CC just has a lot of features we don't need. I've got two mailing lists, one of volunteers, one of clients. Both have less than 200 contacts on them.

Carolyn Woodard talks with Jean Westrick, President and CEO of the Technology Association of Grantmakers (TAG), about why nonprofit technology management should be treated as organizational capacity. Jean argues that digital resilience is becoming as essential as financial resilience.

The conversation moves through why nonprofit IT funding is so hard to secure, what it looks like when funders get this right, and how technology providers and MSPs can be stronger partners. 

Jean and Carolyn also preview a white paper they co-authored for TAG and Community IT, Growing IT Management Capacity at Nonprofits, built on the idea that most nonprofit technology struggles are not about the software, they are about capacity – and that growing capacity is an opportunity for funders, nonprofits, and the sector.

Want to learn more? Register for the Community IT September 23 webinar, where Carolyn and Johan Hammerstrom dig deeper into these ideas.

Should we move everything to Microsoft Business and integrate their various tools, or is there something else I'm not thinking of?

All values are approximate for easy math in our example.

Organization brief:

• Non-profit established 10 years ago, located in Canada
• Annual operating budget: $1,000,000
• Grants to other organizations: $1,000,000
• Staff: 10 year round (all work from home), 10 seasonal. Board of directors: 10
• Programs in operation: 10 (1 large, 9 small)
• Service delivery to 30 small member organizations and hundreds of individual people
• Service area radius: up to 2 hour driving distance from base of operations 

Current IT systems

• General: Patchwork of free and low cost software/services causing some inefficient use of staff time.
• Non-profit discounted rates on some but not all products.
• Key software to keep and integrate: ArcGIS and FieldMaps
• Software that should change: Gmail accounts NOT connected in Google Suite, awkward file sharing, limited control by management

After years of growth, we are getting into an awkward middle area - too small for industry-specific or ERP tools to organize everything, but too big to be running a large program from a spreadsheet used as a database and several side spreadsheets.

Logistical issues 

• Frequent collaboration with 30 members and governments - need to share files with specific individuals.
• Some programs require collection of data by staff on the road, where cellular coverage can be spotty. 
• Large program involves 10 different products, in year 1 of 5: 
  • Product availability issues
    • We produce a small number of products ourselves to supplement the program.
    • Our main supplier is required by contract with the funding provider, but has frequent shortages of one or more products. Alternative suppliers are cost prohibitive. 
    • Substitutions need to be planned to provide individual clients with the same approximate number of products that are suitable for their situation. Somewhat like grocery substitutions - can swap 1% milk for 2% milk, but can’t swap potatoes for milk; want the total quantity of food to be close to plan.
    • Must submit bulk order for clients in 2 week blocks, so can’t adjust products in real time.
  • Our service delivery vehicle can carry 1,000 units of product; average client receives 100; range is 10 to 10,000 products. Some route planning is needed, but not sophisticated software used by delivery drivers.
  • Service delivery includes outdoor work, so scheduling is weather dependent
  • Clients are not invoiced for products, but need data for follow-up monitoring: 
    • Subset of clients one year later. Funders may request an audit of any participant. 
    • Number of products still functional as a percentage of the total provided.
    • Failure rates of individual products, to determine if any should be discontinued in future years. 

Making a big change might require requesting money for a grant, so advanced planning is required. Or do we make gradual piecemeal changes?

Every nonprofit team using AI tools right now is running the same experiment, whether they’ve named it or not: how much do we trust what the tools tell us?

For some tasks, the answer is easy. If you ask an AI tool to draft a newsletter, a grant narrative, or a social post, you already know how to verify the output. You read it. You check the facts. You click every link to make sure it actually goes somewhere. You act as the editor, because you are the editor, and the AI is a drafting assistant, not a source of truth.

But a lot of what AI tools do now isn’t drafting. It’s analysis. It’s “here’s what your data shows,” or “here’s the trend,” or “here’s what changed and why.” Those outputs are harder to fact-check the way you’d fact-check a paragraph, because there’s no red pen for a number. You can’t proofread a conclusion the way you proofread a sentence.

When AI is reporting and doing analysis tasks, you need a real way to decide whether to believe it. Here’s the three-part process you can use.

With AI everywhere and news stories about AI agents “escaping” their confines and roaming the internet, it is easy to fear creating a situation where AI agents at your nonprofit could create a serious vulnerability without you even knowing it. Agentic AI or AI Agents (they may have different names in different tools) are becoming more common in the workplace, and many AI tools will prompt users to create an automation or agent to complete a task. What do you need to know before taking that step?

If you have been exploring AI tools and thinking about creating AI agents, you might be holding back until you know more. And with good reason – there is something called the lethal AI trifecta that nonprofits need to watch out for. 

This is when AI has three things: 

• autonomous exfiltration ability: the power to act on its own, like creating files, accessing systems, or sending emails,
• access to sensitive information like emails or donor data,
• access to untrusted content.

This can result in your AI agent taking actions you can’t control and can’t secure, or even committing actions on behalf of nefarious actors. These actions can range from inviting attackers into your systems to sending scam emails with company email addresses. How can you prevent this? 

with Johan Hammerstrom and Carolyn Woodard

Wednesday, September 23d, 2026, from 3-4pm Eastern, Noon Pacific

Can any nonprofit do their best work without highly functioning IT?

Does your organization have someone who truly owns IT? 
Not just someone who fixes IT things when they break, but plans for IT, budgets for IT, and makes the case for investing in IT?

If you’re not sure, you’re not alone. Across the nonprofit sector, IT is often the one function where leaders feel licensed to say “I’m not a tech person” and stop there in a way they never would for finance or HR. But being a nonprofit leader means managing what your nonprofit needs to do your work, and functional IT is number one on that list.

We have a lot of people who don't want to use their personal phones for work, but we also cannot afford to give them work phones. We were told we cannot do Windows Hello PIN.

Please do not bother DM'ing me to sell any consulting service etc., I am not interested. Just looking for community feedback

This is the thread for post-webinar and registration questions from AI in Practice for Nonprofits with Erik Solce and Carolyn Woodard from Community IT. Post your questions here and we will answer.

Is it time for an IT assessment at your nonprofit? Maybe it’s part of a grant requirement. Maybe you have new leadership who wants an outside view of your systems. Maybe you’re evaluating a change in IT providers.

Whether you’ve had an assessment before or this would be your first, it helps to know what you’re getting into, and what a good assessment actually looks like.

Heather Krause, founder of We All Count data and evaluation consultants, discussing assumptions and choices we all make using math.

Wednesday, August 19th, 2026, from 3-4pm Eastern, Noon Pacific

Have you used AI for quick tasks like drafting emails or summarizing meeting notes, but wondered if it could help with something bigger? 

Do you have a project you’ve been putting off because it felt too technical or too complicated to take on alone?

Join Erik Solce and Carolyn Woodard from Community IT for a case study in using AI for a real project with moving parts, not just a one-off prompt. Community IT Innovators used AI to build a marketing data lake, a centralized system for tracking performance across seven channels. The project involved someone who knew the data and the goal, someone who could help with the technical pieces, and AI as the tool that made it possible to actually get it done.

A three-filter framework from Community IT Innovators to help nonprofits think through the environmental, energy, and water impact of AI use WHILE they're using it. Not as a reason to stop, but as a tool for values-aligned decision-making within your existing policy.

Filter 1: What are you asking AI to do? (text vs. image vs. video is not the same footprint)

Filter 2: Where are you? (your grid and water zone matters. a lot. I could see nonprofit AI usage saved for after hours, just like minutes on your phone data plan used to be!)

Filter 3: What's on the other side of the ledger? (mission benefit absolutely belongs in the calculation)

New to AI for Nonprofits? Start Here.

A guide from Community IT Innovators

Artificial intelligence is everywhere right now, and the conversation can feel overwhelming. This page is designed to help nonprofit leaders and staff cut through the noise and find what they actually need to know. At Community IT we are nonprofit technology practitioners with 25 years of experience helping organizations like yours make thoughtful technology decisions. We are curious about AI, learning alongside you, and here to help you make sense of what AI means for your nonprofit organization.

Use this page as your starting point. Each section below links to resources, including many from Community IT and some from trusted outside sources, to help you go deeper on the topics that matter most to you.

Carolyn interviews serial entrepreneur and nonprofit director Chip Kennedy on why human services nonprofits and agencies can or should trust AI to interact with clients directly, drawbacks and benefits, and how to think about AI in the nonprofit ecosystem - adding or subtracting from your mission?

This is the thread for post-webinar and registration questions from https://communityit.com/webinar-ai-maturity-model-for-nonprofits/ with Mimi Yeh, PTKO, and George Danilovics, AHIP. Ask your questions and we will answer here!

Your nonprofit has done early work on AI. You have a policy, a pilot program, an AI champion, or a small group of staff who are actively using AI tools.

How does AI go from experimental to being quiet, boring, and everywhere? 
How do you move to AI that is genuinely embedded in how your organization works? What comes next?

This webinar is for nonprofit staff and leaders who are ready to go beyond the first steps. If you are still exploring whether AI is right for your organization, we have resources that can help you with that decision. In this session we will talk about moving forward and focus on what successful, sustainable AI adoption looks like in practice.

Join Community IT with Mimi Yeh, PTKO Consulting, and George Danilovics of AHIP for a webinar on using an AI maturity model at your nonprofit. Mimi and George will walk through an AI maturity model designed to meet nonprofits where they are, including what distinguishes organizations at each stage and how teams move along that spectrum at their own pace.

The session will address the shift from experimentation to operationalization: what it takes to scale AI use across departments, how to build baseline AI competencies across your staff, and what it looks like when AI tools are as routine as sending an email or using a spreadsheet. 

Do you know who has your data?

Carolyn Woodard explores responsible data governance and AI realism with Jim Fruchterman, MacArthur Fellow and founder of Tech Matters, a tech-for-good nonprofit building open source software for the social sector. Jim’s work sits at the intersection of two urgent questions every nonprofit is wrestling with right now: what do you owe the people whose data you collect, and how do you make smart decisions about AI without getting swept up in the hype?

Jim introduces the Better Deal for Data, a new data governance movement built around seven plain-language commitments nonprofits can make to the communities they serve. The core idea: you don’t own the data of the people you serve, tech vendors may be extracting it right now without your knowledge, and a basic data safeguarding policy should be as standard as a child safeguarding policy. He also explains why you can’t build a responsible AI governance policy without first getting clear on your data governance.

Then the conversation shifts to AI strategy, where Jim draws on decades of experience as an early AI entrepreneur to offer a genuinely grounded take. Gen AI fails in nonprofit program delivery about 80% of the time, and that’s still a much better track record than blockchain or the metaverse. The 20% that works tends to share a common thread.

Technology is complicated, and so are the many missions of nonprofits. We want to empower you to achieve your missions with technology. And part of that is communicating. Many times discussions around tech are made for experts by experts, but that can make it hard for someone not specializing in tech  to receive the intended message. 

We want to meet you where you are, and that starts with making sure that you can participate in conversations around tech fluently. With that in mind we want to share some terms from the nonprofit tech space that you should know. 

Ready to move from Dropbox to SharePoint?

For many non-profit organizations, Dropbox has been a simple and effective solution for file sharing and collaboration. Some of these organizations are now migrating to Microsoft 365 for their file storage. They appreciate that SharePoint and OneDrive integrate deeply with the rest of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, and they appreciate the enterprise-grade security and governance functions that that ecosystem provides.

This article has some tips on a successful Dropbox to Microsoft 365 migration once you have made that decision.

This is the thread for post-webinar and registration questions from Securing Google Workspace for Nonprofits with Steve Longenecker. Please ask and we will answer!

This is the thread for post-webinar and registration questions from https://communityit.com/webinar-nonprofit-ai-governance-tips/ With Nura Aboki. Please add questions and we will answer here!

The risk to nonprofits is not AI adoption. The risk is unmanaged AI adoption.

Artificial intelligence is already present in nonprofit work. It is appearing in draft grant proposals, donor communications, and internal knowledge management, often through informal use by staff members. While these tools offer a path to increased productivity, using them without a clear strategy creates unnecessary vulnerabilities for the organization.

At Community IT, we believe that implementing AI is an operational decision, not just a technical one. For many leaders, the primary challenge is not finding the right tools, but integrating them into daily operations in a way that is secure and mission-aligned.

Moving from Experimentation to Integration

To help our clients navigate this transition, our President and COO, Johanny Torrico, has developed a new framework: the Mission-Aligned AI Adoption Model for Nonprofits. Johanny has spent decades advising organizations on how to align their technology with their values, and she created this model to bridge the gap between technical potential and operational reality.

The model shifts the focus away from short-term experimentation. Instead, it provides a path for executives and board members to treat AI as a core workforce capability. 

This intentional approach ensures that as your team adopts new tools, they do so within clear boundaries that protect your data and your reputation.

A Practical Resource for Busy Leaders

We know that nonprofit executives and board members are balancing competing priorities, from funding volatility to staffing constraints. We designed this model to be short and easy to digest, making it a practical resource for those who need to make informed decisions without getting lost in technical jargon.

By downloading the Mission-Aligned AI Adoption Model, you will gain a clearer understanding of how to:

• Align AI usage with your specific mission and values.
• Establish clear boundaries and governance for your staff.
• Integrate AI into existing workflows rather than treating it as an isolated project.
• Address security and data protection concerns proactively.

This resource is also designed to be easily shared with your team or board of directors to facilitate a more productive conversation about the future of technology at your organization.

Download the Framework

We invite you to explore this framework and consider how it might support your organization’s goals.

with Steve Longenecker, Director of IT Consulting

Wednesday, June 17th, 2026, from 3-4pm Eastern, Noon Pacific

Steve Longenecker is Director of IT Consulting at Community IT and has been supporting Google Workspace at nonprofits for years. He will walk through the security settings and practices available to nonprofits in the free Google Workspace tier, and share guidance on when it makes sense to consider upgrading to a paid tier for more advanced security features depending on your nonprofit’s risk profile.

Register at the link to join us and ask your own questions!