Episode Notes:

• Learn about Microsoft Tech for Social Impact 

• Check out the full agenda of the 2024 Microsoft Global Nonprofit Leaders Summit

• Read about the Submittable and Microsoft partnership

• Get to know Microsoft Copilot

• Follow Microsoft President Brad Smith on LinkedIn

• Watch The Prompt with Trevor Noah, Microsoft’s Chief Questions Officer 

• Get started with Chat GPT

• Join the Microsoft Nonprofit Community

• Read about how Chat GPT is scoring on standardized tests 

• See how AI tools are helping identify cancer

Transcript

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Welcome to our first <i>Impact</i> <i>Audio</i> <i>Dispatch</i> episode. I'm Sam Caplan, vice president of social impact at Submittable. These <i>Dispatch</i> episodes will be a little more informal, focusing on events I've attended and trends that I'm noticing in real time.

In late January, I attended the inaugural Microsoft Nonprofit Leaders Summit in Bellevue, Washington. And I've never experienced anything like it. I'm excited to share what I learned while I was there. The stage featured blockbuster name after blockbuster name and some super inspiring discussions about where artificial intelligence fits into the future of our work.

I got to see our friend Beth Kanter, who joined us on our previous episode. So if you haven't listened to that conversation yet, be sure to check it out.

Since this summit was an inaugural event and there was just so much incredible content, I wanted to sit down with my friend and colleague Sam Ellsworth to chat about what we heard while we were there and what lessons you might be able to take away from it.

I'm Sam. So tell me about an overview of the event. What was it like? Who all was there?

Well, this was an inaugural event that was hosted by Microsoft Philanthropies and their tech for social impact team. The audience was mostly nonprofits and all of these related organizations who serve nonprofits and work in the nonprofit sector. So there were around 1,500 people that attended live in Bellevue and, I think, another 3,000 to 4,000 that joined virtually.

So it was a huge event. And there were tons of C-suite executives and people from nonprofits that were there in Bellevue. There were several funders that joined as well. So our friends John Moore from the MacArthur Foundation; Leon Wilson, who is the CIO and the chief of digital innovation at the Cleveland Foundation were there.

And as we've talked a lot about in other forums, Submittable is an ISV partner of Microsoft. And we had the opportunity to both attend and to be one of a handful of sponsors for the event. I guess what I would say too, Sam, about this is that this was a real coming-out party for Microsoft and their embracive artificial intelligence and all of their Copilots. And I think that Microsoft really positioned this as like a defining moment for themselves and for their company and for the nonprofit sector as a whole.

I think a lot about how collectively, we all sense that artificial intelligence is going to play this really significant role in the way that we do our work and the way that we achieve impact in the coming years. And I think that Microsoft positioned this event as a way to really showcase all of their investments in AI and especially as those relate to the nonprofit sector.

Sam, one more thing I would say about this too that I've thought a lot about is that I just want to say that I think it's pretty clear that Microsoft's heart is really in the right place when it comes to the nonprofit sector. And they donate or they deeply discount their products to hundreds of thousands of nonprofit organizations. They have this really large team in the form of Microsoft Philanthropies that are committed to nonprofits and partners like us and really just helping thousands of people and organizations try to make the world a little bit better.

And I felt like all of that really came out with this Global Nonprofit Leaders Summit. So it was pretty exciting . And I was super happy to have gotten to be there and be a small part of it.

Awesome. Yeah, I also felt very grateful for it.

Being surrounded by that many nonprofit leaders from so many different corners of the world was definitely a unique experience.

So set the stage for our listeners here. Tell me a bit about what kind of sessions were going on and how were people collaborating within those sessions.

One of my favorite sessions, Sam, was this demo of an AI-enabled application that Microsoft and Goodwill International built together. And the problem that they were trying to solve is that it takes an immense amount of time for Goodwill to take this product that they get donated in the form of like clothing and other types of merchandise that they eventually sell through their retail outlets to generate revenue for the organization.

It takes a tremendous amount of time to get those items described and priced and even posted on their website. And so there was this amazing demo where Microsoft and Goodwill collaborated on a application that they built using generative AI where they can take a photo of a piece of merchandise. And the generative AI will then describe what that merchandise is.

So it creates the website description. It uses an algorithm to come up with a price based on similarly priced items. And once a human reviews it, then it's super easy for them to post that on their online presence so that people can discover it or purchase it online or whatever it is that they do.

And it just struck me like, what an amazing use of AI like a real world, practical use of being able to solve this problem where it takes so many people and so much time and so much energy to achieve something that this really simple application can do almost immediately in real time.

Another session that I totally loved was Brad Smith's presentation. So Brad is the president and co-chairman of Microsoft. And he oversees all of the philanthropic work that happens at the company. And he just gave this really passionate, amazing talk about technology and AI and the nonprofit sector and was just an absolute pro. And I was so impressed with just really his overall level of commitment to what Microsoft is doing around AI and nonprofit.

And then lastly, I was really privileged to get to lead a main stage event that was titled Partner Panel AI Use Cases Among Nonprofits of All Sizes.

I had two other Microsoft partner organizations. One was mhance, and the other was Valorem Reply. They brought nonprofit partners, care, and World Wildlife Fund.

And we talked about how these teams are preparing for and already beginning to implement these AI Copilots and how that is really starting to transform the way that these organizations do all of their day-to-day work and go about achieving this amazing impact in the world.

After the event, I saw on LinkedIn quite a few times that folks were mentioning that they didn't want to be a benchwarmer with AI and that there were so many new ways that they were walking away from these sessions and understanding how AI is now a tool to help them fuel their work, rather than taking away from their own jobs. So building off of that, with technology able to take more of the load in terms of an automation, this moment seems like a good opportunity to define what's uniquely human about social impact work. So did you hear conversations around this at all?

I think so, I mean, a lot of it related back to, like, OK, so we've got this great technology that we're all going to have access to in a variety of ways. And how do we ensure that AI doesn't remove the human element of the work that we do?

And, Sam, if I can pivot just a little, here at Submittable, our colleagues on the product team have done some amazing research where they've spoken with Submittable customers who are grant makers. And they've spoken with people who use our system to apply for grants. And one of the key discoveries in this research was that both sides, the funder side and the applicant side, are both very afraid that AI is going to take away the human agency in the process, meaning that the grant makers are nervous that applicants are going to use generative AI to describe their work. And in doing so, it's not really--

it takes away from that reflective process of really thinking deeply about the reason that they're asking for the funding and how they're going to go about doing their work.

And on the other side, the applicants are really nervous that grant makers are going to use AI and that somehow their application is going to get overlooked because it doesn't have the right keyword. Or the AI is somehow going to make a mistake in terms of identifying their application as being worthy of funding.

So very, very long-winded preamble there, Sam, to say, I think the biggest nervousness for everybody out there is that AI is going to reduce the relational aspect of grant making and of nonprofit work and that it's going to actually potentially remove some of the cognitive work that goes into thinking about which projects make the most sense and are going to achieve the greatest impact out there.

So I think everybody was justifiably a little bit nervous that that could be a negative impact of using AI in the nonprofit world.

What core takeaways do you have from this conference overall? And maybe how is it different from ones that you've attended in the past?

So I think I took away this idea that it's a defining moment in a lot of ways right now, especially for Microsoft. So they've invested billions of dollars into AI. And I'm super excited to see how they're going to continue to apply AI to all of their products and services.

To me, I think that was a really big takeaway. I think the fact there is a point in time where so many nonprofit organizations are all in the same place right now in terms of trying to figure out how to get started with AI and the right ways to use it. And I think in my career, this is the only moment in time that I can remember where there was this question around a new emerging technology. And everyone is in the same place at the same time in terms of trying to figure out how to implement it, how to use it, and how it's going to benefit us.

Definitely. I remember from Trevor Noah's session that he encouraged us to all be curious about AI. What tactical advice would you give to people in the nonprofit space based on the event and conversation sessions that you attended?

I would say just get started with it.

There are some really easy ways out there that you can begin experimenting with generative AI.

You can use the OpenAI ChatGPT product for free. You can use Microsoft's version of that through their Bing interface.

And I think right now, it's just really important to get out there and start using it just like the way we all started using Google at one point. All it takes is just accessing the website, creating a simple account, and then start by entering some prompts and see what results that you get.

But I think there's a bit of a misperception out there that somehow, it's really hard, it's challenging.

People don't know what to expect. And they still think of this as this emerging technology. And in the nonprofit sector, many of our friends are laggards when it comes to technology.

And so a lot of organizations and people will wait until a technology has really gone through several iterations of development and has become very mainstream. And then they will dip their toe in and start to use it. But my advice would be, don't wait. Start using it right now. You don't have to use it in the sense of relying on it to do your job.

But you do want to get in and start using the applications and start asking questions of these AI chat bots and spend a little time every day reading and figuring out how is the world already changing as a result of AI and especially generative AI. There are already tons of great examples of nonprofits that are using this to really, for lack of a better term, revolutionize the way that they're doing their work. And I don't want to see nonprofit organizations miss the bust on this one.

Totally. I know what I loved about this conference as well was really the concept of how we're all leaning into how our peers are using AI or starting to adopt AI across their practices. Can you tell me a bit about how that was reflected in the session that you led?

Yeah, so I had the opportunity to interview two Microsoft partners and their guests. And one of the pairs had already built out a really robust infrastructure. And we're beginning to use the Copilot to help do their work better. And the other had really just started the process. And so they were in the middle of thinking about things like the quality of their data and how do we go about training our employees and what are the right types of use cases for AI in the work that we do.

So the two partners and nonprofits were in pretty different places, but they were both working towards the same end goal of being able to have this robust AI environment that incorporates a lot of practical day-to-day things about the way they work. So one of the things that the partners and the nonprofits were really excited about with the Copilots and being in the Microsoft environment was that the AI was incorporated into their email and their documents that they had saved on in OneDrive and all of the data that was part of their own corporate or nonprofit ecosystem.

And so they were starting to think about like, how do we put together these really interesting queries that will help us to generate things like progress reports or help with our applications or describe the types of impacts that we're making in the communities based on the work that we're doing? So it was really interesting to see the path that both of these partners and organizations were taking to achieve the same thing.

I remember being part of the audience during your session. And I loved looking around and seeing how folks were nodding their heads, seem very engaged and understanding that the application of these AI tools is something that they can adopt too. It's not such an intimidating practice that they have to take on. It's just, like you were mentioning earlier, trying it and seeing where it can help them to get back to the root of their work and remove that tedious component of it to some degree.

Yeah, totally. So, Sam, you got to spent a lot of time hanging out in our booth area. And every time I walked out there, there was a line of people waiting to come and talk to you and the other colleagues that we brought with us to the event. What was the most popular topic of conversation as all of these people came to the booth?

Oh, man. Well, I think, one, people were really excited to hear that Submittable is working on our own AI products. And as a product marketer with Submittable, I really loved being able to speak to how we're really centering our customers' voices and their opinions and feedback on the type of AI tools that we're rolling out.

And I think being able to speak to how much work and thought Submittable has intentionally put behind even just our foundational principles of what AI means for us really stood out with all the different people that I spoke to. I'm just always really amazed at how many different solutions there are to run a grant program from start to finish, you know?

I mean, we focus on once you're a funder or you have funding to distribute or an application-based program. But it was really exciting to hear from so many people that the side of the equation that's focusing on the grant seekers and the grant writers and how AI is truly supporting all of us.

So I think going back to a comment you made earlier of we're all asking very similar questions. We might be representing a different mission, running our programs drastically different. But AI has a way to support all of us. And I thought that was a really cool, unifying piece, which--

I mean, Microsoft really found the glue for all of us, for sure.

Yeah, totally. What was your favorite session aside from the one that I hosted?

Oh, for sure. That was my favorite.

I really did enjoy the Trevor Noah one. I didn't get to visit many sessions, but I didn't quite know what to expect from Trevor Noah. I really liked how he encouraged us to just be curious.

I think it goes back to our concept of, we don't have to know how to use AI correctly the first time. And we don't even know--

we might not get it right the second time. But just beginning to try it and seeing what it means to us. And I thought just that encouragement for everyone to try it out was helpful. And him putting it into context of just day-to-day lives and not having to be so tech heavy and a bit more conversational, I thought that was really refreshing and just gave everyone a level playing ground to relate to.

Yeah, who were one or two of the organizations that you met while you were at the event? They're either at the booth or during one of the meals or the cocktail receptions. Do you remember who you spoke to that you thought was interesting?

What I found really exciting about this event was there were really small nonprofits and foundations were on the flip side of that coin. There were really large ones.

I thought--

I mean, even going back to the way that people are approaching AI, there's the concept of what's the price tag on it. How do I implement this into my existing programs? And is it accessible for me?

So I think rather than saying like, who did I talk to? I think it was more of like the range of types of people that I spoke to that I walked away feeling really excited about my own work that I do at Submittable even more of there were types of organizations that have chapters worldwide that were all doing their practices and day-to-day programming differently. But we're finding a unified way to use AI, whereas there were larger foundations that were finding ways to improve the work that they were already doing.

I thought one of the really exciting things that Devi Thomas and her Microsoft Philanthropy teammates unveiled at the conference was the Microsoft Nonprofit Online Community that they--

Definitely.

--have established. And I've been out onto it a number of times now. And it's continuing to grow in popularity. But I have been saying for like 10 years now that the world really needs a good, solid online community for nonprofit practitioners to come together and exchange ideas and ask questions and just generally have a place to socialize and network.

And so kudos to Microsoft for putting something together that is not necessarily Microsoft centric.

It's a great place to get together and chat and ask questions. And it could be about Microsoft products, but it could totally be about anything else as well.

So I was super excited to see that that had rolled out. And I know that I will continue to visit it and contribute to the ongoing discussions there.

Definitely. And I think those discussions that were kicking off within that online community were similar to what I was experiencing on the floor in terms of the sessions that were going on throughout the conference. We're talking about the way that people were leaning into the successes of how AI can be implemented.

But I also loved how there was a sense of vulnerability of saying, here's where AI either scares me. Or here's where I have not had success with it yet. And I think that community, both online and within the event, was just very refreshing, for sure.

I had this amazing backstage moment.

Before our session, before they marched us out, we were all literally backstage behind the curtain. And I took a picture, which we will post in conjunction with this podcast. But it looked like the command center at NASA behind the curtain back there.

I mean, literally, it was like a huge wall of monitors and computers and people wearing headsets. And they were just directing everything that was happening. And it was like, you have no idea when you're sitting out in the audience of something like this, all of the work and technology that goes into making this a very professionally produced event.

I wasn't nervous about speaking in front of several hundred people until I was backstage. And I was like, oh my god, look at what all these people are doing to make me look good on stage. And then I was a little bit nervous.

No, you looked good.

Well, that was just the magic of HD and lots of colored lights on the stage.

Looking at the sessions that were hosted and the types of conversations that we were all having, how do you think the attitude or the feeling towards AI has maybe shifted if we think about right now in time versus last year, even two years ago? What does that look like to you?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think that 2023 was largely a year of discovery when it comes to generative AI. So as the technology was really becoming popularized over the course of 2023, especially in the nonprofit sector, we were all trying to figure it out. What is it? What does it even mean? What can you do with it?

Does it mean the robots are taking over the world? Does it mean that my job is going away?

And so there was a lot of hand-wringing, a lot of questioning. There was a lot of naysaying and doubting as to whether or not this technology, was it all hype? Was it actually going to amount to something?

And I think the big shift that I've noticed so far in 2024 starting with the nonprofit summit was that suddenly, people are engaged and ready to begin using and experimenting with it. And I think that the other thing is that over the course of 2023, we all began to get a better understanding of what generative AI actually is.

And so we can talk all day long about the large language models and the way that the technology works and it's constructed. But I mean, what people I think are beginning to understand is that I can ask some pretty esoteric questions. And this technology that was trained on the internet and can be trained on all of my organization's data can give some pretty amazing answers.

And there's all these data points now that show that generative AI and ChatGPT is scoring in the 95th percentile on the LSAT and GRE, that it's doing this amazing job of being able to identify these very disparate patterns and complex data, that it's helping medical professionals find cancer faster. It's discovering new pharmaceuticals and new potentials for medicine.

We're all, I think, finally beginning to sense like, my goodness, this could really redefine things in a big and important way.

And I think that's where the nonprofit sector is right now is like, OK, great. So how can I run my food bank more efficiently? How can I help more people through the use of generative AI? And I think that's where we all are. And that's the biggest difference between last year and this year.

I mean I think there's a large curiosity around AI and what it can do. There's so many things that--

we're all intrigued about AI. But what does it actually look like in practice? So, Sam, do you feel like there is a consensus on what AI means to the nonprofit community or what a definition of it is for us moving forward?

Honestly, I don't know that Microsoft or the speakers were focused on trying to provide a succinct definition of what it is and what it isn't. I think instead, they were much more effective at demonstrating a lot of different use cases and a lot of different possibilities out there.

So in our conversation earlier, I mentioned the application with like a Goodwill International. There were a lot of demonstrations of how people can use these Copilots and Microsoft 365 to summarize their emails, to identify what's happening with their particular project at work.

There was this amazing use case where somebody created a prompt that said like, I was on vacation last week, tell me what's happening with this particular project. And AI went out. And it looked at a variety of documents and calendar events and scanned their whole Microsoft ecosystem for information about this project and came back with a bullet pointed list of the most important things that that person had missed while they were on vacation the prior week.

Another demo somebody said like, summarize the last five emails from my boss. And it came back. And it did a great job of summarizing the most salient points in these emails.

So I think the big takeaway for me is that AI in the nonprofit sector, at least in 2024, it is not going to revolutionize the way that we do our work. What it's going to do is create more time in our day to allow us to think more deeply about the challenges that our organizations are trying to solve.

And that is a huge step forward that should not be discounted--

the ability to have more time to think deeply while AI takes away some of the administrative burden that weighs us down in our day-to-day work. That's huge. And I think that that's what Microsoft was trying to demonstrate is the art of the possible in 2024.

And then who knows beyond that? As we get into 2026, 2027, AI is going to have advanced a lot. But the big takeaway for me, Sam, is just like, I can use AI to do my job more effectively in a more fun way that frees me up to think deeply about things that I would rather be focused on.

Yeah, I mean, what I hear you describing is a tool. AI is a tool to help us do our work better but a tool that we have to prompt it to do something. So it's not necessarily thinking for us, but it is doing some of the heavy or the tedious work that we are giving it a prompt to complete.

Something that I heard at one of these sessions that I really liked is the concept of a typewriter. The typewriter was a tool. When the tool came out, it didn't automatically make everyone a--

just because you had a typewriter doesn't mean you're a better writer all of a sudden. However, it is a tool to help you get more practice with writing and to do it more efficiently. And as a result, you do become a better writer by chance.

So I like the different ways that I kept hearing different descriptions of how AI is a tool. And I think the way you just described what it looks like in practice, it is a tool that we are deciding where it plays a role.

Yeah, Sam, one of the things that I talk about a lot is there's a secret hidden language of philanthropy. And people who have been--

who have completed advanced degrees at prestigious universities and that have the privilege of having been in the nonprofit space for a number of years, they know this secret language of philanthropy.

But a lot of new, young nonprofits who are led by people who do not traditionally come from a nonprofit background, they do not know that secret language. And so they're disadvantaged when they try to put together these project proposals looking for big funding to help them achieve their organization's mission. And so a great use case for generative AI is that people can take their project proposal, enter it into a ChatGPT or similar tool, and ask that tool to help change the language to be more philanthropy like. And it does a great job of it.

It's like, there are so many ways that tools like ChatGPT and other types of generative AI are going to help level the playing field for so many individuals and organizations that don't have the same level of privilege as the biggest nonprofits or the most experienced or highly educated nonprofit practitioners out there. I mean, it's one of hundreds and hundreds of use cases where it's a tool, but it's a pretty incredible tool. And the world hasn't seen anything like it before.

Yeah, so I got to ask, Sam, how are you using AI right now, if at all?

Yeah, the main way that I use AI, I use it for two things. One, I use it for research. And especially if I use the Bing chat bot, it references the large language model, but it also goes out onto the internet to look for the most modern sources of information.

So I can ask esoteric questions and get back some pretty incredible summaries that are mostly hallucination free. So I'm using it as a learning tool. And I'm also using it as a thought partner. So when I have an idea, I love to use GPT to help me think through aspects of that idea that I might not normally do on my own.

So I can ask it to help me think about an idea from a different perspective or to apply a different voice or a different lens to this esoteric idea that I may have. And I usually end up with a better idea when I'm done. So those are the two--

I love that.

--main use cases for me.

Very cool.

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Thanks for tuning in today. I know over here, we're already looking forward to the next summit. If you're interested in learning more about how nonprofits are already using automation, join us for a webinar with Microsoft on April 2. We'll talk to leaders from the low-income investment fund, 501(c)(3), to learn how they're using grants management software to create greater impact. Register at submittable.com/register.

And for a deeper dive into artificial intelligence, be sure to check out our recent episode with Beth Kanter. She helps you frame AI adoption around one essential question. And finally, if you're curious about Submittable's approach to AI, you can learn more about it at submittable.com/ai.

Thank you for listening to <i>Impact</i> <i>Audio</i> produced by your friends at Submittable. Subscribe today if you haven't already. Until next time.

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