4 Tips to Help Your Nonprofit’s Staff Become AI Literate

Organizations of all types are discussing the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and how to leverage it in their operations. Based on Fast Forward’s 2025 AI for Humanity Report, the top tasks nonprofits are currently using AI for include:

• Content creation and marketing (77% of respondents)
• Grant writing and applications (77% of respondents)
• Data analysis and reporting (59% of respondents)
• Donor engagement and communications (58% of respondents)
• Workflow automation (49% of respondents)

However, according to TechSoup’s The State of AI in Nonprofits 2025 report:

• Only 45% of nonprofit professionals have some understanding of AI.
• 42% of nonprofits have only one or two staff members exploring AI.
• 26% of nonprofits are not using AI yet.
• Only 6% of nonprofit professionals consider themselves AI experts.

When it comes to AI, knowledge is power. Nonprofit teams that deeply understand how to use AI effectively can better leverage this new technology to streamline their work and focus more time on their missions. To help you stay ahead of the curve, let’s explore how to inform your team about AI best practices and standardize AI use across your organization.

1. Focus on mission impact.

Some team members may be hesitant to adopt AI, wondering if it’s worth it to spend the time getting to know this new technology or if AI will eventually replace their jobs. To assuage these worries, start by showing staff members exactly how AI can make their work easier and ultimately support them in fulfilling your organization’s mission.

Emphasize that using AI in the nonprofit space is all about freeing up time typically spent on administrative tasks so team members can focus more time and energy on high-value, human-focused areas that AI can’t replicate. For example, your team might use AI to help create donor thank-you letter templates, allowing you to spend extra time personally calling donors who have gone above and beyond to support your cause.

Making AI usage more tangible for staff members will help them adjust to the idea of incorporating it into their daily workflows. You can also highlight real case studies of how other nonprofits have used AI for inspiration. For instance, you might share how the American Cancer Society’s research has found large language models (LLMs) effective in abstracting key data for use in cancer research studies with 94-100% accuracy.

2. Source use cases from the team.

If you want your staff to buy into AI, you need to ensure it’s actually enhancing their personal experiences at your organization. After sharing some nonprofit AI case studies, brainstorm how your team can use AI to improve operations and take burdensome tasks off your plate. 

Ask your team: “What time-consuming tasks could we potentially use AI to handle, freeing up that time for more mission-critical tasks?” For example, Bloomerang Fundraising’s automation guide explains that nonprofits can incorporate AI into the fundraising process, using it to:

• Analyze donor data.
• Personalize donation asks.
• Answer supporter questions via chatbot.
• Generate email and social media content.

Compile your team’s use case ideas into a running document. Don’t delete any ideas from this list. Instead, prioritize them based on what’s most important to your team at this moment, so you know which areas to start automating and which types of tools to invest in.

For instance, if several fundraising team members mention prospect research as an area that takes up a large amount of time, you may look into fundraising solutions that use AI to predict supporters’ giving likelihood based on their history with your nonprofit. 

Alternatively, perhaps human resources (HR) or recruitment team members note creating job descriptions as a pain point. In this case, you might adopt a generative AI solution that can quickly write job descriptions that will help you source the best candidates for your organization.

3. Create an AI use policy.

Did you know that 76% of nonprofits don’t have an AI strategy, and 80% have no AI-acceptable use policy? Before your team launches any new AI tools, document regulations to standardize AI usage across your organization and ensure team members use this technology ethically. To set your staff up for success, your policy should cover:

• Tools. List the AI tools available for team members to use and how they can derive value from them. For example, you may explain that your nonprofit CRM has a built-in AI content creation tool that fundraising and marketing team members can use to craft email communications more efficiently.
• Permitted uses. Specify exactly what staff members can and can’t use AI for. Let’s say you want to use AI to help with donor segmentation. You may note in your AI use policy that while team members can use AI to sort donors into appropriate segments, they should never solely rely on AI to create highly relevant, segmented communications since true personalization requires a human touch.
• Human review procedures. Speaking of a human touch, outline how team members should check and edit AI-produced content for accuracy. While AI can often generate sufficient first drafts, real team members should edit this content to verify all statistics, dates, names, and program details and ensure it features your nonprofit’s authentic brand voice.
• Data security standards. Many public AI tools train themselves using the data you input. To protect sensitive information, ensure staff members never input data like identifying donor details, confidential financial records, or grant strategy information directly into public tools. If applicable, create procedures for encrypting or anonymizing sensitive data or mandate the use of pre-approved, secure AI environments.

Since today’s donors prioritize transparency, they’ll also want to know how your nonprofit uses AI. Make your AI use policy publicly available so donors can verify that you’re leveraging AI responsibly and protecting their private information.

4. Teach them prompt engineering best practices.

To get the most out of AI tools, you need to learn how to speak AI’s language. The process of tailoring your generative AI inputs to receive the best possible outputs is called prompt engineering. Try testing out these prompt engineering best practices with your team:

• Define the AI’s role and persona. AI works best when you give it a frame of reference for how it should “think” and produce results. For example, before asking a generative AI tool to draft a social media post for your year-end fundraising campaign, tell the tool: “You are a fundraising professional for a community youth organization.”
• Clarify the audience and end goals. Giving your AI tool audience and conversion information helps it generate more specific, relevant outputs. Let’s say you want to draft an email that welcomes new donors to your organization and asks them to sign up for your newsletter. Instead of simply telling the tool to “Write a welcome email,” instruct it to “Write a welcome email to new donors who contributed for the first time within the past month. The email should inform them about our cause and encourage them to sign up for our monthly newsletter.”
• Add brand voice considerations. While you’ll want to edit any AI-generated content so it closely aligns with your brand voice, let the tool take a first pass at mimicking your typical style by inputting your brand preferences. For instance, you may add tone descriptors, telling the tool you want your copy to sound “warm and inviting,” indicate off-limits words, or give it clear word counts.
• Give formatting constraints. The more specific you are about the format you’d like your answer in, the better response you’ll receive. Perhaps you want to optimize your donation form. Instead of asking your generative AI tool to provide recommendations to improve your donation form, use a prompt like, “Give recommendations for how to improve my nonprofit’s donation form. Organize them in a table, include the impact each change will make (i.e., better user experience, increased mobile-friendliness, etc.), and rate each recommendation from 1-10 based on how urgent it is.”

As your team members test out these strategies, create an AI prompt library for them to use. That way, they can store successful prompts for easy reference and share them with the rest of the team.

Making AI literacy a collaborative process will help your staff maximize the benefits of these tools and feel more invested in AI implementation. Identify early AI adopters on your team and see if they’d be willing to share their knowledge as organizational AI stewards. Additionally, collect feedback throughout the AI implementation process so you can tailor your nonprofit’s AI usage and learning to your team members’ specific needs.