4 min read · Jun 14, 2023
With few exceptions, the nonprofit sector is composed of people who want to make the world a better place. This desire outweighs our dreams of big paychecks, short hours, and a job that doesn’t leave so many of us at risk of burnout.
The nonprofit sector is also growing. Over the last 15 years, it’s grown by 33 percent. It’s now surpassed local governments to become the second-largest source of employment in the United States.
With the sector growing, it seems like a good time to embrace new technology. Yet the breakneck advance of artificial intelligence, or AI, has tolled alarm bells for some.
In the last decade or so, tech companies have self-identified as “disruptors” so often, it’s become a bit of a joke (see HBO’s Silicon Valley for more detail). For most of us, besides increasing our levels of depression and anxiety, the profusion of new products hasn’t changed much.
Artificial intelligence, however, can be truly disruptive.
At best, it can help the nonprofit sector serve the needs of more people. At worst, well, we just need to look at the many creative contributions of Hollywood to understand what the worst might look like.
With artificial intelligence, it’s awfully difficult to occupy the middle ground. You’re either an optimist or a doomer.
For the pessimists, concerns abound. With Americans continuing to save less than the historical average, people feel vulnerable. Changes to the job market and the economy at large could mean more individuals finding themselves on the financial brink.
Put another way, if you say “automation” three times in the mirror, you just might summon ChatGPT on your laptop.
But don’t technological advancements help workers? Well, the truth is more complicated. Despite major technological advances, the American work week has lengthened. As of 2014, it’s increased by seven hours, totaling forty-seven hours a week. Productivity has also increased, but has risen three and a half times more than pay.
So while technology might promise to transform work, ushering in an economy with an egalitarian facelift, it hasn’t. It’s only shifted the goalpost, with companies using new tech to justify higher workloads. It’s also collapsed the divide between work and home. Now many employers expect their employees to be accessible around the clock.
For all its good intentions, the nonprofit sector can rely too heavily on the passion and self-sacrifice of its employees.
It may be worth a reminder that nonprofit workers are workers, too. They aren’t immune to the changes AI might bring to the makeup of labor in the United States. There are ways that nonprofit workers might be particularly vulnerable. According to a 2020 survey, 50 percent of nonprofit workers reported having more than $50,000 in student loan debt. As of 2023, nonprofit human services in Washington State are paid 37 percent less than their for-profit counterparts for the same work.
Nonprofit employees have major skin in this debate.
For nonprofit organizations themselves, the risks of AI are also worth considering. AI might make fake content more accessible. It has a penchant for stealing the intellectual property of human workers. It can amplify hate speech. It might repackage the internal biases of coders, leading to discrimination with the veneer of objective data.
Organizations should plan for these eventualities. Their responses will reflect their organizational ethos.
Yet, artificial intelligence could benefit nonprofits in many ways. AI can increase donor engagement, streamlining existing fundraising efforts. It can also use aggregate data to determine where nonprofits might direct their resources most efficiently.
It isn’t all doom and gloom for workers, either. The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that services LGBTQIA+ teens in crisis, is one organization that has embraced technology. It uses cobotting, or the combination of tech and employee know-how for the benefit of both. By using AI chatbots for training, new counselors have ample time to practice without the pressure of assisting a real human in crisis. This reduces employee stress and increases the quality of care received by vulnerable teens. Benefits Data Trust, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit, uses AI to help staff connect their clients with useful public benefits. Previously, workers needed to memorize huge amounts of information or risk misdirecting a caller. AI has relieved their mental load.
It’s tempting to evaluate artificial intelligence in extremes: entirely good or totally bad. The truth of its impact on the nonprofit sector will likely be more nuanced.
Nonprofit workers should be involved in how their organizations adopt and integrate AI. It’s their job, after all! Nonprofit leadership should also be responsive to the concerns of their employees. A proactive and transparent plan for dealing with potential issues will likely go a long way to quell preliminary anxieties.
The good news is this: there are few industries with more to gain from AI than the nonprofit sector, and there are no sectors better positioned to use AI ethically.
Nonprofits have an enormous opportunity on their hands. They can and should be leaders, setting a positive example for other industries that might be less equipped, and less inclined, to use AI technology responsibly.
