Perhaps you've recently seen mention on the internet of something called ChatGPT. This artificial intelligence bot lets you type in questions or requests and get surprisingly coherent answers. According to CNET, "It's a big deal. . . . It's not omniscient or smart enough to replace all humans yet, but it can be creative, and its answers can sound downright authoritative."
Hearing about ChatGPT, it's a bit difficult to not let one's mind wander to thoughts of Skynet, the AI system in the Terminator movie franchise that comes close to wiping out humanity. Fortunately, people are currently using ChatGPT in less nefarious ways, such as helping to respond to emails, providing customer service responses, or writing cover letters for job applications.
It is a powerful tool. How can it and similar systems affect the nonprofit world?
To get an idea of what the AI engine's output actually looks like, I fed it a short prompt: "Why should a foundation give a grant to The Human Fund: Money for People?"
Here is what it had to say:
The Human Fund: Money for People is a fictional organization that does not exist in the real world. Therefore, there would be no reason for a foundation to give a grant to it. If you are considering applying for a grant from a foundation, it is important to research and find organizations that align with the foundation's mission and goals. Then, you can make a compelling case for why your organization's work is important and how the grant will help you achieve your goals.
Well, you caught me, chatbot! So I thought about local organizations that might need funding and chose our local animal shelter. Again, I fed the AI a short prompt: "Write a grant application for the Lincoln County Animal Shelter."
I got a pretty thorough response:
Title: Improving the Lives of Abandoned Animals in Lincoln County
Introduction:
The Lincoln County Animal Shelter is committed to providing a safe and loving environment for abandoned animals in our community. We believe that every animal deserves a chance at a happy and healthy life, and we strive to give them just that. However, we are in need of funding to improve our facilities and programs in order to better serve the animals in our care.Project Description:
Our proposed project aims to improve the lives of abandoned animals in Lincoln County by upgrading our facilities and expanding our programs. Specifically, we plan to use the funding to:
Renovate our kennels to provide larger, more comfortable living spaces for the animals
Install a new HVAC system to improve air quality and temperature control
Purchase new equipment and supplies, such as grooming tools and veterinary equipment
Expand our spay and neuter program to help reduce the number of unwanted animals in our community
Increase our outreach and education efforts to promote responsible pet ownership and adoption.
Expected Outcomes:
The improvements to our facilities and expansion of our programs will result in a number of positive outcomes for the animals in our care. We expect to see:
Increased comfort and well-being for the animals living in our shelter
Improved health and hygiene for the animals thanks to the new HVAC system and grooming equipment
A reduction in the number of unwanted animals in our community through our expanded spay and neuter program
More successful adoptions as a result of our improved facilities and outreach efforts
Budget:
Renovations: $50,000
HVAC system: $25,000
Equipment and supplies: $10,000
Spay and neuter program: $15,000
Outreach and education: $5,000
Total: $105,000
Conclusion:
The Lincoln County Animal Shelter is dedicated to improving the lives of abandoned animals in our community. With the funding from this grant, we will be able to upgrade our facilities and expand our programs, resulting in better care for the animals in our shelter and a reduction in the number of unwanted animals in our community. We appreciate your consideration of our grant application and look forward to working with you to make a positive impact on the lives of animals in Lincoln County.
Although the chatbot came up with its own program idea and budget out of thin air, it did provide a fairly well-written and coherent grant application that could serve as a useful starting point in the proposal-writing process. (More detailed prompts would also conjure up a more tailored response. And the tool is a chatbot; that is, it can make adjustments to previous parts of the conversation based on further inputs; each input isn't necessarily an isolated item.) Organizations that are new to proposal writing or lacking a proposal writer wouldn't have to start from scratch. Staring at a blank application is one of the most daunting aspects of a grant application; having a tool that gets the wheels in motion could be extremely helpful to smaller organizations.
But professional grant consultants and proposal writers shouldn't be too worried yet. Systems like ChatGPT can provide good templates, but professionals still have the leg up in their ability to integrate storytelling aspects into their writing, along with more artfully integrating the relationship between dollar inputs and specific outcomes. While chatbots can provide a certain level of writing proficiency (one teacher said it can write better than most students), seasoned writers still likely have a lead in their ability to pull at the emotional strings of grant reviewers, and to cater to specific audiences.
In addition to proposal writing, AI tools will also affect other aspects of the nonprofit ecosystem. The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently published an article called "Artificial Intelligence Can Help Nonprofits Reach More Donors, but Fundraisers Can’t Ignore Potential Pitfalls." The article starts with an excellent example of how AI can sometimes go a bit haywire, where a prompt conjures up a heartfelt story about writing a thank-you note to a dead donor. Despite that one issue, the exercise shows how AI can be useful in the donor-interaction work that most nonprofits have to handle. The author, Daniel Hadley, also theorizes that AI will be a useful tool in developing marketing campaigns, as well as other needs such as "bookkeeping, research, hiring, and even more abstract tasks, such as designing a theory of change and demonstrating a program’s impact." (Forbes offers some additional examples of nonprofit tasks that could be handled by AI.)
Hadley also points out some of the pitfalls of relying fully on AI. Research questions can miss out on certain nuances. For example, if you ask an AI to give you a list of low-performing schools in your area, unless you're extremely careful with your entered parameters, the AI's interpretation of "low-performing" may not match your own. In addition, the AI tools are not foolproof; you will probably need a human set of eyes to review the work and double-check the accuracy.
As AI becomes more prevalent across the nonprofit sector, we will get a better idea of the flaws in its usage, along with other thoughts on how it can improve the work of nonprofit organizations. For now, I am predicting that AI will work as something of an equalizer in the field. Larger, well-funded organizations will still be able to hire the best proposal writers or fundraisers, but smaller organizations will have a tool to help them do their good work with limited resources. Though our science fiction entertainment is littered with post-AI dystopias, we can hope that in the real world, AI can be a force for good.
This article was written by a real human being, except for the sections clearly attributed to ChatGPT.