The Nonprofit AI Almanac

Your first 90 days with AI

Prepared 2026-10-09.

Please note: This site is only a guide to help people understand. Consult your IT, security and/or privacy department for clarification.

A plan for a small team with no IT department. Start with public or low-risk information. Owners are roles, not people: one person can hold several roles. Ticking a box here is not saved anywhere, so print the page if you want a copy.

Days 1 to 30: Set the ground rules

Goal: Know what is in use, and agree what is allowed.

Days 1 to 30: Set the ground rules: who does what, week by week
WeeksActionOwner (role)
Week 1Name an AI lead, one person with a few hours a week, and tell staff who it is.Executive director
Ask staff, without blame, which AI tools they already use and for what.AI lead
Name a privacy contact and an IT or security contact, even if they are a volunteer or an outside helper.Executive director
Give the board chair a short heads-up that a small pilot is coming.Executive director
Week 2Draft a one-page use policy with the green/yellow/red rule, the never-paste list and "a person reviews everything", and write one page of examples from your own work for each color.AI lead
Review the draft policy, and ask your lawyer or IT helper to look at it too.Privacy contact
Ask your lawyer or privacy helper whether HIPAA or GDPR applies to your organization.Privacy contact
Week 3Pick candidate tools and send each one the vendor questions.IT or security contact
Read each tool's comparison page and nonprofit offer.AI lead
If HIPAA or GDPR applies, ask each provider whether the exact plan you would use comes with a business associate agreement or a data processing agreement. Words like "compliant" on a website do not settle it.Privacy contact
Collect the written answers from each provider and save them in one shared folder.AI lead
Week 4Choose which tool or tools staff may use for the pilot, based on the written answers, and record why.Executive director
Approve the policy, so everyone knows the rules before they start.Executive director
Set up organization accounts for the approved tool, and turn off personal accounts for work.IT or security contact
Run training session 1 (lessons 1 to 3 and the before-you-paste checker).AI lead

Success checks

Days 31 to 60: Run a small pilot

Goal: Test two or three green-light tasks with a small team.

Days 31 to 60: Run a small pilot: who does what, week by week
WeeksActionOwner (role)
Week 5Choose 2 or 3 green use cases from the library, using only public or low-risk information.AI lead
Time each task by hand once, using the worksheet.Pilot team
Agree on a stop plan: who can pause the pilot, and how you will tell staff.Executive director
Week 6Do each task with AI; record drafting time and checking time; log any made-up facts they caught.Pilot team
Save a copy of the prompts you used, so they can be spot-checked.Pilot team
Week 7Hold a weekly 30-minute check-in, and log any slip-ups in a shared issue log.AI lead
Spot-check five saved prompts for private details.Privacy contact
Keep doing each task with AI, and keep recording drafting time and checking time.Pilot team
Week 8Run an end-of-pilot review of the time notes and the issue log.AI lead
Finish the time notes for each task, so net time saved can be worked out.Pilot team

Success checks

Days 61 to 90: Decide and grow carefully

Goal: Keep what works, stop what doesn't, and set a review rhythm.

Days 61 to 90: Decide and grow carefully: who does what, week by week
WeeksActionOwner (role)
Week 9Decide continue, change or stop for each task, using net time saved and the issue log.AI lead
Stop a task if checking time cancels out the time saved.AI lead
Week 10Update the policy with what you learned.AI lead
Confirm account settings (training opt-out, retention) match the policy.IT or security contact
Weeks 11 and 12Run training session 2 for the wider team (prompting, hallucination, human in the loop).AI lead
Add working prompts to a shared library.Pilot team
Week 13Report to the board using the "Copy for board memo" export (on any topic page) and the pilot results.Executive director
Set a quarterly review date.Board chair

Success checks

If something goes wrong

Stop using the tool for that task, tell the AI lead the same day, and write down what happened. The privacy contact, with your lawyer if you have one, works out whether anyone outside the team must be told. Some laws set short deadlines, so do this quickly.

Talk to the providers

We list pages, not people, because we cannot check who an individual is and a list of names would put those people's privacy at risk. A page can send you to a form, an article or a chat. We cannot promise that anyone will answer, or how fast. Some pages go to the company's partners or to a host, and we say so next to the link.

Nonprofit programs have eligibility rules and limits, and not every organization qualifies. Read the rules on each page. Before you call or fill in a form, have your vendor questions ready, and ask for answers in writing.

What to ask

  • Is there a nonprofit price, and what proof of nonprofit status do you need?
  • Is our data used to train your models, and can we turn that off in writing?
  • How long do you keep our data, and how do we delete it?
  • What happens to our data and accounts if we leave?

The full list is in Questions to ask any provider.

Official pages by provider

Claude (Anthropic)

ChatGPT (OpenAI)

Gemini (Google)

Grok (SpaceXAI)

SpaceXAI runs x.ai, so the Grok pages below are on x.ai.

Llama (Meta)

Meta publishes the license that sets the rules for using the model; the hosting company provides the service. Read Meta's Llama license. The pages below are the host's, shown as via the hosting provider. These AWS pages are about AWS in general, not about Llama.

Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft)

Perplexity (Perplexity AI)

Mistral Le Chat (Mistral AI)

Givebutter (Givebutter)

Grantable (Grantable)

Tools and guides used in this plan