Tag Archives: AI

Horrific experience with AI: a warning for others

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This is something that happened personally, not in the course of working with a nonprofit, but it absolutely can affect nonprofit communications.

My sister and I have worked meticulously on the obituary for my mother, who passed away last month. We were very careful regarding every word we chose, every turn of phrase, the order info was presented, etc. At the funeral home later, we were asked to view the obit one more time before it went live on their server and would be printed for the funeral.

The obituary we saw had been completely rewritten. The rewrite not only used language we would never use, it was riddled with incorrect information, and the entire narrative had been reorganized in such a way that many parts no longer made sense.

After a great deal of confusion and denials by all parties, we realized that when my sister had written the obit on her iPhone, in the phone’s notes function, and just before she sent the version we had worked so hard on, she had had to put the phone in her pocket, and the window had still been open. She pulled the phone out later and hit “send” – but at some point, the visible button to “rewrite” was accidentally pushed while it was in her pocket. I saw the screen for myself – there’s the AI rewrite button, right there on the screen that was visible when she put the phone in her pocket, along with the poorly-rewritten obit.

The horror we would have experienced seeing this inaccurate obituary at the funeral… I can’t imagine.

But in a nonprofit context, imagine getting a grant rejected because of something AI had put into your grant proposal. Imagine people responding to a social media post negatively – because AI rephrased something and made it no longer accurate, or used language that just doesn’t at all sound like you. And imagine you had NO Idea AI had rewritten the text!

Be sure to save documents into a format or program that AI cannot change before sending it on to its destination. And if you use AI to “improve” a narrative, read over the result oh-so-carefully. Meticulously.

Be careful using Canva – nonprofit graphics are starting to all look the same!

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three cartoon people are jumping

I had never used Canva before August 2022. I’m not much of a graphic designer and would never be hired for such, but since I work mostly for nonprofits, I also usually don’t have a budget for a professional graphic designer, so I have to make due on my own. But my primary employer these days has an account with Canva and I’ve been able to use it.

Canva is really amazing and I use it often. BUT, I am also noticing something: a lot of graphics on social media produced by nonprofits and independent bloggers is starting to look the same. The drawn human images on Canva look very similar in style. And I live in a small community and I’ve seen one particular Canva design used by three different nonprofits for their galas – same image and colors.

Here are some tips for making your products produced via Canva unique:

  • Never use a template without a LOT of alteration. Add or change the graphics, change colors, change fonts, etc. Otherwise you risk having an image that looks almost exactly like someone else’s.
  • Never use photos from Canva. Use your own photos. Make sure your volunteers and staff have all signed photo releases, and use photos of them. Same for clients: make sure you have photo releases and, of course, that using their photos publicly is allowed.
  • Alter any ready-made images in your own designs. Flip some horizontally. Change the clothes colors for what the people in the drawings are wearing, for instance. Change skin tones. Change hair colors. If you can’t do this in Canva, use whatever graphic design software that came free on your computer to do it.
  • Follow nonprofits in your area on social media and read their posts regularly. This can help you avoid using similar designs.
  • Canva images tend to not be as diverse as you might need. It can be hard to find a family image with diverse members, for instance, or a family that might better represent a Latino family, a black family, a family where the mother is wearing a hijab or chunni, a family where the men are wearing a dastaar, etc. Or to find a classroom drawing with a diversity among students. I sometimes search for images representing a cultural group specifically so I can make sure my imagery of a family scene, a crowd scene, a classroom, etc. better reflects the community served by the local nonprofit I work for.
  • Standards in graphic design still apply when using Canva: you need to have excellent color contrast for text versus the text background, you need to have an overarching word, phrase or image, one that is bigger than everything else so that it draws in the viewer, you need to think about how you want someone’s eye to move across the graphic, the image should be easily and immediately understood, you need to make sure the graphic has all of the information needed or will be accompanied by the text of all that is needed, etc.

I’m not at all saying don’t use Canva. But don’t get complacent and confuse ease of use with good practice.

Artificial Intelligence – friend or foe for nonprofits?

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I thought about writing a blog addressing whether or not AI tools, like ChatGPT, are good or bad for nonprofits, NGOs, etc. But I think, indread, I’m just going to defer to all of the many discussions about AI on TechSoup, many of which I’ve participated in. I think reading these theards is helpful in seeing how complicated this question is and offers some important cautions for the use of these tools:

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Nonprofit Roles: A Step-by-Step Guide

Ethical Practices for Artificial Intelligence – a resource from SalesForce

Using AI as a text creator – how it went for me

Exploring the ethics of AI robots in volunteerism

UNESCO recommendations to combat gender bias in applications using artificial intelligence

Using Artificial Intelligence for Document and Email Automation

International Nonprofit Is Using Mentors To Help Girls Learn About Artificial Intelligence

World Health Organization issues guiding principles for AI design & use

Nonprofits & AI – How AI Is Helping Humanity

Film spotlights how AI can be a basis for racial and gender discrimination

AI: great for simplistic poems about virtual volunteering, not so great for biographies.

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A drawing of a woman holding a smart phone. The drawing is done in the style of a pictograph (cave painting).

Last week, I used Chat AI to create a history of virtual volunteering. And it did an excellent job, better than any journalist or blogger (other than me) has ever done. It was almost as good as the history I wrote of virtual volunteering. I was surprised because I use GoogleAlerts to let me know about new mentions of virtual volunteering online and about half of the alerts come from AI-generated clickbait sites that are painful to read: clunky sentence structure, incoherent (but grammatically correct!) sentences and at least a few inaccuracies. But let’s be clear: the history generated used a lot of phrasing I have authored and that can be found in a variety of web pages, blogs, etc.

I used Chat AI to create a biography of me, and it flunked HUGELY. It got a lot right, but also had me born in Buffalo (I was born in Kentucky), attending a university that I don’t even know where it is, had my birthday and birth year wrong (which I credit to how I refuse to share my real birthday online except when I have to), and lots of other inaccuracies. My husband had it write a biography of him and got a similarly inaccurate biography.

Then I used Chat AI to write a poem about virtual volunteering and… I have to say, it did a decent job. It’s not earth-shattering. It’s quite simplistic. It’s about as good as a greeting card poem or a very old-fashioned volunteer recognition event, but still – it works. Here it is:

In the digital age, a new way to give,
A chance to serve, to connect, to live,
From anywhere, with a single click,
Virtual volunteering, it’s the trick.

The world’s at our fingertips, the internet’s the key,
To lend a hand, to help those in need,
Through emails, chats, and video calls,
We spread our kindness, break down walls.

Distance doesn’t matter, time is no issue,
We can make a difference, with virtual tissue,
Writing, coding, designing and more,
We’re part of something greater, that’s for sure.

In a world that’s ever-changing, virtual volunteering’s here to stay,
To touch a life, to brighten a day,
We give our time, we share our hearts,
And though we’re apart, we’re never far apart.

Virtual volunteering, a new way to serve,
To use our skills, to use our nerve,
A world of good, we can do online,
We’ll make a difference, one heart at a time.

Only thing wrong: virtual volunteering is NOT new… which the history it generated noted.

Anyway…

I can absolutely see using Chat AI or something like it to write a cutesy, silly poem in a pinch – and that is something nonprofits often need for a gala or celebration. A friend that works in real estate told me she uses it to generate descriptions of houses she is trying to sell. But otherwise, be careful regarding what narratives these AI tools generate – they are NOT always accurate in the information they generate.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

There’s no poetry in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook but it does contain the most comprehensive and detailed guidance regarding using the Internet to engage and support volunteers (and some sci fi references, per the authors both being geek girls). It’s for organizations that want to get started with virtual volunteering or to expand a program they already have, as well as those researching virtual volunteering. The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is based on many years of experience, from a variety of organizations. It’s like having me do an in-depth analysis of your program, or me helping you set up your own program, but without having to pay my hourly rate as a consultant. It’s also better than any AI. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

If you have benefited from any of my 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.