AI muNonprofits

Start with the people and mission outcome the system should serve. Automating donor categorization, drafting a grant summary, and deciding eligibility are different uses with different risks. Keep decisions about people reviewable and do not let a convenient proxy replace the actual mission measure. Use a small representative pilot with a baseline. Record staff correction time, completion rate, quality, and who is excluded or burdened. A tool that saves drafting time but creates extensive fact-checking may not improve the program. Protect donor, beneficiary, and partner information. Minimize data, document provider access and retention, and preserve a manual route when a service is unavailable. Make generated communications transparent where readers could be misled, and review claims about outcomes or fundraising impact. Assign an owner for data, model, and workflow changes. Keep a simple rollback and incident process that a small team can operate without depending on a vendor’s opaque status page.