WaPo: AI Can Make You More Productive
I’m excited to see an idea entering the mainstream: using AI to make yourself more efficient. See this Washington Post article: “Meet the ‘super users’ who use AI to get ahead at work.” A lot of these tools are free, making them ideal for community benefit organizations with limited resources (which is most of them). There are really three categories of AI uses with increasing complexity for each: everyday tasks, automating repetitive tasks, and generating advanced insights.
In fact, I wrote this blog post for free using ChatGPT.
Here’s my blog writing process:
Put in a smart prompt with an outline of what I want to say. I entered the following: “Write a blog post about how AI can help nonprofits in three categories: 1) recurring tasks that people do every day like writing emails; 2) slightly more complicated tasks like automating repetitive, low value, currently manual activities; 3) complicated tasks like searching through small donors to find people with high propensity and capacity to give.”
Edit ChatGPT’s output. Typically, I first have the AI perform some manipulations. What’s pasted below is the result of my second and third prompts: “Make the output more casual and engaging” and “Make it 30% shorter.”
Copy and paste the response. Below this blog post, I pasted the actual output from ChatGPT so that you can compare the initial AI draft to this final one. Once I had pasted it, I starting editing it myself.
Craft a snappy opening. Everything through the “my process” bullets was hand-written using just my brain, although ChatGPT is perfectly capable of generating creative ideas, too.
Consider adding a snappy ending. Read to the end to see mine!
Learn more below about the three areas where AI can make a big difference: 1) daily tasks like email, 2) repetitive, low-value processes that you do manually today, and 3) advanced data insights such as finding small donors who have potential to be big donors.
1. Everyday Tasks: Smoother Communication, Faster Content
Managing emails, social media, and scheduling can eat up your day. AI makes these routine tasks easier, freeing up your time for what really matters.
Email Assistance: AI-powered writing tools—think of your typically “LLMs” like ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Claude—can help you quickly draft emails, updates, and reminders, making outreach smoother and faster. It takes a little culture change to think about defaulting to AI first, but once you’re used to it, you’ll save a lot of time. I really encourage fundraisers to use it for regular donor outreach emails as long as they’re careful to edit.
Art: The proliferation of AI-powered photo and video editing tools and image and video generation tools is astounding. Just the AI tools alone for making short videos from longer ones includes the following (a list too long for me to have tried all of them yet):
Social Media and Scheduling: AI can draft social posts that align with your nonprofit’s voice, keeping your community engaged without the time drain. AI scheduling tools also handle meetings and reminders automatically (Motion, Reclaim, Clockwise, SkedPal, Katch, Kronologic, Scheduler AI and even more general use ones like Microsoft Copilot).
These tools help speed up and simplify daily communication so you and your team can focus on high-impact work.
2. Automating Repetitive Tasks
AI shines in automating those time-consuming, repetitive tasks that don’t need a human touch.
Data Entry: Instead of manually updating records, AI can pull data from forms or emails directly into your system, improving accuracy and saving time. If you’re in the Microsoft environment, the slightly complicated but highly robust Power Automate works wonders. Zapier AI is rapidly becoming the industry standard here, with many others available including free ones like Fivetran.
Reports and Customer Service: AI can quickly compile reports and even handle basic inquiries via chatbots, so your team can focus on bigger priorities. Believe it or not, some of these are still free like AIDesk.
By automating these tasks, AI helps reduce burnout, keeps things running smoothly.
3. Data Insights for Donor Engagement
One of AI’s most powerful applications is in data analysis, making it easier to connect with the right donors at the right time.
Donor Prediction: AI can spot donors with high potential, even if they’re currently low-profile, so you know who to prioritize.
Personalized Outreach: AI can recommend personalized messages and timing based on each donor’s past engagement, helping your campaigns hit the mark.
The last category probably requires the most work, investment and planning, but the potential can be the highest. I have never worked yet with a community benefit organization that couldn’t use more donor dollars.
Adartova Consulting can help you with any or all of these categories, but you really don’t need my help to get started. Create your own login to some of these tools, check with your HR department to make sure you’re not violating company AI policy, and then play around!
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For those of you who wondered what ChatGPT originally wrote for me, here it is:
How AI Can Help Nonprofits Work Smarter
Imagine if the daily grind of emails, data entry, and donor analysis could be streamlined or even automated. That’s where AI steps in to help nonprofits work smarter, not harder. Here’s how AI can make a difference in three areas: 1) daily tasks, 2) repetitive processes, and 3) advanced data insights.
1. Everyday Tasks: Smoother Email and Communication
Managing emails, social media, and scheduling can eat up your day. AI makes these routine tasks easier, freeing up your time for what really matters.
Email Assistance: AI-powered writing tools can help you quickly draft emails, updates, and reminders, making outreach smoother and more consistent.
Social Media and Scheduling: AI can draft social posts that align with your nonprofit’s voice, keeping your community engaged without the time drain. Scheduling tools like Motion also handle meetings and reminders automatically.
These tools help simplify daily communication so your team can focus on high-impact work.
2. Automating Repetitive Tasks
AI shines in automating those time-consuming, repetitive tasks that don’t need a human touch.
Data Entry: Instead of manually updating records, AI can pull data from forms or emails directly into your system, improving accuracy and saving time.
Reports and Customer Service: AI can quickly compile reports and even handle basic inquiries via chatbots, so your team can focus on bigger priorities.
By automating these tasks, AI helps reduce burnout and keeps things running smoothly.
3. Data Insights for Donor Engagement
One of AI’s most powerful applications is in data analysis, making it easier to connect with the right donors at the right time.
Donor Prediction: AI can spot donors with high potential, even if they’re currently low-profile, so you know who to prioritize.
Personalized Outreach: AI can recommend personalized messages and timing based on each donor’s past engagement, helping your campaigns hit the mark.
With these insights, AI empowers nonprofits to strengthen donor relationships and grow support.