Unless you have been on a media fast, you have probably heard about ChatGPT, which is an AI language model developed by Open AI. It launched publicly at the end of November 2022. I’ve been watching AI and its impact on the social sector for the past 12 years and I have never been so impressed with the usability of an AI tool and have so clearly seen how it will change all aspects of our work in the field. I think this will have significant impacts on grant writing, program development, donor engagement, staff training, operations processes, communications, and almost everything else you do in your day-to-day work.
I’ve been talking to audiences of nonprofit and foundation leaders across the country and the responses to this tool have varied from “I have never heard of this thing, what are you talking about?” to “my communications team is using this as the basis for all of their work moving forward.” This singular tool is going to change almost all aspects of your day-to-day work and I would encourage you to jump in and start learning how to use it effectively as soon as possible.
So how can you use this?
Generate email templates. Instead of having to manually respond to each and every email or message from clients, supporters or potential donors, AI can be programmed to provide automated replies, freeing up staff time for more important tasks.
Increase the strength of your communications. ChatGPT can help your organization reach new audiences and grow your support base. By leveraging the AI model to generate engaging and relevant content for blog posts, your website, or emails, your organization can create a more dynamic online presence that appeals to a wider range of people, increasing your visibility and reach.
Completing drafts of grant applications. I envision a future where nonprofits give a foundation’s AI program the permission to scrape its website for the information needed to create a grant application, eliminating the millions of hours nonprofits spend on foundation grant applications but in the short-term future you can use AI tools to answer foundation grant application questions by pasting the question and relevant information from your website into the prompt and asking it to create a response that meets that word or character requirement of the funder.
Create new program plans. Create a query that includes details about the context of your request, the task you are asking it to complete, and then any additional details or clarity about the request. For example if you need a lesson plan created create a query like this:
You are an experienced afterschool program designer. You are an expert in cultural competence and how to make arts education exciting for 12-16 year olds in Oakland, California. Your writing style is accessible, informative, and fun. Create the outline for a 4-week program where youth learn about the history of local graffiti artists in Oakland and how the artform connects to hip hop culture.
Next refine the outline by adding 3 learning objectives for each session and one hands on classroom assignment. Here is the lesson plan that ChatGPT created for me using that prompt. (Note: each result is created individually so you will probably get a similar but not identical different result if you use this prompt.)
Week 1: Introduction to graffiti art and hip hop culture
Introduction to the program, its goals, and the students involved
Overview of graffiti art and its connection to hip hop culture
Introduction to local graffiti artists and their styles
Assignment: Students create a graffiti-style name tag using paper, markers, and spray paint
Week 2-3: Graffiti as a form of political expression
Overview of graffiti as a form of political and social expression
Discussion of the role of graffiti in political activism and its impact on the community
Examination of graffiti as a form of resistance against gentrification and urban renewal in Oakland
Hands-on workshop on spray paint techniques, stenciling, and handstyle
Assignment: Students create a graffiti-style protest poster addressing a social or political issue affecting their community, and present it to the class
Week 4: Reflection and conclusion
Reflection on what students have learned about the political context of graffiti art and hip hop culture
Final projects and presentations, showcasing the students' own graffiti pieces and the stories behind them
Conclusion and goodbye ceremony for the program and its participants
Assignment: Students create a group mural reflecting on their experience in the program and its impact on their understanding of the political context of graffiti art and hip hop culture.
There are a million more ways that you can use ChatGPT and I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.
The Ethical Considerations
ChatGPT is a tool that still learning how to refine its outputs, so it is critical that people in the social sector interact with in and give it feedback if it is generating responses that are racist, sexist or if it needs more context on the issues that your organization is working on. You have the ability to make this tool more nuanced. Just click the down button next to the response it provided to give feedback.
There is also an important debate about the human cost of making these AI tools safe for people to use by filtering out toxic data from the chatbot’s training dataset. Real people in Kenya were paid $2 an hour to look through tons of graphic content like child sex abuse, murder, torture and self harm to make sure the tool was safe for you to use. Our sector needs to be a part of the conversations about creating ethical AI and we need to be well versed in these tools to make an impact on these conversations.
I have also heard from many people in the sector that are concerned that this tool will create job losses. Let me be clear, it will. Just like how the supercomputer replaced the African American women who were the human computers at NASA or how many bank tellers were replaced by ATMs, all technological advances cause some jobs or job duties to disappear. But importantly, according to the World Economic Forum, technology creates 12 million more jobs that is destroys every year. We are not losing jobs, we are transforming them to something else and for our sector the something else could be more time for your staff to connect with real people in your community and more time to innovate and solve some of our society’s toughest problems. You can use this tool to decrease or eliminate repetitive tasks that don’t harness your employees creativity or ability to connect in the community.
Final Thoughts
There is a saying in futurism, don’t get Blockbustered. That is when an innovation is staring you in the face and you decide to stay on the tried-and-true road instead, to your own peril. This is a moment where we need to disrupt our organizations so that we don’t get disrupted. We have the opportunity to free ourselves and our teams from repetitive work and instead spend more time understanding how to truly solve the issues our organizations are working on. Let’s not let this moment pass us by.
Trista Harris is a Philanthropic Futurist and President of FutureGood, a consultancy that helps foundations and nonprofits harness emerging trends to create a more beautiful and equitable future. She also is the creator behind FutureGood Studio, a 3-month learning program where nonprofit and foundation leaders learn how to use the tools of futurism to increase their impact.