AI Tool Guide for Nonprofits

By: Sarah Pita

Over 75% of nonprofit employees use AI at work. But only 15% of nonprofit organizations have policies in place governing AI use (Source: AI Equity Project, 2025).

In the absence of organization-wide tool selection, training, and guidance on acceptable use, I’m hearing about employees who are just… trying things.

While this spirit of exploration is wonderful, there are some real problems with “shadow AI use,” as it’s called. If your employees are using personal accounts at work, employers have no admin access to that work. There is no way to be sure everyone is following correct procedures for data privacy—and personal free or paid subscriptions have weaker privacy protection than enterprise models, which are designed to work securely within teams. And when employees leave, employers lose access to all that AI work because they don’t own the account.

So what’s the solution? While nobody wants to add another subscription to an already lean nonprofit budget, these risks will only continue to grow if not managed. And as of fairly recently, all the major LLMs have nonprofit pricing options for enterprise subscriptions. These have much more robust default security controls than a paid or free personal account.

I put together a downloadable resource guide for your reference. It breaks out nonprofit pricing for ChatGPT, Claude, Google/Gemini, and Microsoft CoPilot, along with privacy considerations, security basics, and key features.

There may be a tool that is particularly strong for your needs, or your decision may be dictated by whether you are using Google Workspace or Microsoft Office already. As you’ll see, each model has some unique features. And you may find yourself using more than one.

Getting an organizational subscription, or subscriptions, is something you need to do to safeguard your organization’s client and donor data, but it can also open up innovation on your team.

Going into 2026, why not learn about the different tools, and figure out what will work best for your needs? Invest in some training so your team will use AI safely, effectively, and well to support the very human work at the heart of your mission.

P.S. Got questions? Feel free to reach out, I’d love to hear from you.

About the Author:

Sarah Pita is a fundraising professional with 25+ years of experience and a dynamic speaker who makes AI approachable and immediately useful for nonprofit teams. She leads practical, engaging trainings and workshops on using AI for fundraising and has presented at groups such as Women In Development NYC and at the AFP GPC Leading Philanthropy conference, among others. Sarah is currently Director of Development at the Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York.

Interested in an AI workshop or training? Contact Sarah here.