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Community IT Innovators

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Community IT offers free webinars monthly to promote learning within our nonprofit technology community. Our podcast is appropriate for a varied level of technology expertise. Community IT is vendor-agnostic and our webinars cover a range of topics and discussions. Something on your mind you don’t see covered here? Contact us to suggest a topic! http://www.communityit.com

3d ago

Growing IT Management Capacity at Nonprofits with Johan Hammerstrom pt 2

In Part 2 of the Growing IT Management Capacity at Nonprofits webinar, Carolyn Woodard and Johan Hammerstrom, CEO of Community IT, get practical about what well-managed IT looks like, and why the capacity to manage IT matters more than any tool, device, or license you can buy. Johan walks through a simple framework: five capacities every nonprofit's IT should have, and ten security essentials that non-technical leaders can use as a checklist. Carolyn then shares why she wrote the upcoming white paper with the Technology Association of Grantmakers (TAG), reframing nonprofit IT around assets instead of deficits. Nonprofit staff bring deep knowledge of their mission, IT vendors bring technical expertise, and funders bring capacity-building dollars and a view across their grantees. The missing piece is IT management, and closing that gap takes everyone working together. The Q&A takes on a question many listeners will recognize: what can a one-person team wearing too many hats do to be more proactive when there's no time to think strategically? Johan's answer is to make your vendor carry the proactive work, and to build in simple checkpoints that keep the relationship accountable. Haven't listened to Part 1 yet? Find it in your podcast feed. This episode covers: The five IT capacities your nonprofit should be able to do either internally or with vendor support: resolving simple issues on demand, resolving advanced technical issues, proactively managing IT systems, proactively managing IT operations, and planning strategic investmentsTen security essentials across devices, accounts, data, and governance, and why your acceptable use policy should address AI and be a living documentWhy funding technology without funding IT management capacity leads to technical debt, and why expecting mission-driven staff to also be IT experts is an equity issueHow a monthly vendor check-in and an annual assessment timed before budgeting can shift a vendor relationship from reactive to proactive, and why an assessment is an easier ask of fundersWhy AI adoption is exposing underlying IT management gaps that AI can't fix on its ownResources Mentioned: Webinar: Growing IT Management Capacity at Nonprofits – Community ITTemplate: Acceptable Use of AI Tools in the Nonprofit Workplace – Community ITWebinar: Nonprofit Cybersecurity Playbook, Updated for AI (October 21) – Community ITKauffman Foundation – kauffman.orgTAG 2026 Conference – Technology Association of Grantmakers – tagtech.orgStart Here: Nonprofit Cybersecurity Basics - Community IT2026 Cybersecurity Readiness for Nonprofits Playbook - Community IT _______________________________ Start a conversation :) Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.comon LinkedIn on reddit/r/nonprofitITmanagementon the Community IT websiteThanks for listening.
6d ago

Nonprofit AI: Policy Creation Tips

Carolyn Woodard covers a question many nonprofits keep putting off: how do you create an AI policy when you are short on time? Whether your organization is embracing AI or has decided not to use it at all, you need a written policy, because AI is already arriving inside the tools you pay for. First, two news items with nonprofit connections. The Gates Foundation has committed $1 billion to AI for health workers, farmers, and teachers, including work to make AI tools function in languages that are poorly represented today. Carolyn looks at why some tribal and small language communities see AI as a way to preserve their languages, while others are rightly skeptical about who owns their data and culture. Common Sense Media also named former Google trust and safety leader Tom Siegel as executive director of its Youth AI Safety Institute, funded in part by Anthropic and the OpenAI Foundation. Then Carolyn walks through practical steps for building a policy, and explains where Community IT stands: we support nonprofits that choose AI and nonprofits that choose not to, and we want any use to be secure. This episode covers: Why every nonprofit needs an AI policy, even if that policy is that you do not use AI. Microsoft, Google, Zoom, your CRM, and nearly every other tool keeps adding AI, and staff need to know what to do when an update arrives.Tips to build a policy: designate an AI owner, a person or small team with an executive champion and a board connection, and hold listening sessions with staff, leadership, and the board to surface opinions, skill levels, ideas, and mission-specific concerns before you write anything.What a policy outline should cover: principles, examples of what you will and will not use AI for, approved uses and tools, a process for resolving questions and revising the policy, and standards for disclosing AI use.How AI connects to cybersecurity through two risks and one benefit: better scams and deeper fakes coming in, oversharing through free AI tools going out, and AI that can help a small team find security gaps when used carefully.Why training and review matter as much as the document: common scenarios, a light quiz that confirms staff know who to ask, a culture with no dumb questions, and a revisit at least twice a year.Resources Mentioned: SNL Weekend Update, Dario Amodei sketchGates Foundation $1 Billion Equitable AI CommitmentTom Siegel Joins the Youth AI Safety Institute, Common Sense MediaTemplate, Acceptable Use of AI Tools in the Nonprofit Workplace, Community ITMission Aligned AI Adoption Model for Nonprofits, Community ITBlog: Three Filters for Mission-Aligned AI Decision Making, Community ITNew every Tuesday. _______________________________ Start a conversation :) Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.comon LinkedIn on reddit/r/nonprofitITmanagementon the Community IT websiteThanks for listening.
Sep 25

Growing IT Management Capacity at Nonprofits with Johan Hammerstrom pt 1

In the first part of this two-part conversation, Carolyn Woodard and Johan Hammerstrom, CEO of Community IT, take on a question behind a lot of nonprofit IT frustration: who at your organization actually owns IT? Not who fixes it, but who plans, budgets, and makes the case for it. Drawn from a Community IT webinar, this episode looks at what well-managed IT requires and why building management capacity does more for nonprofit resilience than buying more tools, devices, and licenses. Johan walks through the hallmarks of well-managed IT, tied together by one theme: proactive rather than reactive. Carolyn then draws on her own experience as IT Director at an international NGO with close to 100 staff, where she managed an MSP that handled the technology but could not play a strategic role, and translated between an executive team that wanted new systems but needed to understand the budget and staffing needed to support them. Her takeaway: owning IT is a management function, and it does not require a technology background. This episode covers: The characteristics of well-managed IT: defined service levels, predictive management and monitoring, IT driven by organizational strategy and policy, automation where appropriate, and meeting business needs.Why defined service levels are about clarity, not complexity. What matters is that expectations are written down and shared, whether your organization is small or large.Why AI is not a shortcut around IT management. Systems that are easy to build still need a long-term plan for managing and maintaining them. If you are not managing IT well now, you will struggle to manage AI.What owning IT looks like in practice: strategic oversight and governance, setting and enforcing policies, managing vendors, and the decision-making authority that middle managers often lack.Why a vendor handling day-to-day support cannot replace an internal owner who understands your budget, strategy, and mission.Resources Mentioned: Technology Association of Grantmakers (TAG) - https://www.tagtech.org/Nonprofit IT Management Reddit Community - https://www.reddit.com/r/nonprofitITmanagement Listen for part two in your podcast feed. _______________________________ Start a conversation :) Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.comon LinkedIn on reddit/r/nonprofitITmanagementon the Community IT websiteThanks for listening.
Sep 22

Nonprofit AI: Carve Out Time To Experiment with AI

Carolyn Woodard digs into something that hits closer to home this week: a conversation with a friend who knows that parts of her job could be automated, but can't find the hour to actually build it. That tension of fixing the plane while flying it turns out to be a well-documented, structural problem across the nonprofit sector, not a personal failing, and Carolyn spends the episode working through what the research says and what to actually do about it if you need to find the time to look into using AI. What happens when funders and nonprofits invest seriously in nonprofit capacity and cutting down on busy work? What's the intersection with using AI to cut down on those repetitive time-sucking tasks? This episode covers: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's "Pace the Frontier" essay is still generating responses from every direction, and the UN General Assembly opened this week with AI as a headline issue - worth watching.A peer-reviewed 2026 study on nonprofit administrative burden, paired with a nearly 20-year-old RAND finding that one agency spent almost half its staff time on compliance alone, shows this isn't a new problem. A recent post from Vu Le's Nonprofit AF asks the sharper question of how much of that busywork nonprofits and funders create for each other unnecessarily.Trust-based philanthropy has real data behind it: a Center for Effective Philanthropy study of MacKenzie Scott's unrestricted giving found that over a third of nonprofit leaders reported reduced burnout, and recipient organizations held roughly double the cash reserves of comparable orgs.A Harvard Business Review field study found AI doesn't automatically free up time. Without deliberate norms around pacing and boundaries, saved time just gets absorbed into doing more, faster, indefinitely.A practical, step-by-step way to actually carve out the hour: audit last week's tasks, filter for frequent and time-consuming ones, pick just one, define success in a sentence, and pilot it with a human still in the loop.What to do if you're not sure what your organization's AI policy is? That's not a reason to stop investigating, but it is a reason to ask before you run anything through a tool.Resources Mentioned: "We Must Pace the Frontier" – Dario Amodei – https://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-frontier"Challenges, Choices and Common Applications: Funders' Exercise of Power and Its Consequences for Nonprofits' Administrative Burden" – Katy Adams, Journal of Philanthropy (2026) – https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/nvsm.70064Meeting Funder Compliance (2006) – RAND Corporation – https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2006/RAND_MG505.sum.pdf"Is a lot of our work just creating work for other people to do?" – Vu Le, Nonprofit AF – https://www.nonprofitaf.com/is-a-lot-of-our-work-just-creating-work-for-other-people-to-do/"Breaking the Mold: The Transformative Effect of MacKenzie Scott's Big Gifts" – Center for Effective Philanthropy (2025) – https://cep.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/CEP_Breaking_the_Mold_FNL.pdf"AI Doesn't Reduce Work—It Intensifies It" – Harvard Business Review – https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies-itCase Study: Nonprofits Leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot for Impact – TechSoup – https://blog.techsoup.org/en-us/posts/case-study-nonprofits-leveraging-microsoft-365-copilot-for-impactNonprofit Success Stories (Gemini) – Google for Nonprofits – https://www.google.com/nonprofits/find-solutions/Brian Impact Foundation Case Study – Anthropic – https://www.anthropic.com/customers/brian-impact-foundation"GitLab hosts nonprofit AI demo day to woo investors to innovation fund" – Chronicle of Philanthropy – https://www.philanthropy.com/news/gitlab-hosts-nonprofit-ai-demo-day-to-woo-investors-to-innovation-fund/AI Acceptable Use Policy Template – Community IT Innovators – https://communityit.com/template-acceptable-use-of-ai-tools-in-the-nonprofit-workplace/Register now: Growing IT Management Capacity at Nonprofits Webinar - Community IT Innovators - https://communityit.com/webinar-growing-it-management-capacity-at-nonprofits/ _______________________________ Start a conversation :) Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.comon LinkedIn on reddit/r/nonprofitITmanagementon the Community IT websiteThanks for listening.
Sep 18

Growing IT Management Capacity at Nonprofits with Jean Westrick

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. This episode covers: Three reasons IT funding is so hard to secure: outdated ideas about overhead, funders treating a technology purchase as the finish line instead of ongoing management, and a failure to recognize that technology decisions are strategic, leadership decisions.Naming has power. When the Kauffman Foundation names IT planning, cybersecurity, and AI readiness as eligible capacity building expenses it sends a powerful signal to grantees that they are allowed to ask.How the Virtual CTO Program from TechSoup and Tech Impact gives small nonprofits access to technology assessments and long-term roadmaps at an affordable price point and connects them to a cohort of nonprofits on the same IT journey who can share resources and knowledge.Why every organization needs IT friends and translators, people who can connect a technology decision back to the mission it is meant to serve.A first look at Growing IT Management Capacity at Nonprofits, the white paper Carolyn authored, coming from TAG in early 2027. Resources Mentioned: Technology Association of Grantmakers (TAG)Virtual CTO Program for the Nonprofit Sector, TechSoup and Tech ImpactCapacity Building Grants, Ewing Marion Kauffman FoundationRegister for the Sept 23 webinar with Carolyn and Johan Hammerstrom on Growing IT Management Capacity at Nonprofits _______________________________ Start a conversation :) Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.comon LinkedIn on reddit/r/nonprofitITmanagementon the Community IT websiteThanks for listening.
Sep 15

Nonprofit AI: Calls for Regulation

This week, host Carolyn Woodard tackles the AI story that made it onto TV and radio news this weekend: an essay from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei calling for a deliberate slowdown in frontier AI development, followed within about 24 hours by agreement from OpenAI's Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind. If the headlines had you feeling like you should be very afraid, Carolyn walks through what's actually happening, why the timing is worth a second look, and why nonprofits have more agency in this moment than the news cycle suggests. She also digs into a practical question raised by Anthropic's own account bans this week: how did they know what users were asking? The answer has real implications for any nonprofit using AI tools with sensitive data. This episode covers: Anthropic bans five accounts tied to bioweapons-related research just days after a top researcher, Jacob Coxon, publicly resigns over AI safety concerns — the backdrop that turned Amodei's essay into a weekend news cycle, alongside Congress's narrow pre-midterm window and today's unlikely Bernie Sanders–Steve Bannon press conference calling for AI curbs from opposite ends of the political spectrum."Regulatory capture" gets a plain-language explainer. The same self-regulation playbook the auto and food safety industries have used for decades, now showing up in AI companies' pitch that only they understand their technology well enough to write the rules for themselves.A nuclear arms race compare and contrast - exponential capability growth, decades-long treaty timelines, and a key difference: nuclear weapons required nation-state resources and scientists, while today's dangerous capability increasingly just requires an AI assistant and the right specialized background.How did Anthropic actually catch the flagged accounts? Automated safety classifiers scan for risk patterns, similar to how YouTube flags copyrighted content, and escalating flags trigger human investigation. Anthropic doesn't have a person reading every chat. Check your terms and conditions for more information on the AI tool you use. Practical, org-level steps for nonprofits worried about AI vendor trust: a free AI Acceptable Use Policy Template, a nonprofit-specific tool safety guide, and the suggestion to ask funders what due diligence they've already done and hang on to their coattails (if they have more time and budget for due diligence than you do)Andrew Strait, formerly of Google and DeepMind, questions who gets to appoint AI safety evaluators and what counts as "safety." Two real regulatory alternatives are already on the table, including a Wharton proposal modeled on two centuries of bank regulation.Where does philanthropy fit in? John Palfrey and MacArthur Foundation's reaction, the nine-foundation Humanity AI coalition, and an honest look at whether philanthropy's slow pace can keep up with this pace of change. Resources Mentioned: We Must Pace the Frontier – Dario Amodei – https://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-frontierDetecting and Countering Misuse of AI: September 2026 – Anthropic – https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026Anthropic's Moral Conflict Is Playing Out in Real Time – Wall Street Journal (paywalled, free with account) – https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropics-moral-conflict-is-playing-out-in-real-time-c503e0c1Exclusive: Sam Altman interview – Fortune – https://fortune.com/2026/09/12/sam-altman-interview-ai-doomsday-safety-models-control-ipo-2027/Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon to share a stage to promote curbs on AI – NPR – https://www.npr.org/2026/09/15/nx-s1-5968678/bernie-sanders-and-steve-bannon-to-share-a-stage-to-promote-curbs-on-aiLinkedIn post on AI industry self-regulation – Andrew Strait – https://www.linkedin.com/posts/agstrait_there-are-significant-reasons-to-be-skeptical-ugcPost-7504112678676885505-QG8l/'Pace the Frontier,' They Say. But Who Sets the Pace? – Tech Policy Press – https://www.techpolicy.press/pace-the-frontier-they-say-but-who-sets-the-pace/Supervising Risk: A New Deal for Artificial Intelligence – Kevin Werbach & Peter Conti-Brown, Wharton – https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6781380AI Tools Safety Guide – Meet the Moment – https://nonprofit-ai-tools-trust-directory.mtmapps.nowAI Acceptable Use Policy Template – Community IT Innovators – https://communityit.com/template-acceptable-use-of-ai-tools-in-the-nonprofit-workplace/Nonprofit AI Framework Webinar – Community IT Innovators – https://communityit.com/webinar-nonprofit-ai-framework/Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Ethics for Nonprofits Webinar – Community IT Innovators – https://communityit.com/webinar-artificial-intelligence-ai-and-ethics-for-nonprofits/LinkedIn post on industry self-regulation and AI accountability – John Palfrey, MacArthur Foundation – https://lnkd.in/p/gtNmCyeUHumanity AI – https://humanityai.ai/Current AI – https://www.currentai.org/ _______________________________ Start a conversation :) Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.comon LinkedIn on reddit/r/nonprofitITmanagementon the Community IT websiteThanks for listening.
Sep 11

Doing IT Assessments at Nonprofits Pt 2

In part 2 of this two-part episode, Carolyn continues her conversation with CEO Johan Hammerstrom and Senior IT Consultant Nuradeen Aboki: what you actually get at the end of an IT assessment, and what to do with it. This episode covers: Assessment deliverables — the comprehensive report, prioritized recommendations, strategic plan, and IT roadmap, and how they connect findings to what leadership actually cares aboutTwo key principles behind a successful assessmentWhat a healthy nonprofit IT environment looks like, category by categoryKey takeaways and next steps if your assessment points toward a change in IT supportAudience Q&A on timing an assessment around staff transitions, whether smaller nonprofits need an assessment too, and what type of assessment may be most helpful.Resources Mentioned: Cybersecurity Readiness for Nonprofits Playbook: https://communityit.com/download-cybersecurity-readiness-for-nonprofits-playbook/How Do I Know If an IT Managed Services Provider Is Right for My Nonprofit Organization?: https://communityit.com/how-do-i-know-if-an-msp-is-right-for-my-organization/Building a Foundation for IT Innovation: https://communityit.com/building-the-foundation-for-it-innovation-download-this-guide/The Nonprofit Guide to Vetting a Managed IT Services Provider: https://communityit.com/the-nonprofit-guide-to-vetting-a-managed-it-service-provider/ _______________________________ Start a conversation :) Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.comon LinkedIn on reddit/r/nonprofitITmanagementon the Community IT websiteThanks for listening.
Sep 8

Nonprofit AI: LLM 101 and Best Practices Roundup

Carolyn Woodard covers two things this week: a quick and basic explainer of how large language models actually work under the hood, and a roundup of the best practices for using AI at nonprofits that Community IT has built up over nine months of this podcast and 3 years of our monthly webinars. First, the basics. An LLM is not a database and it is not doing a Google search. It is predicting the next most likely word, or token, based on patterns learned from the huge amount of text it was trained on. Image and video tools work differently, using a diffusion model that refines random noise into a picture, which is why video generation costs roughly 2,000 times more energy at the data center than a text prompt. "Hallucination" or being confidently wrong is a feature, not an AI bug. OpenAI research from last year shows it is a predictable result of how models are trained to guess a fluent-sounding answer rather than say I do not know. Then Carolyn walks through the best practices Community IT recommends for any nonprofit using AI, from naming an AI owner to keeping a human editor in the loop on anything that goes out under your name. The full version, with links to Community IT's past episodes and resources, lives in our AI for Nonprofits guide on the website. This episode covers: What an LLM is actually doing when you type in a prompt, and why that mechanism is also why LLMs are bad at math.What the fact that image and video generation use so much more energy than text means for your organization's AI choices.Why hallucination happens, and how to prompt AI to tell you when it is uncertain instead of guessing.A dozen or so of Community IT's best practices for nonprofit AI adoption: talk about it openly and often, name an AI owner, build hands-on literacy, verify what you can verify, keep a human editor in the loop, and many moreWhy evaluating AI tools against your organization's values, not just their features, matters.Resources Mentioned: Running Your Own LLM, Nonprofit AI PodcastAI for Nonprofits Guide, Community ITValues-Aligned AI Decision-Making, Community ITAI Acceptable Use Policy Template, Community ITWhy Language Models Hallucinate, OpenAI, 2025Nonprofit IT Management Reddit CommunityNew every Tuesday. _______________________________ Start a conversation :) Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.comon LinkedIn on reddit/r/nonprofitITmanagementon the Community IT websiteThanks for listening.

Community IT offers free webinars monthly to promote learning within our nonprofit technology community. Our podcast is appropriate for a varied level of technology expertise. Community IT is vendor-agnostic and our webinars cover a range of topics and discussions. Something on your mind you don’t see covered here? Contact us to suggest a topic! http://www.communityit.com

Creator

Community IT Innovators
Years Active

2026
Episodes

338
Rating

Clean
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© 2026 Community IT Innovators Nonprofit Technology Topics
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Community IT Innovators Nonprofit Technology Topics