The Agility Advantage: Small Nonprofits in the Age of AI
A Tale of Two Sectors from the Global Nonprofit Leaders Summit
Last week I had the chance to attend the Global Nonprofit Leaders Summit hosted by Microsoft. The entire event was tastefully curated and produced with participation from top level company executives and special guests including former Daily Show host, Trevor Noah, and my favorite AI expert, Dr. Fei-Fei Li. The idea, it seemed to me, was to bring leaders of some of the world’s most influential nonprofits together to get them excited about Copilot, Microsoft’s all-out initiative to embed generative AI at the core of its dominant software suite.
Copilot, an AI assistant soon to be always-at-your-side in the Microsoft software ecosystem, was the shiny object presented by exceptionally shiny people, and I must admit at times I was blinded by the glare. I felt cool with my spiffy lanyard and badge, in well-appointed rooms with well-known people from the sector where I’ve spent most of my career.
But I also know this gathering was for the 1% of the nonprofit sector, the household names with nine and ten-figure annual operating budgets who will undoubtedly be on the leading edge of incorporating generative AI into their workflows. I’ll let you imagine the representative distribution between the global north and south.
Inverse correlation between nonprofit size and AI apprehension
Anecdotally, I’m beginning to observe an inverse correlation between the size of a nonprofit organization and apprehension about diving into AI. It seems the larger the entities, the less anxious they are, and vice versa. We might speculate perhaps larger organizations have had the resources to experiment with AI for years already, or that the scale of their operations make adding automation a much more obvious priority, or well-funded teams of thousands with strong technology and communications teams feel more confident about weathering any AI-induced turbulence.
And yet, it is small organizations that could benefit most from this new wellspring of machine intelligence beginning to flow throughout the digital economy. Generative AI tools seem milliner-made for nonprofit folks who must wear many hats and for whom nothing is more scarce or valuable than time. With these tools, they can begin to approximate results that scaled-up nonprofits achieve with entire departments for marketing, development, finance, and IT.
Intra-nonprofit-sector inequity is poised to deepen
Intra-nonprofit-sector inequity is poised to deepen and become more drastically entrenched if the largest and most well-resourced organizations seize upon the profound new benefits of generative technology while small teams hesitate or abstain. Large organizations will race ahead to establish new higher standards of AI-augmented production, which will become the benchmark sought by philanthropists for their donations, leaving everyone else to catch up.
The single greatest advantage small organizations have is agility. I’ve known this since middle school when I was a 4’ 10” point guard weaving between hyper-pubescent giants with only my quickness to see me through. Likewise, sitting in the audience watching Microsoft unveil products built by thousands of elite engineers and backed by billions of dollars, I know our tiny AI startup only stands a chance of survival if we can move with speed and precision to solve specific problems for people.
The single greatest advantage small organizations have is agility
Smaller teams tend to have less bureaucracy which means decision making can happen faster. It is imperative to seize this natural advantage and not let it go to waste when so much of the ecosystem favors the largest entities. Also, it is important to note the difference between moving quickly in terms of the work to be done, which is difficult if not impossible to do with insufficient resources, and moving quickly in terms of decision making, which is usually easier to do in smaller groups.
What are all the virtues of smallness? Portability? Invisibility? Density? Simplicity? However the full manifest reads, it is becoming clear to me that small nonprofits that comprise the vast majority of the sector can benefit from taking stock of all the ways in which being little is an advantage, and then figuring out how to make AI, and every other tool at their disposal, an asset from this perspective.
Many of the biggest changes and challenges in our world originate from minuscule places. Climate change is, physically speaking, a molecular problem. AI is enabled by microscopic circuitry. Culture is increasingly shaped by the powerful computers we carry in our pockets.
This moment for all of its tumult also feels, to me, like it is circling around timeless immutable themes. What’s old is new. The meek shall inherit the earth. Change is the only constant. Think small. I’ll be meditating on these kinds of narratives as we collectively consider the future of our purpose-driven sector and where solutions may be found.
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Philip Deng is the CEO of Grantable, a company building AI-powered grant writing software to empower mission-driven organizations to access grant funding they deserve.