Nonprofits should focus on incremental gains for AI success

Now is the time for nonprofits to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) .

There is a distinct opportunity to significantly improve their operations using the latest developments in AI and automation.

We are seeing confidence grow in the third sector as organizations come to understand the potential of AI, but now we are entering a crucial phase as they look to implement it.

Given the complex technology involved, it may appear daunting to get the right strategy in place, but a disciplined approach to adoption that is focused on incremental gains - not radical transformation - will ensure a positive outcome.

This will mitigate significant disruption by avoiding large number of components being upgraded at the same time, as that increases the risk of something going wrong.

A pragmatic approach combined with thinking big Getting to this point is perhaps easier said than done, as many nonprofits rely on purpose-built applications and manual processes.

It is incumbent on vendors to articulate a pragmatic approach to integrating AI with these existing systems, focusing on the idea of incremental improvements to processes and ways of working.

In parallel, nonprofits must think big about the potential for positive change.

Vendors must work with their customers to help them understand that transformation entails more than just a chatbot or another point solution being added to the technology stack.

Done right, AI will reshape how workflows are triggered, data is interpreted and insights are generated.

It will become an intelligence layer acting autonomously to interrogate data and provide teams with cognitive support to make more effective and real-time decisions.

Therefore, if nonprofits are to maximize their AI investments, they must ask themselves big questions: how does AI change the ecosystem the organization operates in? And how can it be used to improve the nonprofit’s mission? If nonprofit leaders can think ambitiously about these answers, it will empower teams to become true knowledge workers.

AI will help them uncover information to inform actions or give workers more time to focus on problem-solving, as the technology is designed to automate repetitive tasks that traditionally consume cognitive bandwidth.

The right data strategy is crucial A key challenge for nonprofits is data governance, as the AI tools will only be effective if they have access to the right data.