Every AI tool I tried for my own nonprofit produced something that sounded like a regional auto insurance company. The donor thank-yous were generic. The grant LOIs needed three rewrites. The board update drafts had to be tossed.
I spent the last six months figuring out what actually fixes that. The fix is not a better prompt. The fix is teaching the AI your voice once, then never explaining it again. The pattern is called a Claude skill (works in ChatGPT too, with a slightly different setup path).
I have been documenting the patterns in a weekly free Substack called AI for Nonprofits. Every post ships with the actual working file you can install in 15 minutes. No paywall on the working files. No tool roundups. No affiliate links. No upsells to anything but the paid tier of the newsletter itself, and the paid tier is not even active yet. Free for any 501(c)(3) to use, edit, and version. No attribution required.
What is in the archive so far and coming in the next few weeks:
The donor thank-you skill (the first AI workflow every nonprofit should build, drops 8 to 15 minute thank-yous to under 5 minutes per donor, file included).
The grant pre-screening skill (drops 30 to 90 minutes of guideline reading per alert to under 5 minutes of triage, file included).
The brand voice skill that makes every AI output sound like your org instead of generic AI (the prompt-to-skill upgrade).
The AI Use Policy template (19 sections, plug-and-play for any 501(c)(3), built on Kristen Hassen's six-rule framework).
The data safety self-audit (5 questions, 15 minutes, paired with the policy template).
The LOI Writer skill (drops 3 to 4 hour LOIs to 30 minutes, file included).
The board meeting to donor emails skill (5 personalized donor emails from your raw board notes in 20 minutes, file included).
And there will be more coming.
All free. No attribution required. Built by a sole-operator nonprofit founder for sole-operator nonprofit founders.
Subscribe and the working file lands in your inbox every Tuesday morning: https://aifornonprofits.substack.com
If any of these workflows would have saved you a Sunday night recently, the file is already sitting there waiting for you to install it.
If there are any other ones that you would like to see, let me know. There may be some that I haven't thought of that would be useful. If you have any issues with any of these files getting them installed or anything, shoot me an email. They should be pretty self-explanatory and hopefully save you a lot of time, so you're not up till 2:00 in the morning trying to figure it out like I have been. Once I got all my skills dialed in, I rarely have to do any editing. I still look over everything before anything goes out and run it through accountability checks and stuff like that. If you'd like the prompt for that or quotes or anything of that in any documents, I have an accountability prompt that will check to make sure you have citations and the stats are correct and everything else. I'd be happy to share that with you, too.
#DataandTechnology#FundraisingandDevelopment#MarketingandSocialMedia------------------------------
Join The Shift To Prevention.
BJ Adkins
Founder/Director
Animal-Angels Foundation
Pinson, AL
calendy.com/animal-angels
bjadkins@animal-angels.organimal-angelsfoundation.org
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