Tag Archives: creation

Nonprofits, don’t cede creativity or curiosity or customer relations to AI, & keep your use of AI ethical

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HAL from 2001 a space odyssey

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.

I’ve warned about relying too much on the choices of Canva when creating designs. I’ve warned about ceding too much of your client interactions to AI. I’ve warned about how AI can have disastrous results when rewriting something.

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.

I blogged what I feel are highlights from the 2025 Human Development Report from UNDP – the theme is artificial intelligence. It’s worth noting that I do highlight positives regarding AI – because there are positives.

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.

I have an affirmation on my web site that my web site is created & managed by a human. Consider doing the same on your own web site (but only if it’s true).

Also see

Artificial Intelligence – friend or foe for nonprofits?

schedule social media posts? use with caution

No app can substitute for actually talking with people

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. 

the first steps for a nonprofit dream

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Some years ago, I worked with a very specific community – I prefer not to say which one nor where it was – that wanted its own cultural center. The community members envisioned a place where they and their families could celebrate their unique culture, host activities that could help address the needs of community members (job training, skills development, counseling, etc.), host events that could educate people about their culture’s history and challenges, offer low-cost childcare for pre-K children, offer after-school activities for teen members of their community, offer activities for elders in their community, offer legal clinics, and on and on.

The challenge I faced in trying to help this community reach their goal is that, in talking about the community center, they wanted to focus only on what the building would look like. They wanted to talk about the kinds of rooms it would have, how it would look on the outside, the murals that would be drawn inside, etc. They even spent time talking about what the logo would look like. And, indeed, those conversations were important, but what was so much more important in starting to talk about the center was their answering these questions:

  • What documented data do we have that shows who makes up our community, in terms of their ages, their backgrounds, their most critical needs and their desires regarding the programs offered via a cultural center? What data do we still need to gather and how might we gather that information?
  • What programs might we launch at first, and which might we want to have later? What data do we have that shows we are prioritizing our initial programming correctly?
  • How do we envision the staffing for our initial programs – by volunteers? If so, what tasks might these volunteers do? Could the tasks be divided into different roles: leadership roles, one-time group activities, short-term individual roles, online volunteering, university classwork, etc.? And what might the costs be to involve such volunteers (recruitment, screening, support, etc.)? Or will we staff these initial programs by paid employees or consultants? If so, what might these roles look and what would the costs be?
  • What will the decision-making and leadership of the center look like? How will the board of directors be chosen? How long will each member serve? How will their fiscal responsibilities and other oversight responsibilities be defined? Will there also be an advisory board?
  • What could we do in terms of programming without our own physical space? Could we leverage church fellowship halls, library meeting rooms, other cultural centers, arts spaces and other existing facilities to offer our own programming until we get a physical space of our own?
  • What would success look like in the first year of our operations? How would we collect data that proves our success?
  • How much would all of the above cost for the first two-five years?
  • What would we need to have in place to get fiscal sponsorship or become an independent nonprofit, and how would we get those things in place? What would the timeline look like?
  • When would we be ready to start accepting financial donations for our efforts and what avenues could we accept those donations (how would we accept and track checks, online donations, even cash donations)?

Altogether, the answers to these questions create both a business plan and all of the information a group needs for a funding proposal. All of these activities create a cultural center without anything having to wait for a building to be built or a rented and, at the same time, make funding an actual building all the more attractive.

Sadly, the cultural center, as a building, didn’t happen, and efforts to offer these programs in other spaces have come and gone over the years. I think community members still dream of a magical mega donor descending into the area and offering them millions of dollars to make this happen.

I think about this situation frequently as I am asked by so many people, “How do I start the nonprofit of my dreams?” The steps are all neatly listed in my blog, but the reality is that it’s messy in execution. None of these steps are easy, but I regularly see new nonprofits flourish after diligently completing each.

If you have an idea for a new organization, a new program or a new project, I recommend you have a look at this UNESCO project planning tool. It’s developed for youth and the projects they want to undertake, but it’s something that a lot of adults could use as well. This can be a good tool to use in a group exercise with the core leadership of your effort to establish a new program or organization.

Also helpful is this free NGO Capacity Assessment Supporting Tool. It can be used to identify an NGO’s strengths and weaknesses and help to establish a unified, coherent vision of what an NGO can be. The tool provides a step-by-step way to map where an organization is and can help those working with the NGO, including consultants, board members, employees, volunteers, clients, and others, to decide which functional areas need to be strengthened and how to go about to strengthen them. Share the results of your using this tool in your funding proposals – even on your web site. The tool was compiled by Europe Foundation (EPF) in the country of Georgia, and is based on various resources, including USAID – an NGO Capacity Assessment Supporting Tool from USAID (2000), the NGO Sustainability Index 2004-2008, the Civil Society Index (2009) from CIVICUS, and Peace Corps/Slovakia NGO Characteristics Assessment for Recommended Development (NGO CARD) 1996-1997.

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