Non Profit News Pod: AI for Good - Helping Nonprofits Navigate the Future

 [00:00:00] Welcome to this nonprofit podcast NewsPod, where we amplify the voices of nonprofit leaders making a difference in their communities. I'm joined by Brad Squire, CEO at Sacramento Venture Philanthropy, to share some significant and time-bound news that relates to our nonprofit community. Brad, welcome.

Hey, Jeff. Thanks for having me. Happy to have you. Everywhere we turn, there's a conversation taking place about AI, artificial intelligence. It's something we can't get away from and, you know, when we're approaching it with the right attitude, it can be a significant asset to any organization, especially nonprofits.

You recently had a mixer to simply bring together people in the community to sort of vet their interest, find out what their thoughts were, get a better understanding of where it stood in Sacramento, and you heard some things about AI from [00:01:00] others that were both positive, negative, concerning, whatever it may be.

Tell us a little bit about what you learned and what it resulted in. Yeah, I mean, what we're doing is we're just to recognize that this is a really unique moment for all of society to find this new technology and where we can im- integrate it into our day-to-day lives and our work and, you know, the work that we do with SVP Sacramento, Sacramento Venture Philanthropy, is all about nonprofit capacity building.

So, you know, we do that through helping nonprofits raise money through things like Fast Pitch, and in this case, with AI for Good, it's really about helping them find efficiencies so that they can operate more lean, take advantage of some of the, the benefits that AI can bring to the table. What did you hear about in that mixer?

What was the... If there was an overriding, oh, I don't want... not the right word, concern, interest, uh, curiosity. What was it like? Yeah, I mean, so we [00:02:00] had 100 and... I think 120 people that showed up, and it's a combination of, uh, you know, the community we're building is a combination of nonprofit leaders, business people, technologists.

So we're, we're, we're in- intending to form this community all around AI for good, and the conversations are all over the map, as you can imagine. Again, we're all learning together. I think that's a common theme, is trying to figure out, again, where this plays a role in our day-to-day lives. So there's, there's definitely, like, the, the nonprofit sector is often very under-resourced and just needs a little extra support.

You know, always more work to do than hours in the day, and, and I think that's one of the conversations is, you know, one, where do we start? I think there's a, a strong interest in using AI, but maybe not sure where to start or what to do next, and, and that's where we hope to bring these communities together to just help unlock and demystify what it means to implement [00:03:00] AI.

You know, that, even that term of, "Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna integrate AI," what, what does that actually even mean for any business, nonprofits all the way up to any organization? Again, I think we're all learning together as a society, and that's partly why bringing together people in communities, in conversation really matters.

Well, and I think a lot of people too, when you say AI, there's four letters that pop into their mind, and it's F-E-A-R. Like, "Oh my gosh, I don't know what I'm doing." And then the second one is four letters. It's T-I-M-E. It's time. I don't... H- how am I gonna get this done? So what you've done is you've created this, this course, so to speak.

It's, it's three different dates. Tell us a little bit about what it looks like in terms of first, second, third And what you're expecting Yeah. So, you know, so SVP is launching this concept of AI for Good, and it's new, and really the three key pillars, you know, connecting, and [00:04:00] we just talked about how, you know, gathering in communities is important and bringing people together to learn together.

But then more intentional learning is where we have, we have three workshops coming up May, June, July, and, and they're really for anybody. It's not just for nonprofit leaders, but anybody that's wanting to find out about how to use AI for good. So we have a one-oh-one, a two-oh-one, and a three-oh-one course or track.

They're two-day, half-day workshops in person. And I think that's also part of the fun of it is not just online training, but being together in a room with people just to compare notes and learn together. So one-oh-one will be in May, two-oh-one in June, and, and three-oh-one in July, and we can share the link to the website.

It's ai.svpsacramento.org. All the training dates and details are there. We do have discounts for nonprofit leaders. And again, it's not just for nonprofit leaders, although we do have a lot of them signed up, which is very exciting, 'cause [00:05:00] again, I think this really can unlock some amazing opportunities for these organizations that are doing such, such amazing work, uh, in our communities.

Yeah, I couldn't- Um ... agree with you more, and I love the fact that you have got it beyond the nonprofit community because AI for Good is going to incorporate a lot of different entities and give people an exposure into our nonprofit space as well that maybe they can be collaborative and identify some areas of interest, concern, support that maybe we weren't thinking about as they look at it from a different perspective.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We're talking... So the, the-- one of the things we're looking at which is really interesting, we talked about, you know, connecting in communities, learning together with these workshops, but the third pillar of the AI for Good thing that we're building is just around truly building, building apps, building technology, actually building custom software using AI.

And so we have a hackathon that we're gonna be putting out in August. We did one hackathon back in March with five [00:06:00] nonprofits, built five custom software apps for them that are now being used and implemented and, and really showing amazing promise for these five nonprofits. And then in August, we'll have our next one.

Yeah, I know, and I, I'm gonna do this shout-out to Scott Richards. I know he was like your star pupil, jumped in and has two or three different apps that he's working with already. Well, when you think about nonprofit capacity building, you know, we, we built alongside, we built with Scott and his team. So we brought in some business people, some technology people, and Scott and his team all together to, to build this app, which was a, an app for the St.

John's programs, the women in the program to connect in a digital space, a safe digital space. And then because of the fact that we built with them, they actually learned the tools to build themselves, and now are building additional apps that are helping them find efficiencies and, you know, create that internal [00:07:00] clarity and just am-amazing technology that's helping them do the work that they do better.

And, and not to scare anybody away, the way that you've got the course set up is you've got the introduction, then the intermediary, and then maybe the developmental course to where you actually get into it. You don't have to go through all three- No ... and you don't have to be that technically, technologically savvy, I should say- No

to actually build your own app. It's just if you choose to go down that path, the course is there to, to help you. It's more your pace, the leadership and their pace and understanding and how far they wanna go with each of the course and the programs, correct? Yeah. They're, they're definitely not intended to be required sequential courses, but certainly, uh, they do...

If you think about Anthropics Claude, we sort of modeled it after, uh, Chat, Claude Chat, Claude Cowork, and Claude Code as sort of three pillars. So 101 being more like prompting and finding efficiencies through just using the chatbot and LLMs, and [00:08:00] then the 201 is a little bit more about agents and workflows, and that's more like Claude the Cowork, um, product.

And then with Claude Code, it's really more about vibe coding and app building and, and using a tool that we use called Replit, which is a layer on top of Claude Code, to build this custom software. And I think the key message there is this is not for technologists. This is-- I mean, it can... You certainly, if you are a technology person, come and join us, but it's really designed to be practical AI.

How can you take the things that we learn in just those two days and apply them right away? Like, our goal would be that everyone that goes to those trainings leaves with, you know, two to three very practical use cases and workflows that they can take back to their desk the next day and start finding those efficiencies.

Exactly what I wanted you to share. That was the next question. You answered it beautifully. So the, the expectations are there predicated on what you want to accomplish and how far you wanna go with it. And that's, that's [00:09:00] the beauty of what you've got set up. I love it. Yeah. Do you wanna go through the details one more time, the dates, the times, place, and where to learn more about it and get yourself registered?

Yeah, so we're buil- so again, it's AI works- AI for Good training workshops, 101, 201, 301, May, June, July. The specific date's ai.svpsacramento.org. Find them. I know May 28th, 29th is the first. That's our 101. We're doing this all in Rancho Cordova. Frequency Coworking is the space that we're doing. Obviously, Ranch- the City of Rancho Cordova has made some big moves and some big investments in establishing an AI ecosystem for our region, and so we're kinda heading into that, just trying to, um, help support that and build around Rancho Cordova in that way.

So all of our three workshops will happen there at Frequency, uh, Coworking. And you said they're, they're two-day half days. Is it morning, afternoon? Two half days. [00:10:00] Mm-hmm. Uh, nine to noon or, or noon to 3:00, or what is it? Yeah. Yeah, like a noon, like a nine to noon morning. Nine to this morning. Okay, great, and all that'll be available in the episode notes as well, so somebody can grab them quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Well, Brad, what you and SVP are doing, so, so many engagement levels for our nonprofit community, and now actually bringing in the rest of the community to support with AI for Good, it's pivotal in getting ahead of the curve with nonprofit capacity building, and this is just another example.

And, and we so appreciate what you and the partners of SVP are doing, your commitments to helping grow our local organizations and, and get them to a point where they're actually in the know for this artificial intelligence, which, uh, understandingly, understandably can be both confusing and, and frightening if you're not on the curve.

So thank you for the work. Here's to a successful program these next couple of, uh, months as you engage everybody with AI for Good, and I'm looking forward to hearing the results. [00:11:00] Thank you. Awesome. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for listening. If you like our program, please subscribe, give us a positive review, and share with someone you know.

This Nonprofit Podcast Newspod has been a production of Hear Me Now Studio.