By Maggie Corry
As nonprofits consider the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), the key is leveraging this technology thoughtfully to complement and strengthen your overall organizational strategy. According to a recent survey (Herschander, 2024), more than half of nonprofits say at least some employees use generative AI daily, yet many organizations, and the world at large, are just beginning to understand AI’s full potential. At Spectrum Nonprofit Services, we approach nonprofit strategy and management by understanding the three interdependent components of impact, finance, and people, aligning each to ensure long-term sustainability and strategic decision-making. Through this lens, I’ve identified essential questions every nonprofit should consider when venturing into AI adoption:
People
How can we leverage AI responsibly to grow organizational capacity while leaning on human strengths? And how can we foster a culture of curiosity, continuous learning, and ethical AI application?
Nonprofit staff are often asked to do more with less, stretching limited human resources. AI offers a significant opportunity to create greater capacity by automating repetitive or administrative tasks, allowing people to focus on the high-value, human side of nonprofit work. As France Hoang, CEO of boodleAI explains, “… AI should support human judgment, not replace it. Even the best AI-generated output is often mediocre, requiring human expertise and verification to achieve high quality.”
The key is considering how you can create more time for your staff and volunteers to apply their strengths in strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, and relationship building, areas where AI cannot replicate the human touch, and investigating the repetitive, time-consuming tasks where AI can improve efficiencies, leading to increased capacity.
Establish clear policies around data privacy, algorithmic bias, and human oversight to ensure equitable AI processes that amplify and extend your team’s expertise. Training and transparent communication around expectations for AI application are crucial to ensure your team feels supported in using these emerging technologies.
Cultivate a culture that encourages AI experimentation within ethical boundaries, setting your team up to feel empowered to test and experiment applications through a structured, low-risk innovation process. Celebrate successes, learn from failures, and continually refine your approach. Model this behavior to create a space of psychological safety, creative problem-solving, and shared interest in its strategic use. This will build AI fluency and familiarity while reinforcing curiosity, improvement, and ethics as organizational values.
Finally, as you think about the culture you want to build around AI and the adoption of new technologies, also explore how efficiency and optimization through AI integration may show up in adverse ways in your culture and impact staff morale. More specifically researchers from the American Psychological Association say, “To navigate the challenges and opportunities of AI in the workplace for employees, [the organization’s] leaders must balance the drive for efficiency with a deep commitment to employee well-being and social cohesion.” Some steps to take include monitoring morale, thinking of AI as a tool, and “redesign[ing] workflows around the unique strengths of both humans and machines” (Cremer & Koopman, 2024)
Impact
How can AI enhance our ability to understand and respond to the evolving needs of the communities we serve? And in what ways can AI amplify the impact and scale of our programs and services?
AI-powered data analytics tools can help you gain richer, more nuanced insights about the needs, preferences, and challenges of the community you serve, informing more impactful program design and service delivery. Natural language processing AI tools can analyze feedback more effectively, while predictive analytics can help track program progress with greater precision, demonstrating impact more productively.
The driving force must be your mission and how these tools can boost your ability to drive meaningful, sustainable change. In doing so, acknowledge the limitations and biases of AI and ensure applications interacting directly with communities are not offering harmful information, creating barriers to access, or compromising your values.
Finance
How can AI optimize the efficiency and sustainability of our financial model? And how can AI support the administrative, non-relational work of our revenue generators, allowing them to focus more on relationship management?
AI-powered analytics can provide your finance and development teams with deeper, actionable insights to inform your overall financial strategy. Predictive modeling can forecast revenue and make more informed decisions about resource allocation, leading to greater sustainability and funding flexibility.
AI can transform development teams by handling repetitive tasks such as data entry, donation processing, reporting, and drafting donor communications. This frees up your revenue team to focus more on cultivating relationships and advancing your broader revenue strategy. As Every.org notes, “It may seem impossible to create a deep, personal experience for everyday donors in the same way you do for major donors, but it isn’t. Relational fundraising at scale enables you to build relationships with donors at every level and weather any storm.”
Many nonprofit professionals worry that building meaningful relationships with thousands of donors is simply unattainable. However, “when used responsibly, AI makes fundraising more personal, not less.” AI tools can customize outreach based on donor preferences and history, ensure timely and thoughtful communication, and ultimately free up valuable staff time for genuine conversations with donors.
This approach to AI-assisted fundraising allows nonprofits of any size to implement relational fundraising at scale, requiring “a new mindset and new habits, plus the smart, responsible use of artificial intelligence tools.” (Every.org, 2025)”
Responsible and effective AI application is a complex and evolving challenge, but the barriers that nonprofits face because of capacity constraints can often be areas where AI is most useful. By thoughtfully addressing these key strategic questions, your nonprofit can chart a path forward that aligns AI with your holistic organizational strategy.
As you begin, use quality data, complement AI with human critical thinking, consider data privacy, and understand underlying biases built into the AI tools you select. Start slowly, pilot AI usage in low-stakes situations, continually evaluate success, and update policies as needed.
The nonprofit sector leads on complex challenges facing our society. Now, as AI evolves, you can be leaders in responsible, ethical, and community-centric implementation – positioning your organization for long-term, agile success.
Visit our resource page for more actionable insights from the Spectrum Nonprofit Services team.
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
Additional Resources & References:
- The Chronicle of Philanthropy, More Than Half of Nonprofits Use A.I., Google.org Survey Finds https://www.philanthropy.com/article/more-than-half-of-nonprofits-use-a-i-google-org-survey-finds
- Nonprofit Tech for Good, 4 Ways Nonprofits Can Start Using AI in 2024 https://www.nptechforgood.com/2023/12/23/4-ways-nonprofits-can-start-using-ai-in-2024/
- Harvard Business Review, Research: Using AI at Work Makes Us Lonelier and Less Healthy https://hbr.org/2024/06/research-using-ai-at-work-makes-us-lonelier-and-less-healthy
- org, Relational Fundraising Playbook https://res.cloudinary.com/everydotorg/image/upload/v1742414021/2025playbook_w6deeg.pdf
- Fast Forward Nonprofit’s AI Policy Builder https://www.ffwd.org/nonprofit-ai-policy-builder