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AI Productivity for Small Nonprofits

Do more with a tiny team by putting AI to work on busywork.

32 min Beginner 8 modules Pass 80%
For: Nonprofit leaders and staff using AI

What you’ll learn

  • Identify the busywork on a lean team that AI is genuinely good at
  • Write reusable prompts for email, meeting notes, documents, research, and spreadsheets
  • Choose tools sensibly and tell free from paid (and what each costs you in privacy)
  • Know what is safe to paste into a chatbot — and write a one-page AI use policy
  • Apply the human-in-the-loop rule so AI never speaks for you unchecked
  • Start this week with three small wins, not a six-month rollout

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Course outline

  1. 1

    Why AI matters when your team is tiny

    Small nonprofits run on borrowed time. One person is the development director, the comms team, the volunteer coordinator, and the person who unjams the printer. AI…

    5 min Quiz Interactive
  2. 2

    The everyday wins: eight things AI does well

    Before tools or policy, get concrete about the jobs.

    6 min Quiz Interactive
  3. 3

    The prompt-to-result loop

    Productivity with AI isn’t a single magic question — it’s a short loop you run until the output is good enough.

    4 min Quiz Interactive
  4. 4

    Choosing tools: free vs paid, and what you trade

    You don’t need ten tools. For most small nonprofits, one capable general assistant plus whatever AI is already baked into the software you own (Microsoft 365,…

    5 min Quiz Interactive
  5. 5

    Data privacy: what is safe to paste

    Here’s the rule that keeps a small nonprofit out of trouble: treat a public AI chatbot like a postcard, not a vault.

    6 min Quiz Interactive
  6. 6

    Write your one-page AI use policy

    A policy isn’t bureaucracy — it’s the difference between AI helping your team and AI quietly leaking a donor list.

    5 min Quiz
  7. 7

    The human-in-the-loop rule

    Every other lesson rests on one rule: AI drafts; a human decides.

    4 min Quiz Interactive
  8. 8

    Get started this week

    You don’t need a strategy offsite. You need three small wins this week that prove the value and build the habit. Pick tasks you already do, that are low-stakes and…

    3 min Quiz Interactive

Sources & further reading

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