it. 131 00:26:18.500 --> 00:26:27.739 Neon One Webinars: you can tell it, pull info… or pull statistics, stories, and quotes from this document. Don't make anything else up, so include that in your… in your, prompt. 132 00:26:27.740 --> 00:26:41.900 Neon One Webinars: And then go through after it has been created and fact-check it. LLMs are notorious for creating plausible-sounding stories, quotes, and statistics, and this helps you make sure that everything you tell your 133 00:26:41.900 --> 00:26:43.890 Neon One Webinars: Your donors is true and accurate. 134 00:26:43.890 --> 00:27:04.460 Neon One Webinars: A very personal example, I recently wrote a research study on recurring donors, and I gave my AI tool that document, and I said, I want you to put together a social media caption for me on this topic, only pull statistics from the research that I gave you. And it made up statistics, it got the percentages wrong. 135 00:27:04.490 --> 00:27:09.450 Neon One Webinars: So even if you give a good prompt and you train your model well, you're gonna… you're gonna need to double-check it. 136 00:27:09.600 --> 00:27:19.790 Neon One Webinars: You could also say, we want any email, article, or piece of content that our supporters read to sound warm and friendly and human. A lot of you have called out 137 00:27:19.790 --> 00:27:35.949 Neon One Webinars: that you don't like it when something feels entirely AI-written. So, you may have the rule, we're gonna combine really good prompts with thorough editing, and then we're gonna, like, have everything reviewed and edited to make sure that everything sounds like us and not like… 138 00:27:35.950 --> 00:27:37.430 Neon One Webinars: AI-generated content. 139 00:27:37.770 --> 00:27:45.269 Neon One Webinars: Again, these are just examples. The decisions that you make and the rules that you put in place are going to depend on a lot of different variables. 140 00:27:45.380 --> 00:28:05.319 Neon One Webinars: the folks on this call have different sizes of teams, you're using AI for different use cases, you're using different stacks of tools. The guidelines that you put together are going to vary from each other, but as you start establishing these guidelines, and as you start really communicating them across any team or volunteers that you're working with, you're going to start seeing better results. 141 00:28:05.490 --> 00:28:06.860 Neon One Webinars: Things like 142 00:28:07.050 --> 00:28:30.719 Neon One Webinars: tasks, or tasks like writing, or turning content into social media posts, or even planning a social media calendar will be more effective for you. Reviewing your donor histories and analyzing data will go more smoothly, and you won't have to worry about compromising someone's privacy. Task automations can streamline your day, so you have more time to have conversations with people, but they will never replace 143 00:28:30.760 --> 00:28:32.929 Neon One Webinars: The conversations that you're having. 144 00:28:33.280 --> 00:28:47.639 Neon One Webinars: Dave asked a question, is ChatGPT plus individual safe if we check the box not to have data shared to train the model? Dave, I'm not sure. I, from what I understand, the only 145 00:28:48.100 --> 00:28:57.010 Neon One Webinars: The only packages that allow you to opt entirely out of having your data train the model are those business and enterprise level 146 00:28:57.220 --> 00:28:58.270 Neon One Webinars: packages. 147 00:28:58.290 --> 00:29:11.400 Neon One Webinars: I would double check. The last time I looked, I don't think that you can opt entirely out of having your interactions train the model if you are using a personal account, even a paid one, but I would… I would certainly double check. 148 00:29:11.400 --> 00:29:18.779 Neon One Webinars: And then Judy asks, what about donor data that is listed on your website? AI can search and find the donor names by scraping your website. 149 00:29:18.890 --> 00:29:39.590 Neon One Webinars: That depends, really, on what information is on your website. I would assume that if you have donor data, donor information on your website, you're probably not sharing things like their address, their phone number, their payment methods, their, like, extensive giving history, notes about 150 00:29:39.620 --> 00:29:58.280 Neon One Webinars: allergies or family interactions or whatever. Oh, just their name. I wouldn't worry too much about that. If… if your donors are okay with having their… their names on your website, I don't think that there would be too much concern about anything else, because you don't have any of their other, like, private information on your site. 151 00:29:58.680 --> 00:30:09.070 Neon One Webinars: Okay, the last step that I would encourage you all to take, and this is especially true for those of you who have either teams or volunteers, especially volunteers. 152 00:30:09.250 --> 00:30:13.510 Neon One Webinars: As people come in and out, as you get new volunteers, as you get new team members. 153 00:30:13.600 --> 00:30:22.020 Neon One Webinars: you're gonna want to have an AI usage policy. So, at this point, you will have decided what problems you want to solve using these tools. 154 00:30:22.040 --> 00:30:40.130 Neon One Webinars: You've talked about the outcomes you want to make possible, you've decided when and how you're going to use this technology, and when you're not going to use it at all. You will have chosen the right tools for each job, and you will have established how you want to use the technology to solve each of your problems, while also 155 00:30:40.130 --> 00:30:57.109 Neon One Webinars: having guidelines in place that will protect your reputation and protect your donors and reinforce the trust that your community has put in you. The last step that you want to take is to put all of this information together in an AI usage policy that you implement at your organization. 156 00:30:57.560 --> 00:31:02.959 Neon One Webinars: And then, this is the most important part, make it readily available to the people who need to consult it. 157 00:31:02.960 --> 00:31:22.580 Neon One Webinars: This should be shared broadly with everyone on your team. So, if you get a volunteer, and she wants to know if she can use Claude to interpret a donor report, she should be able to find information about what she can and can't use Claude for, what data she can and can't share, and then how to use that tool. 158 00:31:22.750 --> 00:31:40.029 Neon One Webinars: If someone isn't sure that he… if he can use, or share a donor's history that he pulled out of Neon CRM, or whatever you're using with a volunteer, he should be able to look that up. If someone wants to know if they can use an AI-powered writing tool to spin up a newsletter, they should be able to find an answer to that. 159 00:31:40.030 --> 00:31:44.709 Neon One Webinars: And then, so just remember that the base goal of this document 160 00:31:44.870 --> 00:31:51.040 Neon One Webinars: is to make your team more effective, so they can spend their time doing valuable work. That… that… 161 00:31:51.040 --> 00:32:06.750 Neon One Webinars: goal will never change, but the technology that you're using is evolving rapidly, so I would encourage you to revisit your policy every once in a while and make sure that it is kind of up-to-date, it's still practical, it still addresses all of your use cases. 162 00:32:06.880 --> 00:32:27.219 Neon One Webinars: And it still addresses the tools that you're using. Linda asks, I'd like the policy idea, will a transcript of this meeting be available? I'm interested in the policy ideas expressed. Yes. Linda, you're gonna get an email from me tomorrow with a link to the recording and the slides and everything else, so look for that. And then here is just a pro tip. 163 00:32:27.220 --> 00:32:30.469 Neon One Webinars: I talk a lot about tools that are… 164 00:32:30.470 --> 00:32:41.100 Neon One Webinars: a lot about instances that AI is not the best tool for the job. Putting together a basic AI usage policy for your organization is a great job for an AI tool. And then. 165 00:32:41.100 --> 00:32:49.839 Neon One Webinars: after you get a draft, you can go through and adjust it individually for your own organization's needs, so try that. 166 00:32:49.840 --> 00:33:04.229 Neon One Webinars: Let's see, Megan replied… oh, this is a good one. Megan searched it out on Google, and their AI overview says, individual paid consumer tiers, like Plus, handle opted-out data identically to free tiers. 167 00:33:04.230 --> 00:33:10.710 Neon One Webinars: Business-paid tiers, like Team and Enterprise, exclude training by default and add advanced administrative controls. 168 00:33:10.710 --> 00:33:26.820 Neon One Webinars: So, there you go. If you need to be super careful about putting any PII or private information into those tools, because the opted-out data is not handled the same way, as those higher level tiers. 169 00:33:27.040 --> 00:33:52.020 Neon One Webinars: Okay, I want to leave this with you… with you now. There is a lot of noise about AI in the sector. I don't know about you, sometimes I joke that I hear the word or the phrase AI more than I hear any other word in the English language day to day. There is a lot of noise even beyond the nonprofit tech sector right now. I am sure that a lot of you have felt the pressure to 170 00:33:52.020 --> 00:33:53.829 Neon One Webinars: Quickly adopt these tools. 171 00:33:53.830 --> 00:33:57.389 Neon One Webinars: And I'm sure some of us have even heard that line, like. 172 00:33:57.430 --> 00:34:06.549 Neon One Webinars: If you don't learn AI now, you're gonna be left behind. And yes, the technology is here, it is everywhere, it's not going anywhere, and that can be anxiety-inducing. 173 00:34:06.550 --> 00:34:18.149 Neon One Webinars: It isn't anxiety-inducing for me, if I'm being honest with you. I'm a writer, and a lot of writing jobs are being shortened or taken over by some of these tools. So this is something that… 174 00:34:18.250 --> 00:34:22.250 Neon One Webinars: Can keep you grounded if you start feeling a little overwhelmed. 175 00:34:22.730 --> 00:34:34.859 Neon One Webinars: My friend Nathan Chappelle wrote an article, and he said this, the nonprofit sector must purchase, design, and evaluate AI by a single governing question. Does this preserve and protect trust? 176 00:34:35.239 --> 00:34:44.259 Neon One Webinars: If and when you start feeling that anxiety creep in, and let me know if you've never felt any anxiety about this at all, because if you have never felt anxious about this, I want to talk to you. 177 00:34:44.409 --> 00:34:54.210 Neon One Webinars: If you start feeling that anxiety creep in, if you start feeling pressured to make decisions fast, adopt tools fast, innovate fast, just pause for a second. 178 00:34:54.290 --> 00:35:04.489 Neon One Webinars: And ask yourself if a new tool or the processes you're talking about will preserve and protect the trust that exists between your community and your organization. 179 00:35:04.570 --> 00:35:12.790 Neon One Webinars: That is your North Star. That North Star will make you more effective and help you get the best possible results from this tech. 180 00:35:13.610 --> 00:35:33.379 Neon One Webinars: Alright, that was a lot of information. We're right at time, but I'm happy to stick around and answer some questions if you have. But I love what this has kind of… what Elizabeth dropped in the chat about this topic. I try to balance the ethical use of AI with my need to accomplish more than I can on my own in a short period of time. For this reason, I am careful with how I use it. 181 00:35:33.380 --> 00:35:40.829 Neon One Webinars: That is the best, healthiest, way to approach new technology. Any new technology, this one included. 182 00:35:40.930 --> 00:35:55.320 Neon One Webinars: That handling it ethically while using it to accelerate your ability to serve your community best is so important. I'm not seeing a ton of questions come in. We've answered the ones that have popped up, so I will leave you all with this. 183 00:35:55.680 --> 00:35:58.260 Neon One Webinars: You all do incredibly valuable work. 184 00:35:58.710 --> 00:36:01.720 Neon One Webinars: No tool will ever take the place of what you do. 185 00:36:01.880 --> 00:36:12.240 Neon One Webinars: If you can find a tool that helps you serve your community better and to do more good, embrace it. If a specific tool will not help you reach that end, it is not the right tool for the job. 186 00:36:12.240 --> 00:36:31.329 Neon One Webinars: If you have any questions that come up as you're talking, I invite you to email me, talk to me on LinkedIn, send me an email. You're gonna get the recording from me tomorrow, and then keep an eye out for invitations to some upcoming sessions on both new, cool new tools that are going to be, popping up in Neon One. 187 00:36:31.370 --> 00:36:45.020 Neon One Webinars: And then some more conversations about how you can use technology to do more good, more effectively. You're all wonderful. Thank you for talking with me today. I will email you tomorrow with a link to the recording and everything else. I hope you have a good Wednesday.