AI for Community Foundations
Has any organization integrated AI into their daily work beyond just taking minutes and sending emails? We are struggling to find resources and training applicable to community foundation work, and our staff, particularly development staff, are asking for more. I would love to chat with someone who has found unique approaches to AI!
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Hi Codi! Just seeing this - at Central Carolina Community Foundation, we have done a staff survey related to AI, adopted an AI policy, purchased ChatGPT Business for our staff, and have done two staff trainings related to using AI in their everyday work. We are still hoping to see more efficiencies gained, but I am happy to jump on a call to share more! Chelsea Richard (chelsea@yourfoundation.org)
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Great question! I am so glad you started this discussion. I have been gathering information on this as well for our foundation, especially around putting some structure and policy around AI. I am hope others are further along in this work and can share in this space.
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We have a lot of staff using AI for writing/reviewing documents/summarizing. I have been testing AI for scoring scholarship applications. I have also created some spreadsheets with formulas that I have wanted for years. So far, I am a big fan.
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We have adopted an AI policy and are using it in very basic ways like what you mentioned. Helpful for sure, but I am really interested in how we can use it more robustly. Would welcome further conversation.
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Hello! We use AI at our Foundation to help with emails, grant applications that we may be putting in, and other tasks. I actually will frequently challenge AI to help me with CSuites work flows to see what is possible.
I'm currently using AI to help us create reports with a ton more detail than we have ever given our donors. I find that for work flows there aren't that many efficiencies that I have found that can't already be addressed by CSuites for what we do.
In my opinion, the most important thing to do is to ask really specific questions. Have a dialogue with your AI. For example, I will ask a question then tell them to get more specific or challenge them on a point (IE, I will frequently ask for CSuites work flow but then they find old directions online so I tell them that I don't have those functions and ask them how to figure out which version to look up). I always tell our team to treat AI like an assistant—you are guiding and directing it to get the information you need and to ensure that the information is correct.
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Since I am new to a community foundation and CSuite, I have been using AI to help me with processes. I agree, some of the information for CSuite seems to be dated, so, I have to sometimes work with that. Overall, it has been very helpful! Would love to learn more about how others (especially staff who are responsible for the data entry, running reports, and managing campaigns for events, etc. are using it!
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I use AI when creating reports in CSuite. I love the reports but I find that there's a significant learning curve with them. I've been asking my coworkers to tell me what they'd like to see in a report so that I can get more comfortable with reports and deepen my understanding of them. We have been using CSuite since 2017 and we just started using reports last year.
As far as managing Campaigns, we also just started doing these this year. We love the campaign functionality but are still getting used to it. We don't really use AI for that unless it's to put some cool HTML in their Giving Hub or Campaign page. Otherwise we find that what CSuite offers is enough for what we do. Happy to answer any specific questions on that!
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We’ve incorporated AI into our communications workflow like email drafts, social media content, marketing materials, and general messaging. It’s been a practical tool for improving efficiency and helping our team move projects forward more quickly.
What we’re most curious about now is how others are applying AI to scoring and data management. Are foundations using it to support grant review, analyze trends, or clean and structure data?
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