Upon the election of Donald Trump to a second presidency, many nonprofits became wary about how they talk about their work, even their mission statement. Even before the election, many nonprofits rushed to remove any mention of the phrase diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI, or ANY of those words on their own, from their web sites. Now, as the Trump administration threatens to revoke tax-exempt status from nonprofits supporting racial justice efforts, it’s made it further difficult for many nonprofits to communicate at all about their work. This article from the Chronicle of Philanthropy focuses on specific nonprofits who are having to significantly alter their messaging – or put a pause on public communications altogether (note that you must register on the site to read it, but registraiton is free).
This is an issue I’ve been researching, talking about and training about long before the current presidency. Because this campaign against nonprofits has been a long time coming.
I first wrote about the political right’s desire to undermine the credibility and support for nonprofit organizations in 2011, in my blog Could your organization be deceived by GOTCHA media?, where I showed examples of how any cause can become politicized, and any organization can become a political target. My favorite example of this is the successful and horrifying elimination of the wonderful Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), per right-wing misinformation via doctored videos.
I hope your nonprofit won’t back off of its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. I hope your nonprofit won’t alter its mission statement. I do hope your nonprofit will:
Talk to your board of directors, staff and lead volunteers regularly, repeatedly, about why your nonprofit exists, why it does what it does, and why it has the values or commitments it does. Make sure they know how to talk about all of that from a place of confidence.
If this hasn’t been on a staff agenda or a board meeting agenda yet, then get it on there ASAP. If you had a meeting about it last year, you’re overdue to have one this year. Get busy.
Nonprofits produce communications products, online and in print, from web pages to social media to brochures. Whether that product is designed by a professional designer or is designed by someone who has never had a design class, there are certain qualities those products MUST have. And while there are a plethora of online resources that provide excellent guidance on accessibility and usability for online products, like web pages and apps, there is a lack of guidance for how to make print products and graphics associated with social media relevant / necessary, complete, informative, legible for a majority of viewers / readers and understandable for a majority of the target audience.
This new page on my web site provides simple, easy-to-understand guidance for both designers and those who have the final say on something being published.
And before I get the comment – yes, it’s pretty clear from the simple, almost primitive design of my web site that I’m not a professional designer. But when you work in communications for nonprofits, you often have to design flyers, posters, brochures, web sites, etc. My designs are plain and blocky. My designs won’t win any design awards. However, my designs adhere to all of the aforementioned suggested qualities, and that means they work: I am amazing at recruiting volunteers, at getting attendance to an event, at getting participation in a program, at getting traffic on a web site, and on and on.
Even if you are NOT a professional designer, you know what your nonprofit needs. You know your audience, which likely includes seniors and people over 40 who do not like to be called seniors but also can’t read 9 point fonts.
If you have benefited from this resource, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
The staff at nonprofits, no matter its size, no matter its focus, need at least one short video that succinctly explains their programs and their impact, or a video that shows how the organization engages volunteers. They may also need a video that helps onboard program participants or explains safety measures.
Your small nonprofit with just a handful of staff – maybe just a few employees, maybe just one employee, maybe all volunteers (unpaid staff) – may think it cannot make such a video, because it can’t afford a professional videographer. In fact, you can, and with just the tech assets you have.
Making a short video for your nonprofit with just the tech you have. This resource on my web site takes you step-by-step in how to identify the hardware and software you have right now, via your smart phones and laptops and operating systems, and how you can leverage that very basic technology, as well as the photos you may already have on hand, to create videos you need, from videos of clients explaining the impact of your programs to short videos for Facebook and Instagram reels, Tik Tok, and whatever else shows up as the fun new social media.
If you want to see the video I made for the Habitat affiliate I work for now, the video I made on the cheap, it’s linked off the aforementioned page, but here’s the link to the video as well.
This is the first tech-focused resources I’ve created on my web site in YEARS. It’s nice to get back to the subject that inspired my web site back in 1996.
If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
For many years, I’ve moderated one of the most popular online communities on Reddit. Such communities are called subreddits, and the very popular subreddit I moderated for many years (but not the only one) is r/volunteer. The description, which has a character limit, reads:
Share volunteering experiences or attempts to volunteer (unpaid work for a CAUSE, like helping foster kids). Share vol opportunities for others or a paid or unpaid role for a manager of vols, or a resource for such. Ask questions or for advice on recruiting, engaging & supporting vols, or about policies or safety for vols & those they serve. Discuss volunteerism ethics.
The description also notes: This sub is a highly moderated.
I’ve been a moderator and facilitator of online communities and discussion boards in association with events since the 1990s. My first gig was on the soc.org.nonprofit newsgroup (remember USENET?). I’ve done these moderating and facilitating gigs mostly as a volunteer (unpaid). Why? Because I enjoy networking with others in my professional areas, from volunteer engagement to humanitarian response to nonprofit management to communications for development and on and on. I’ve been a part of even more online communities as just a member – asking questions, answering questions, debating, and lurking. Online communities have always been what I loved most about the Internet, far more than the World Wide Web or any streaming service. Participation in online communities has landed me short-term paid gigs and full-time paid jobs, including with the United Nations. Participation has also given me some wonderful learning experiences and terrific professional colleagues.
I’m VERY proud of my many years moderating and facilitating the volunteer subreddit in particular. It has taken several hours a week to moderate and facilitate the group. It’s a group that has always been very popular on Reddit, but once I took over, membership exploded, and it got even more popular. It also had more on-topic posts, more on-topic comments and more viewers. What did I do so that the subreddit got more members, more viewers and much higher quality content?
One thing I noticed early on was a complete lack of quality control regarding posts on the subreddit. Misinformation about volunteering was everywhere, as were posts from very dodgy groups wanting foreign volunteers to pay a great deal of money to “help” in some developing country somewhere, and “nonprofits” that would give a person a letter, in exchange for a “donation,” saying they had completed online community service for the court. There were people recruiting volunteers but offering no information on who was behind the initiative, something I feel strongly puts people at risk for harm. There were also people asking for volunteers to engage in initiatives that many groups were begging people NOT to do, like create holiday cards for people in assisted living or children in hospitals. There were teens with no experience wanting to create mental health crisis lines – which could, of course, put more teens at risk and lead to teens being harmed. And on and on.
There were also frequently asked questions that were easily answered: how do I volunteer? How do I volunteer to explore a career? How do I volunteer to help animals? How do I volunteer to make me look good for a scholarship? Etc.
My goal in becoming the moderator of the group – and I was the only one, no one else wanted the role – was to get rules in place, get quality content posted regularly that addressed the FAQs, and counter all the misinformation.
Since I began moderating the group so many years ago, it has taken hours of my time every week:
reading every post,
writing and rewriting and rewriting the group rules as the group and the content evolves,
always giving a reason for deleting a post or comment,
welcoming someone who reposts because they’ve rewritten their message so that it fits the rules, complimenting good content,
creating meaningful content tags to that content is easier to find,
creating automated rules (such as requiring that the word “volunteer” appear somewhere in every post and comment),
addressing FAQs with detailed responses (and that sometimes means pointing people to previous responses),
regularly posting what I hope will be thread starters,
promptly banning trolls, people who won’t follow the rules, those trying to sell community service, etc.
trying to answer the many questions and comments that come in via modmail.
posting links to questions and comments to other social media, trying to get more people to respond with quality content or to raise awareness about an issue that I thought more volunteer management experts and consultants and volunteerism-focused organizations should know about.
I’ve always tried to be strategic and thoughtful in the writing and re-writing of every group rule, of every group structure, even of using the automod function. I created standard content tags for the group that I shadow tested for weeks, going back through years of posts and thinking, “which tag would this have if tags had been a thing then?” I never made a group change impulsively and I can justify every post deletion and every ban.
I think it speaks volumes that there are so many other subreddits that are focused on volunteering but have few or no rules regarding transparency, safety programs when vulnerable populations are involved, no prohibitions anywhere near what r/volunteer had – and those subreddits have never taken off. And I even linked to them on r/volunteer, so that people knew, if they didn’t like the rules, there were plenty of other places on reddit that had the “anything goes” vibe they claimed to be looking for.
I loved the experience of moderating r/volunteer in that I’ve gotten to help people volunteer and I think I’ve finally gotten through in a big way regarding why trying to be a volunteer can be so hard (because most organizations have zero volunteer management training, don’t have a person dedicated to volunteer engagement, and can’t get funding for such because foundations and corporations refuse to fund “overhead”). I’ve also really enjoyed seeing for myself just how much people under 40 really, REALLY want to give back to their communities and do good in the world. It’s why, when networking with volunteer management professionals elsewhere, I’ve been able to say, with confidence, that claims that “no one wants to volunteer” are not true. So much of my interactions on the subreddit have affirmed everything I’ve said for years about how to recruit volunteers and engage them effectively. The vindication has been wonderful.
But moderating has also meant a LOT of abuse and personal, nasty insults. I have kept those private from the members of the subreddit, because I see no reason to amplify that hate. I’m not talking about people who are criticizing my points of view; I’m talking about people who say vile things, things meant to terrify. I’ve also regularly been threatened with the filing of lawsuits (such has never been filed, BTW). Two different angry people called me at home – a consequence of me being transparent on Reddit about who I am, rather than hiding behind a cyber pseudonym.
But just as bad, and maybe worse, are the people who parachute in to the group for a few days and demand my credentials and demand that I prove I really am an expert regarding volunteer engagement; these are requests from people who won’t share their own credentials and are unaware that there were any global standards regarding volunteer management, unaware that there are global gatherings on the subject, etc.
Those constant demands for me to prove I am an expert, and the repeated “Why aren’t you doing it THIS way?” messages from people who rarely provide meaningful content has finally gotten too much.
And so, my time moderating the volunteer subreddit is at an end. Not ending how I wanted it to – I kept trying to recruit new moderators, so I could just be a regular member, but no one ever even tried to meet the criteria. But I’m done – as moderator and member.
And one last note: I’ll always be frustrated with all of the volunteer management researchers and consultants out there, all of the leaders of volunteer management associations, all the volunteerism-promoting organizations like Points of Light and the Corporation for National Service, who would not even read the volunteer subreddit, let alone participate in it. For those consultants, researchers, nonprofits and associations to ignore what is probably the largest community focused on volunteerism is shameful.
Verboort is an unincorporated community in Washington County, Oregon. It has less than 500 residents. It also has a very large Catholic Church and an adjacent, small Catholic School.
Back in 1934, the church and school started the Verboort Sausage and Sauerkraut Festival, with proceeds going for the upkeep of the school. It was small and attended by residents, families, and some people from surrounding villages.
Now, the one-day festival attracts about 10,000 people a year. The line for purchasing bulk sausage and sauerkraut starts forming four or five hours before sunrise. The cars that want to pick up ready-made dinners line up five hours before serving begins. The venue where dinner is served (rather than take aways) is continually packed from the moment it opens until it closes in the evening.
I’m just back, rain-soaked from standing in line for a take away meal, and covered in mud from the trek to and from the car parked in a farm field. And I’ve been wondering why this fundraising event is so amazingly successful.
Here’s what I think makes it successful year after year, even during COVID:
They’ve kept the festival simple in terms of what it serves. It’s pretty much the exact same meals, every year (pork sausages, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, green beans, apple sauce, coleslaw, a roll and a piece of pie). No variation. They have the formula down – really hearty comfort food you want to eat in November – and they stick with it.
The food is incredible. I have never had mass-prepared meals that are this scrumptious. The sauerkraut is to die for – which is why they also sell it by the tub the day of.
The community was founded by six Dutch Catholic families, and the festival plays up the Dutch connection HUGELY. Actually, they get a little mixed up and play German Oktoberfest music too, but most people don’t know. The point is, this isn’t like any other festival anywhere else in Oregon. It makes it more than food – it’s an experience.
They grew slowly. What started off as maybe 100 people coming to a community feed has slowly blossomed. They didn’t immediately try to do something beyond their resources. People who enjoyed it returned – and told their friends. Then they started putting a sign out on the highway in farmer’s fields. Simple sign, name of the festival, “First Saturday in November.” SO easy to remember. Now, they will have TV crews come out to see the kraut-making process – and the local TV news always comes.
They know how to manage the crowd. This is a TINY town with ONE paved street going through it (not kidding). Yet, unless you are in line for a ready-to-take-away meal, you will rarely be in a traffic jam. You get directed to parking and you park quickly, no fuss, no muss. And that’s because…
Most of the festival is staffed by volunteers, and plenty of them. They are directing traffic, they are helping people park, they are taking orders, they are helping people find the right line, they are putting the meal trays together, etc. Some are students of the school, some are parents, some are residents, some are church parishioners from Verboort, some are parishioners from elsewhere, and some are people that just love this event and love being a part of it. SO MANY VOLUNTEERS.
I really cannot emphasize enough how well organized this event is. The volunteers are juggling orders and food and parking and cars like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s a well oiled machine.
Altogether, it feels like something you just have to go to if you live here. It feels like an event, a happening. It feels unique. You go even in crap weather. And I’m not Catholic and I don’t eat pork, but there I am, every year (the secret is that you park in the farm field and bring a wagon or a lot of bags, and you stand in line for the ready made meals – you can be there just 60 minutes before it opens and get all the food you want).
People come from Portland and Salem to this.
And many know it’s a fundraiser, but don’t know for what! I’ve done some informal polling, and people will say they like to support it because it’s a fundraiser, and when I ask for what, they’ll say, “for some school or something?” All that is important to them is that, in addition to the good food and unique experience they are supporting a “good cause” – even if they don’t know what it is.
There is a lot that smaller fundraising events could learn from this festival.
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With so many newspapers and local radio stations long disappeared, with so many TV stations serving only an urban population an hour’s drive away, I’ve long come to rely hugely on a variety of online tools to promote whatever nonprofit I’m working for. That shouldn’t be a problem, according to so many media stories that tell us that everyone is online in one way or another, and that all young people are whatever the Social Media Platform Flavor of the Month is, right? I should have no problem getting my information out about events, volunteering, helping the community and more, because we’re all so networked.
But, in fact, it’s never been harder for me undertake public relations and marketing to reach a diversity of people, especially local people in the region where I live.
Once I start working with someone in their mid 40s or younger, or on the oh-so-rare occasion I talk with a teenager, I will, inevitably, ask, “Are you on any social media with your friends, like Instagram? Which platforms?” And most of the time, the answer is that they are not on whatever platform that’s the hot new thing; they might look at videos on TikTok, but their interactions with friends are on messaging apps, like WhatsApp or Signal. Or they do old-fashioned text messaging. I don’t even bother asking if they are on Facebook – they aren’t. Many listen to Spotify, but they pay for a subscription specifically so that they never hear any advertisements.
I’ll also ask “How do you get news?” And the answer is usually that they don’t. They listen to podcasts and gets LOTS of opinions. Lots and lots of opinions. But they don’t listen nor read actual news.
They don’t know if the high school has a soccer team or not, even if they went there as a student, let alone if that team won a state championship. They don’t know what production the local community theater is mounting because they didn’t even know there was a community theater. They don’t know that there’s a Habitat for Humanity affiliate in the area and they could volunteer there. They don’t know if the nearest firehouse is staffed by career people or volunteers or a mix of both. They don’t know who the mayor is. They don’t know about the giant data center being built in that field over there.
And how would they know any of this local information without a local newspaper, a local radio station, even a local podcast, or if they aren’t following a variety of local organizations on social media?
Back in the late 1980s, I worked at a theater that had tremendous success with advertising shows by paying to put a notice in the pay stub envelopes of some of the largest employers – but with most people doing direct deposit, that’s no longer an option. Putting a notice in a newsletter that they city sends with a utility bill is still a good option in some places to reach some people, but most young people sign up for paperless billing.
I live in a community that has no local TV and no local radio. It has two struggling semi-print newspapers which people under 50 here have never heard of. How do I reach these folks about events, volunteering opportunities, and legislative issues they need to know about and care about?
Direct mail, via traditional post? That’s an expense far out of reach for most small nonprofits.
I’ve noticed a LOT of businesses are back to using great big banners and other signage outside their properties to let people know about events and special deals. The town where I live has two places in town where it strings a banner over the street to announce various events, that everyone entering may notice. If your nonprofit can afford it, consider doing the same. Be sure to keep the messaging simple: people are going to see it as they glance up or over while driving, and have just a few seconds for the message to get through.
I wrote about this trend two years ago in this blog, Social media is losing its influence for nonprofits – what to do? In that blog, I suggested that cities revisit the community bulletin board model of the 1990s, which flourished in places like Cupertino. I believe those models could still work if they had essential information on them – not just when the next city council meeting is, but also where to find a role-playing game meetup, or a basketball pickup game.
I also think every city needs to think about creating a podcast. If starting a community radio is out of reach, then why not a daily or weekly or bi-weekly 30 minute podcast? Use it to:
List upcoming nonprofit and community events that week.
List events at the local high school that week (games, performances, fairs).
List events at the local senior center.
Remind people of important deadlines (for registering to vote, for submitting a ballot).
Remind people of local government meetings.
List obituaries.
Does your local high school have a speech team or drama club, or does your nearest college or university have a drama club or political studies? Recruit from those students to record the information. Sell a sponsorship for each broadcast to a local business. The most popular podcast platforms are Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, and any online search will provide you with a plethora of guides on how to get your podcast on those channels.
If you are leveraging young people to produce the podcast, you’ve already got a built-in group of marketers who will share the podcast with friends on whatever app they are using these days. You need to also market the podcast in your usual ways: social media posts, web site announcement, flyer in your lobby, press release to media outlets, etc.
And don’t be surprised if podcast success leads to serious discussions about starting a local community radio station…
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I love that AI can see or find patterns. The advancements that can mean for everything from space exploration to medical treatment to analysis of ancient art are glorious to think about. I also love that AI can apply grammar and spelling rules to things I’ve written.
AI-powered identification of bird species can enable users to better identify them in the future. The increased ability to identify species can, in turn, improve AI’s performance by directly contributing geolocated observations and uploading labelled sounds and images.
I love all of this.
However…
Have you ever seen a movie that you were assured by a trusted film critic was horrible and, in fact, it turned out you loved it? Or the opposite: he said it was wonderful and you loathed it?
Have you ever been told by a few people that someone you haven’t met yet through work or in your neighborhood was boring and not really worth hanging out with, but you did finally meet them and you thought they were hilarious and fun to be with?
Have you ever read a summary of a long report or a book, but then you read the report and you came to a very different conclusion than the summary?
Those scenarios are why I don’t trust AI for decision-making or for all things related to customer service and most client interactions. Those scenarios are why I want to keep interacting with clients and the community myself.
Whether I’m the director of a project or directing communications for a project, one of the first things I like to do is take some time to answer questions that come in via phone or email. It never turns out quite like it’s been portrayed to me, especially by an over-worked, under-trained administrative assistant or an executive director who has a million other priorities. Nothing teaches me more quickly what’s been working and what has not. Sure, I might come up with canned responses to frequently asked questions, but if that response doesn’t answer the person’s inquiry, I want to know about it.
And then there is the idea of care and support: for clients, for volunteers, for the community. Care is about awareness, concern and looking after something. Providing clear, easy-to-access and easy-to understand information for an audience is a part of caring about that audience, but it’s not all of it, because quality, sincere care – the kind that keeps clients coming back, that keeps volunteers engaged and keeps donors supporting the organization – is emotional and relational. When I listen to certain staff members talk on the phone with the clients of one of the nonprofits where I work, I know that AI is no substitute for those interactions – and that if we stuck those folks on an automated phone system or chatbot, we’d not only let them down, we would lose them.
I also would never trust AI to author most social media posts, nor answer most messages that come in via social media or an online group: I would never cede the incredible knowledge that comes from interacting with people, with actual humans, to AI.
I can’t imagine taking away one of the best ways ever to gather knowledge and build skills: interacting with people MYSELF.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
Reddit was founded in 2005 is a community platform categorized around different interests. As of January 2025, Reddit had over 500 million people registered as users. 110.4 million daily active users and 416.4 million weekly active users, 44% of US Redditors were aged 18 to 29 years old and around 2 in 3Reddit users were male. Redditors tend to be significantly younger than other online communities like Facebook, with less than 3% of users being 65 or over.
These community members use the platform for highly targeted content, via whatever community, or subreddit, they subscribe to. And that, together with the demographics of the platform, are why I find Reddit so valuable for outreach: I can reach a group that’s hard for me to reach otherwise (people under 35, as well as young men) and I can target specific groups, like just the users that live in the town where I live (because there’s a subreddit for that), women that ride motorcycles.
If you have struggled to connect with young, male audiences regarding your nonprofit’s work, or if you want to get a handle on what young people say regarding nonprofits, volunteering, civic engagement, etc., Reddit is a great place to get to know.
Reddit has not only given me amazing insights into how young adults think about volunteering. It has also:
Helped a nonprofit I support FINALLY land a group of volunteers from a very, very large and well known company in our area that we had been trying to reach for a couple of years, with no success. I posted info about a one-day volunteering event on a subreddit for a large city near us and one of the employees stuck it on the employee intranet and, boom, we got volunteers from that corporation at long, long last – and later, a donation of $5,000.
I’ve been hired twice by another very large, well-known company for consulting work because of my activities on Reddit – on r/volunteer in particular.
Of course, your mileage may vary…
I hear a lot of people say they have no idea where to get started on Reddit. If you work for nonprofits, here’s what I recommend:
Look at my Reddit profile and see what subreddits I’m a part of and what I’ve been posting (you can also follow me on Reddit).
Then look at Reddit4Good, a massive list of Reddit communities that relate somehow to doing good. It has a list of:
Subreddits focused on areas related to nonprofit work, like biology, agriculture, etc.
Subreddits for formally established programs (CASA, AmeriCorps, Red Cross, Peace Corps, Habitat for Humanity, etc.).
Regional-based subreddits focused on volunteering (the UK, Brazil, Oregon, etc.).
ONE BIG CAUTION: change your settings so that you do not get a notification every time a new post or comment is made to any of the subreddits you join. Trust me on this – you do not want that many notifications in your life.
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According to the online dictionary on my computer, empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
I have long believed that one of the biggest benefits in volunteer engagement, for the volunteer, for the host organization and for the community – indeed, for all of humanity – is the cultivation of empathy.
There are many benefits to both host organizations and volunteers when it comes to volunteer engagement. And usually when empathy is discussed regarding volunteerism, it’s focused just on the idea of well-off people learning more about the experiences of not-so-well-off-people. But for many years, I have been promoting the idea of volunteerism as community building, as a way to cultivate community cohesion and greater understanding among different groups, and as a way to address the growing gaps between different groups. Here are some of my blogs on the subject over the years:
In addition, I’ve also been fascinated by the study of compassion regarding how it impacts individual mental health and community cohesion. It’s terrific to find out that science shows that compassion isn’t just nice – it’s necessary:
So you can imagine my horror to realize that one of the foundations of volunteerism, one of the primary reasons it is worth supporting and worth promoting – the cultivation of empathy – is under attack, primarily by people that support the Republican party:
“I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.” These are the words of Charlie Kirk, who was murdered a few weeks ago.
“We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on,” says Elon Musk. “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit…. they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.” Elon Musk.
Idaho-based Chrisitan pastor Joe Rigney has written a book called The Sin of Empathy and claims empathy is “the greatest rhetorical tool of manipulation in the 21st century”.
Extremist Gad Saad wrote a book called Suicidal Empathy which you see in the earlier mention as inspiring Elon Musk and which the author says highlights “the inability to implement optimal decisions when our emotional system is tricked into an orgiastic hyperactive form of empathy, deployed on the wrong targets.”
And I bring all of this up because nonprofits, NGOs, government programs, community organizations, schools, communities of faith and all those that engage volunteers and promote volunteerism NEED TO BE ON GUARD. If you think volunteerism is such a fantastic, pure, universally-loved idea that could never be the target of a political movement, you are wrong – and your lack of preparation will hurt your organization and your community.
This isn’t the first time volunteerism has been under attack by political movements. I started writing about Initiatives opposed to some or all volunteering (unpaid work) back in the late 1990s. I felt like I could reason with both sides of the political spectrum regarding their opposition to volunteer engagement, which in some respects were based in very real fears. But a war on empathy? That is going to be MUCH harder to win.
Are you preparing to argue for the value of empathy? Or are you, instead, rushing to remove the word from your web site, the way you did regarding diversity, equity and inclusion?
I’ve been writing about how computer and Internet technologies can, and do, affect the work of nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies and other mission-based programs (as opposed to for-profit businesses) since the 1990s. I’ve been mostly a cheerleader for such, but also have tried to be realistic and to highlight cautions. So you shouldn’t be surprised that I have thoughts about AI and how it will, and is, affecting that work and those we serve.
And then there is the creative laziness AI seems to encourage. In an earlier blog I warned nonprofits to be careful using Canva, since their graphics are starting to all look the same. Here’s a new story about why reliance on Canva and similar AI graphic programs can be a bad choice: months ago, I had a volunteer from a high school who was supposed to create social media graphics in association with various holidays for a nonprofit I worked for. He turned in designs that were obviously the first template choice offered by Canva, with just our nonprofit logo and a date inserted somewhere – no other alterations at all. He supposedly had taken a marketing class that included learning graphic design basics, but seemed flummoxed when I talked about the need for color contrast, easy-to-read fonts, and the importance of ads being readable without someone having to have glasses. And don’t even get me started on Canva’s profound lack of diversity among its human images in terms of ethnicities, body types and ages. I ended up having to alter all of his work – spending more time on the task, not less.
Using AI-powered chatbots for schoolwork is undermining opportunities for young people to learn skills such as analyzing text, elaborating syntheses and writing coherent narratives. The writing process stimulates thinking, scrutinizing and self-improvement, tasks that all people should learn. But when it is outsourced to AI, people not only don’t have that stimulation or mental improvement, the reduction in cognitive effort can reduce memory retention and diminish learning and cognitive abilities (cited in the Human Development Report on page 73 and in Blanchflower, D. G., Bryson, A., and Xu, X. 2024, “The Declining Mental Health of the Young and the Global Disappearance of the Hump Shape in Age in Unhappiness.” Working Paper 32337, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA).
I’m working with someone right now who uses AI to write all of his emails and reports. These never provide me with the information I need – information I always got when his predecessor wrote the reports and emails herself (and in MUCH shorter form). For some reason, AI always deletes out the essential info I need for marketing efforts.
AI is determining what we see online, and hiding what someone or a company has decided they do not want us to see. Content is being curated, sorted and ranked by machine learning based on the desires of one person or a company, often with users not having any idea that this is happening. I’m using two and three different search engines whenever I do research, because the results are always so different.
AI-written text is showing up with hallucinated facts across the Internet landscape and creeping into the people and government’s decision-making. And if AI is leveraged to degrade human rights or coerce people to believe a lie or harm others, it’s NOT an ally. It’s easy to find examples of this all over the Internet.
We live in a world where trust and credibility is more important than ever before. We’re going to lose more of that if we keep ceding creativity, curiosity and human interactions to AI.
There are a lot of companies who are now telling their employees that they are not allowed to suggest the creation of any new positions – paid staff or consultants – unless they can prove AI could not do most of that job. That means the elimination of graphic design positions, receptionists, data analysts, social media managers, consultants brought on to create and design special products (annual reports, specific marketing campaigns) and managers of volunteer programs who spend most of their time reviewing applications and screening new volunteers. Yes, AI can do all of those jobs – but not well, and not to the standards nonprofits need. As more and more people are using AI to both summarize texts and write emails and reports as well as reading those texts and emails and reports, humans are less and less involved – thereby missing trends, insights and potential challenges, while clients and customers become more and more frustrated trying to get answers to questions and help to solve problems.
A way to counter this AI use demand by management: be able to say, right now, how you are leveraging AI in your work. Show that you are already using it to save money, such as grammar correction programs, graphic design programs, donor data analysis, volunteer data analysis, translating and news alerts regarding certain topics. But then also show why you hold on to certain tasks, like interacting with clients in real-time, because cultivating and sustaining trust with various stakeholders.
What I find fascinating in this push for nonprofits to use AI is that a much better strategy is to push nonprofits to engage more volunteers, thereby doing what AI cannot: engage with the community more, cultivate more supporters, and build more awareness and understanding about the nonprofit and the cause it addresses.
One last thing: if you use AI in any communications, DECLARE IT. If you write an email to someone and you used AI to create that email, declare it. Declare in any online or offline publication if the material was created or authored, primarily, by AI. If you publish a blog that has content that was, even in part, created by AI, say so. “Some of the content of this article was created using AI.” Affirm if an article or blog is written by a human: give credit to the person or people responsible for such, by name.
If your nonprofit has a chatbot for clients, be clear that the chatbot is not a human, that it’s AI. Many people do NOT understand that a box with a human image that says, “Hi, how can I help you?” is not a human.
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