Name: Smarter, Not Harder: Five Ways to Actually Use Automation and AI in Your Nonprofit Finance Office
Uploaded: 2025-09-23T18:30:40.876Z
Duration: 59 min 48 s
Description: Smarter, Not Harder: Five Ways to Actually Use Automation and AI in Your Nonprofit Finance Office

Transcript for "Smarter, Not Harder: Five Ways to Actually Use Automation and AI in Your Nonprofit Finance Office": Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's I'm Sarah Curry. I'm part of the financial marketing team here at Blackbaud. I'm gonna be your host. I'm getting over a little bit of a so I apologize for the hoarse voice. Thank you for your patience. I have to pause for a few moments and take a sip of water. It seems like conversations about AI are everywhere, but sometimes they're lacking in specificity and concrete examples, of what folks are actually talking about. So that's what we're hoping to provide you today. Andrew is going to give you five top level ways you can use it and then some specific use cases and examples to get you thinking. So I'll go through a few housekeeping items. We'll get started with him. And then at the very end, I'm gonna chat with you all a little bit about what Blackbaud specifically is is doing to implement AI into our software. So stay tuned for that and hang with us to the end. Okay. Just a few housekeeping items. For those of you that are new, we use a platform called Goldcast to broadcast our webinars. We love it, but it's helpful to know where all of the pieces and parts are so you can interact with us. So the chat should be on the right hand side of your screen. I see most of you already answering and chiming in there, so please keep doing that throughout. Andrew and I will keep an eye on that if you have any questions. Yes, Jameson. The fourth best for is here. Good memory. We will be sending out a recording of this session, probably later this afternoon, if not tomorrow, whenever the platform finishes loading it. We'll send that to your email address. You can download a PDF of the slides in the docs tab, and you can find some other helpful links there as well. So the top is a PDF of the slides. If you've not yet registered for our next webinar on budgeting, you can do that there. There's a helpful blog that talks about how AI is transforming fund accounting specifically. I'll link to Andrew's website, and then one more link that I'll mention shortly. If you are interested in talking with someone for a sales question, we do have someone on the line. Daniel is here with us, so you can chat or message with him. And there's also a link in the docs tab. Hey, Daniel. Thank you. There's also a link in the docs tab. If you wanna book a fifteen minute meeting with him, he's the fastest way to get connected with our sales team. It's a quick conversation. They can chat with you about your needs and then get connect get you connected with somebody, normally as quickly as the next business day. So thank you, Daniel, for joining us. Quick link here if you wanna screenshot it. It's always helpful to have the chat support and phone number handy, so I always include that in the deck for you. And then for those of you that are hoping to get a CPU credit today, we're offering one credit. Please make sure you stay on the whole time. And when we run the polls, chime in on the chat, then make sure that you answer in the polls tab. That will appear on the right hand side of your screen in the same section as the chat and docs. It isn't currently there because we don't have a poll live, but that's where they'll show up. And Andrew and I will let you know that we're running a poll. We'll remind you to go answer it in the polls tab, and I normally leave them up for a few minutes after we've moved on just to give you time to respond because I know sometimes those move quickly. Screenshot or write down this email address. We take two weeks to process those CPE certificates and try to get them out to you earlier. But, occasionally, we do take the full two weeks. If you've not received yours at the close of two weeks, please email me, and I will help you figure out what happened. Alright. With that, Andrew, I'm gonna let you get into the fun stuff. Alright. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for joining me on this, lovely day. I appreciate everybody taking the time. So you see the the title here. And just just as a quick introduction of what we'll be talking about today, there's so many things when it comes to AI and automation that I always tell my friends at Blackbaud those words have become absolutely kinda meaningless to me personally just because they're thrown around so much and who knows what they mean. What I'm really gonna try to get at today is, especially coming from a nonprofit finance department or accounting department, resources are tight, funds are tight. What are some ways we can think about using automation tools, AI models to help us. And I'm gonna talk a lot about things you can probably do today with out paying for something more or using the tools you already have or some low code, no code option that are really accessible probably to everybody on this call. The asterisk to that is there's a tons of tool that can do so much more. But as you know, in the nonprofit world, everything comes with a price, and we don't always have the resources. So what I'm gonna really try to focus on are the things you can use and do right after you get off this call with resources you probably already have or come at a minimal additional cost. So, hopefully, that's beneficial. Quick about me, if you've never joined us before, I am the current director of finance at the Fifth Avenue Community, which is an affordable housing nonprofit here in Brooklyn, New York. I'm also the founder and partner of Innovate for Good. Been in the nonprofit world for a while, especially in this tech, accounting side, and I know somebody said I was the fourth best HARO. Actually, as of three and a half weeks ago, I'm now the fifth best HARO. Me and my wife welcomed our son. So if at any point, I just stop talking and fall asleep, it's probably from the lack of sleep from the baby. But, hopefully, I can get through this today. But I appreciate you all being here. Oh, it is counting the dog. So key points. These are the five places we're really gonna try to hit today is how can you optimize your financial management, how can you strengthen that grant management, improve that risk, enhance decision making, and boost those and to bring it all together, boost those operational efficiencies across your organization. Because I really think this isn't just about what finance can do. It's really how can you use these tools to give your teams, your management, your board better decision making data. That's the key I always wanna come out of finance. So I just wanted to talk about a few key terms that I'm gonna be throwing around wildly over the next hour, to make sure we're all coming from the same place. The first one is really when I talk about automation, that can mean so many things. From something as what I believe as simple as creating a rule in my inbox that if I get something marked invoice, it automatically forwards to my accounts payable email to a automated tool that processes payments based off the bank account it should be coming forward, the department. Automation means so many things, and I think sometimes we think about it as this big overarching automation is gonna take over. It can be some simple things too that can free up time during the day. AI, when I talk about that, it's that's a ambiguous term, but it's really how can machines learn and grow and, become more able to do these everyday tasks. And then the big one that I wanna talk about is what what a large language model is. And at it it's basic. Those are the AI tools I think a lot of us see out in the wild. The two biggest ones I'd say are Chat, TTT, and Copilot. I'm probably gonna mention Copilot a lot just because I use it just because it's on my computer because I have Office. I know a lot of you are Microsoft people, so when I talk about it, these this is a tool you have probably installed and you probably ignored the icon. So they're really tools that just take in a lot of data and learn kind of the right and wrong just through language. I can tell you they they they can do a lot of things and not a lot of things great. I can tell you one of the big things is I put in the key points I wanted for this PowerPoint and asked to asked it to spit out the deck. Obviously, I had to go back in and change a lot because it's it has its limitations, but I think knowing what tools are available can really help. And I think as we talk about all this AI and automation is to remember none of this is set and forget. There's always a review. There's always gonna be a manual process going into it. So when you think about setting up some of these systems or some of these tools, think about how you're gonna safeguard it, how you're gonna review what it's doing, and just make sure that there is some human elements still in your processes. And that brings us to the first poll question, which Sarah is gonna launch in the background. I'm gonna take some water. Alright. How confident are you in understanding how AI can be used in your department? And I think there's there's there's many levels to this. When I think about this, I think about all the endless possibilities. And then when I start thinking about, okay, what can it actually do and what's the cost benefit? That's where my brain starts kinda smoking like about it was in a cartoon because there's just so many inputs. So thinking about that And sometimes it's very hard, especially nonprofit. You've been doing things the same way year after year after year that it's hard to think of new ways to do things. And I come in with some tools at clients at my own nonprofit, and people are very reticent to give up power control to a tool. And then once you put it in, they love it because it makes life so much easier. And the goal of most of what I'm gonna talk about today is how can we get away from data entry to data analysis? And that's really what we're trying to get to is how can we put our people to the highest and best use. So the poll's gonna stay up for a few more minutes. I'm gonna move on. So how do we optimize financial management with our automated systems? And really it goes back to how can I get things into my system quicker? How can I have my books more up to date? How can I take some of this human element out of data out of it? The the example I give is, even if you have a low amount of transactions, can you put your the easiest one I can think of, can you put your bank feeds into your financial edge so that the transactions are there? So then you're just coding them. And that way, you're not doing that data entry from the beginning, and you can stop things like, hey. I have a few donors whose names are alike. If you're hand keying a lot of data, you might skip over something like that. But if you're actually reviewing things rather than hand keying, you're more likely to catch errors because you're also not reviewing your own work. Also, having that automation, having those tools get data into a system gives you that real time financial visibility. And I think the biggest place I see this not happening at non profit is on the accounts payable side. Most of the accounts payable teams I see and work with, it's really they get their built into the system and then they pay them. There's no real accounts payable. It's just paper moves or emails move throughout the office. Once it's done, it gets into a system and paid. That makes it really hard for CFOs, director of finances to do cash flow forecasting. Because I don't know what my organization has been committed to until the invoice hits my desk because it's not being entered into the system. If you're working with the system where the first stop and we'll see one in a little bit. First stop is getting it into a system. That way, you know what? It hasn't been approved, but I know I owe Blackbaud $20,000. Now if that's not getting into a system on the first step, I don't know that until it goes to pay. And like most nonprofits today, I see a lot of clients who are having cash flow issues. So not being able to plan these things out and know what's been incurred really hurts that kind of visibility and that that real time good data forecasting. And even thinking about how you're gonna forecast and budget, one of the things I've seen AI do is I had a, a client they had to they got their budget done very late and had to prepare their board presentation. So what they did is they really, they put their budget spreadsheet and last year's budget spreadsheet into Copilot and said, hey. Can you spit out some key points? And it really now there are a lot of more work had to be done to prepare the presentation to make some of the graphs and charts, but really it gave them a sense of what does my board need to know, what are the major changes that happened. And sometimes that also helps because if you're the one creating those budget to those forecast, you're in it. And I don't necessarily know what doesn't make sense to somebody who has not spent their blood, sweat, and tears putting together this budget spreadsheet or this budget plan. And having a a tool spit out here are the key points that you need to hit on really will tell you what an outside observer is gonna take take away from your presentation. So sometimes that can also just be a different thing. And I think having these forecasts allows you to really dive into the data and and look for those anomalies. What doesn't make sense? I think about when your auditors come in, one of the first thing they do is preliminary analytics. And they literally just take your trial balance side by side depending on who your auditors are. Maybe it's anything over 10% or 5,000 you have to explain. Well, an AI tool, if you give them that give it that data, even something like Copilot, it can do a little more advanced and look at it and look at what the name of the account is and know what's going on in the world. Or you can put something like your annual report in there so it's data it can pull from, and it can try to answer those questions. Hey. Why is program revenue up? If my annual report talks about three new programs, it's gonna be able to spit that out. So it's really thinking about how to go about getting to that next level of analysis. How do we get our data in the system and get to the next level? So that brings us to and really thinking and thinking about reporting. How can I use dashboards? How can I get people real time data? I think that's the key when thinking about automation and AT, is how do I get real time data? Like, how can I have my program people looking at the grant allocation of expenses in real time? So come end of the year, it doesn't take me months to do my functional expenses. How can I go about reporting with accuracy and supporting the compliance team? How can I go about getting better data into my system? So come grant billing or contract billing. It's already there. My contract, he doesn't have to put anything together. Just how can you support the rest of the organization rather than be stuck in data entry? Can you get data into the system, do your bank recs in a fewer number of days to get reports out that can be reviewed so it's not just this giant snowball that keeps rolling down the hill. So here's what everybody's here for. What are the real world applications? So one of the ones and I know in Blackbaud, you have payment assist. You have the expense module. Some organizations, they're just not ready yet. I see a lot of people talking in the chat about using spreadsheet. I've worked with a few clients who have created kind of an expense report generation from a Google form or a Microsoft form. Makes it a little more user friendly. Finance is able to capture the data in a way that's not as accounting system y. And what happens is when that's done, it sends an email to accounting. Here's the form they filled out. Here's anything they attached. And really, it just gets it automates at a very basic level that expense reporting and allows you to get that data. Like I said, another way is to just drop your financials into Copilot and say, hey, what are my key points for this year? And let it kinda come up with a top track that you then you can start. And another one is data automation when you're using Blackbaud. And I know a lot of people in the chat has been talking about payment assistance, and, the expense module. One of the biggest things is really this invoice capture. There's a little screenshot. It's a little blurry because I made it way too big on the slide. Sorry about that, Sarah. But the idea is and I I always joke that OCR has been around for years. But thinking about how it can help you, if you can get an invoice into your system and that OCR, even taking a first pass based off your history, based off what's on the invoice, even coming up, like I said, with the vendor and the amount. Now I know who I have to pay what. Does my may my team have to go on and do some allocations of that expense and change up the description so it matches what our president wants in our general ledger? Yes. But at the very base of it, you're starting at, okay. Here is where I'm starting. I'm starting with I owe Andrew Harrow $5,000. I can figure out some of the detail, but at least that way when you're sitting there thinking about what your organization's incurred and what you have to do, you have that starting point and that's in the system, and it makes it so easy. So yeah. That there's there's so many tools you have, and I always say, especially with Blackbaud, either come to Blackbaud time next month and learn some things, or Daniel's here, Sarah's here. Ask for a new demo. See what the system can do. They've added so much over the past years. And like I always say is, no one reads release notes except, like, me to know what the system's added. So just ask for a fresh demo. Pretend you're a new customer. Show you all the bells and whistles because I find in nonprofits, there's so much you're paying for that you're not using. And I always say when I go into clients, let's look at what you're using, to do it. And I I see something in the chat, and it's a good point. When we're talking about these AI tools, especially these large language models, is your data is gonna be as secure as they say it is, but you have no control. The reason I tend to use and this is just me, my personal opinion, not the opinion of Blackbaud's. When I talk about Microsoft is Copilot, all my data is already on the OneDrive. So I'm just taking what it already has access to and asking you to work on it. And I see a question about it it whatever we type into Copilot is confidential and private. I hope so because I use it to craft a lot of emails to make them softer when I'm especially when I'm emailing vendors. So if my prompts ever got out, I have a problem. So there's just some of the ways we can use it. So let's so that's our first place. It's really how do we get financial data into our system for better analysis? Because that's what really what we do. We wanna be able to look at the data and know what's going on. So the next one next one I thought about when I was talking to some clients and thinking about where there's kind of low hanging fruit, it's strengthening grant management and fundraising efforts. And I know this really does fall probably on our razor razor's edge folk more, but I think there are places that finance can insert itself with some of these tools to really help. So using AI to find new funding sources. That's that's something and I know there there's I see both sides of this. One, it can give you ideas you haven't had, but also remember, if you're asking chat gbt for new funding sources, another nonprofit can ask the same prompt. So sometimes it's a very good starting place to go, hey. What haven't I thought about? And even asking because for some nonprofits, some of that funder data is public depending on what state you're in, so it can be put into there. But I think sometimes getting new ideas of how to generate revenue and really using the tools you have can really help. And thinking about because I know we've talked in past webinars about new revenue sources, new funding driver, but really thinking about how to use AI for that funding sources. Are there donors you're not hitting? The other place I've seen is it was a national nonprofit. They put their donor database into a AI tool and said, hey. Do we have a concentration of donors somewhere? Because they were nationwide, and they were actually able to stand up, like, five mini galas, for lack of better term, where their donors were concentrated to kind of build off that momentum. So just some of the some of the ways you can use it to identify new funding sources. This is this is a big one that I've actually started to use. It's really where you have grant applications tracking at deadlines. I get a lot of, requests from my development team for either to fill out applications or, hey. We won this. Here's the deadlines for reporting. And when they send me a 50 page document where I need, like, two lines on reporting or when I'm gonna get the money, it can take a lot of time. What I've started doing is taking those reports, plugging them into an AI tool, and asking the questions I need to ask to fill out, like, my checklist. And then what I do is once I have the answers, I'll usually go back and kind of control f, just verify the answers are correct. Like I said, it's not set and forget. It's really that deadline management kinda create can you plug in all your grants and say, hey. Can you make me a reporting deadline? It can do that. It can make you a compliance calendar. And what I'd say is if you've never done anything like this, these tools and the versions that exist now and a lot of the free versions, it's a great place to start. Hey. Here's all the grants we have. Here's the information I have. Can you make me a compliance calendar? And then and then it's filling it in by hand, but at least as a starting point, I always say it's easier to to, work on something that's been started rather than start from start from the beginning. And then that goes to, real world applications. And we've been talking a lot about this at my nonprofit. And I think a big one is a lot of grant applications, as all of you know, in some way, shape, or form, they're not standard. But if you have standard paragraphs about what your organization does, one of the things I've seen work pretty well is you take those standard wordings, you take your application you're trying to fill out and the organization who you're applying to, plug those both in, and ask it to tailor your standard wording towards the organization you're applying to on the prompts, and it'll split out spit out a more specific version of your standard wording to quickly as a as a starting point to quickly fill out some of these long longer grant applications. The same way you would think maybe you would do that for a job with a cover letter. But at least, like I said, most of these ideas on the base of it is how can we create a starting point? Because I think we've all sat there either with an application or write up or a board presentation where you're just like, I don't even know where to start. That I think with most of the free versions of these tools without giving away some proprietary or HIPAA related data, we can plug some basic data in and get a starting point. So I really think that's that's my real world application here is when you have those long narratives. Do you have boilerplate wording that it can take a path at, tailoring it to what you're looking at? And also, you can ask to change the tone. Do you want a more serious tone? Do you want a more lighthearted tone? It can take a path to that. It's not always great. Sometimes the metaphors are a little weird, but like I said, all this requires review. So this is just a place that we can take as a good starting point. And that brings us to poll question number two. Has your organization put in any guardrails or policy AI policies in place yet? And I know I've actually been working on my organization. It's very hard to write a policy. Because every time I feel like I go and write it, it's gonna be outdated in two weeks. So the thing I've I've fallen back on is a lot of our policy is if you're unsure, ask. If you're unsure if you should put this data in the model, ask. If you're unsure if you should download this program, ask. Is our policy is really bay based on please, please, please ask for permission, not for forgiveness. This is not a corporate credit card where you ask for forgiveness. And AI can actually help you write the policy. What I would say in that case is there are certain tools, that it gives the references where it's pulling from, and that usually is also a good place to look as well. So make sure it's just not making that a thin air. AI AI do have what's called hallucinations, which is usually giving bad data or bad answers. So just make sure that you are sometimes looking at those sources. So that brings us to part three. So talking about improving compliance and risk management process, and I think this is where this is where you can really think about, using these tools as a first line of defense and really thinking about how can it act as, for lack of better terms, can we set these tools up to act as kind of a smoke detector for our risk and our compliance? Kinda tell me, you know what? Something feels off. You should investigate it. Something just doesn't look right. Can you investigate it? Or this doesn't line up with trends. Is there a reason? That's what I think about these is. When I think about risk and compliance, can it act as that smoke detector? So I think about let's say you have, you have regulatory compliance, whether that's state, city, federal, you have debt, you have grants that require some compliance. First thing is, can it make that compliance calendar? Especially if you have some sort of debt or bonds or, loans, can it come up with that payment schedule? Can it come up with that reporting schedule? Can it just create putting in the agreements you have? I will tell you I'm in the affordable housing industry. I can tell you before this call, I was taking some of our agreements and putting them in and asking, hey. What should our what is our reporting? Because I have an old compliance calendar, but we wanna refresh it. So let's start from somewhere. I said, hey. Can you spit out what the reporting is monthly, quarterly, and annually? And it's making me a spreadsheet as we speak. Now I'm gonna have to go into every agreement and verify that it gave me the right information, but at least I'll know what I'm looking for in theory. And reducing some of that manual workload. Once you have that reporting calendar, is there a way that you can put your trial balance, income statement, balance sheet into it and ask it for the reports that this funder grantee government agency is looking for. And I think if you can do that first pass, it all comes back to, naturally, these tools, in theory, should minimize errors. Now they're not perfect. They're wrong good percent of the time, but what you're doing is you're creating a system where you're now reviewing the work rather than doing that first pass. And as good as all of us think we are, when we do the work ourselves, you're always gonna take less of an equal eye of review because no one reviews their own work well. It's just there's people who do it better than others, but if you're not not having somebody else prepare and review it, I think in a perfect world, all our financings would be set up that we'd have people preparing, reviewing, levels, internal controls, separation of duties. I think everybody on this call realizes in certain instances, those things do not exist in a nonprofit finance team because we just do not have the number of staff we probably should. And it's it's the way it's always gonna be. So thinking about how can we use the tools we have available to us to really take that first pass where maybe at a for profit, that's a staff accountant doing it or a bookkeeper. We don't have that luxury. So let's see if we can make the computers work. Because I've seen enough that AI is not coming for anybody on this call's job. What's gonna come for your job is the person who can use AI to do that first layer of work. And really the because that person's gonna be able to deliver better insights to a board, to management, to staff than the person who doesn't. I'm really thinking about how to maintain audit trails, and I think some of this goes back to really simpler things like, have you set up journal entry approval in your SE? Have you set up that separation? Because you know what that does? It creates an audit trail. Plain and simple. That if you reverse an entry, you approve an entry. It's now in the system. We've all had the auditors come in come in and do that. Ask for that audit trail and sometimes you're just like, well, the person who created the journal entry is different than the person who posted it. So that's my separation of duties. But thinking about how we can use the system we have and set up properly, sometimes that does come at the expense of a convenience. But thinking about how to really have that audit trail in a system. And the other thing, when we were looking earlier at the, the the payment the AP dashboard from FE, one of the things is getting those invoices into the system. I talked to too many clients that are using FE XT and still are not attaching the invoices when they do AP. What that does is come audit time, come compliance time, you're running around looking for paper invoices where if they were in the system, technically, you could give your auditors read only access to the AP module and say go nuts with your selections because then they can pull whatever they want. But at least having it in the system attached gives you that backup. So two years from now when a funder comes in and goes, what did you spend this $1,100 on? It's not a panic to find the invoice. It's right there. And it also makes for better review if you can review the invoice in real time. Sorry. Excuse me. Like I said, this also fulfills facilitates smoother audits just because all the documentation is in one place. You have that internal controls. You know, it's been reviewed. And really, it it'll it stops that kind of bookkeeper controller CFO going crazy just entering journal entries that no one understands. It it requires that. Like, I know I was at an organization working with an organization where even the CFO, when they entered something, it then had to be reviewed by the controller. Everything was reviewed by the CFO except they enter something. It just needed that extra step. Because I think as CFOs, we think we're always doing the right, but if we're not the one doing journal entries every day, we're probably putting something in the wrong place. And I I've gotten enough lectures from controllers throughout the years that, hey. What you did was right, but that's not the account we use. Even though it should be, it's not. So I think it's really thinking about how to use the the workflows in the system we have. And listen, that does come at the expense, like I said, of some convenience. But But I think at the end of the day, when you're trying to minimize risk, this is a big one. So what are real world applications? Using the tools you have or another tool to create audit trail, Whether that I've seen some organizations that they're still paying things using their bank portal or something like that. What they do is they have their bank they've set up their bank portal. It sends an automatic remittance email. It just sends it to them, and that just sits in an inbox. You know what? That does create an audit trail of every payment and who approved it. Thinking about where where you can have an audit trail that's that's, automated. At the least, having it through an email that's filed somewhere, like like I said, if you can create if you're doing journal entry approvals for emails, and I still work with some organizations that are, you know what? Let's create a standard subject on this. Journal entry approval dash number and then the journal entry number. And you know what? Let's set up a tool in Outlook or or Google Mail that's gonna file those under journal entry approval when it sees that subject. Do you know what that does? That creates an automation that now you now have a journal entry approval file. So when I think about automations, there are some really cool tools out there, but some of it's just basic enough how do we get our data where it needs to be to make it easier to use. Saving documentation within your system, within your, accounting system, AP system, expense system, hopefully, that's all in one. But thinking about how can I have the documentation side by side, to really work together? And it also makes that review from a CFO controller standpoint a lot easier when you have the journal entry or the accounts payable entry and the invoice is right there. There's no questioning. There's no is this right? There's no questioning. Did my AP clerk put $8,000 instead of $80? The invoice is right there and it makes that that, that review easier. And I think it also you can do some of this automated reporting. Can I have report you know what? I have my my close so streamlined because of all this other stuff we've talked about. I just have my reports set to automatically go out on the tenth business day of the month. They just get sent out. You know what? They've already been reviewed. And that's a great place to be. If you are, I wanna talk to you. But thinking about how to automate some of this reporting, what do you need monthly that you can really set up and do quickly? And some of that is that automated reporting. Some of it is just being able to create those reports on a schedule so you're not sitting there waiting for them to run. Because we all know the bigger the report, it just takes some time. So can we automate that that it's gonna come on a certain days? Lots of questions in the chat, which it looks like we'll have some time at the end to kinda wrap those up. So I'm not ignoring you guys. I think this is a big one that I saw a lot in the pre questions that kinda came in. It's how to really enhance your decision making with those AI insights and how can we use the tools we have to really make better decisions. Because that's all we wanna do for our organization is make better decisions. And I think one of them is really this dashboards within Epi thinking about it. If your executive director could come in and answer some of the questions they have on their own rather than bothering finance, I think that can go a long way. Being able to have this dashboard that they can drill down. You know what? This expense looks too high. We've all got an email. Hey. Can you send me the the detail of this expense? It looks too high on my budget actual. Well, if you've set up a dashboard correctly, you can just say, hey. Budget actuals are ready for August. People go in, they look, and then they can drill down themselves. And I think that really makes the process so much better, and I've just seen it. And it also saves your accounting staff or you time going in and printing all these reports. Like, I know I'm not in financial edge. It takes my staff accountant about two hours to print all our budget's actual reports at the end of the month, and we do that about three times because I always find something. So thinking about how you can just save some time. And that two hours that she spends doing it, you know, that's two hours she could spend going through the actual budget to actuals and make sure things make sense. Do we have expenses that are on a zero line? Do we have things that are just not where they're supposed to be? How can we free up people's time? And really, one of the things these tools can do, like I said, take your financials. If you wanna change some of your names, account names, line items, your entity name to keep your data, so plug in your financial. Ask it to identify those patterns. I think a big part of this too is take your the one of the places I've seen it is when you when it comes to budgeting, I think a lot more nonprofits are seeing that the financial budget and cash flow budget need to be better aligned. Because I think in the past, especially with some federal funding, that there was always that cash cushion at a lot of nonprofits that has now dwindled very, very, very, very low that keeps a lot of CFOs up at night. But I think, okay. You know, we're budgeting. When does our cash come in? Take your GL and just spit it into one of these tools and say, hey. What are our cash patterns based off our account? And it's gonna be able to give you those trends. So when you think about that expense budget, you know what? We're not gonna be able to buy computers in February for a calendar year budget, but we're gonna be able to buy them in August based off when our cash comes in after our gala. So really thinking about how can you use it to identify patterns that maybe we I think we all could identify these patterns, but it may take me four to six hours to really do the analysis, find a pattern to go after, make a pretty chart in Excel, make sure it works, and really thinking about, it's gonna do that very quickly and give you the part to start even even even plugging it into, like, a chat GBT, it's gonna give you a place to start, and really give you that kind of strategic alignment. Like I said, one of the things to do is, you know what you're presenting to a forward or you're presenting to a funder, Take your annual report, plug it in, and then take your financials and say, hey. Do my financial tell the story they're supposed to be? I think we're doing a webinar two, three months about how you use your finances to tell a story, and we're gonna go through various ways that dashboarding and and presentations can tell the same financial story different ways. But make sure you're really looking at it, holistically and making sure like I said, it's a good way to have that second set of eyes look at what you're presenting to make sure your main takeaways. Because one of the things I did, I think it's a people slide. I left it in this AI did it. I said, okay. Here's the presentation. Give me a wrap up and the key points I should have hit based off this deck. We'll see if I hit them when I get there. And I think it another thing is when you think about your forecasting and scenario modeling, sometimes these tools and maybe there's a little of that next step of tool, but it can help you with those scenario modeling. Like, hey. What happens if all our revenue is shifted by fifteen days? I can do that in Excel, but a a AI tool or an automation tool is gonna do that a lot better. And there's a lot of tools out there that do so much that it's hard to figure out, and some of that is figuring out exactly what you need. But I think when you think about these complex models where maybe CFOs had this 35 tab Excel sheet that you hoped worked, there are tools out there that can help. And then optimizing resource allocation. Thinking about, let's plug in our expenses by department or by program or by grant. Does everything kinda make sense? Because I think as a nonprofit, sometimes you're gonna have lost leaders when it comes to program. Because not everything has program revenue, not everything is gonna be grant funded one to one. Having a tool like a Copilot or g chat t b t, let's just plug in and say, hey. Can you tell me if the programs I gave based off the coding in my GL, am I allocating rev resources correctly? And maybe it'll tell you because maybe you're entering some program data too. Because I know I was with a nonprofit and we were looking at their program stats, and it was like, we've helped 5,000 people in this in this program and 50 people in this program. Well, the difference was to help 5,000 people, it was about two hours a person. To help 50 people, it was about forty hours. But to some donors, they'd rather help those 50 people, and it's just making sure that all your numbers have the context. And I think some of these tools can allow that. Real world applications. So one of the things and this is this has been around for years, but when I think about automation, it's one of the things that comes to mind. And it's it does require some learning, but can you use macros to create some reports? Like, let's say there are reports you just can't the way your system was set up fifteen years ago, you can't get the reports your board wants today, and you're doing everything in Excel. You're recoding expenses, you're doing this and that, if it's the same thing month after month, you can in Excel create macros that'll do that for you. And we'll do some of that. And and there's there's expanded version of that. There's power pivots. There's tons, to do that Excel can do on its own. Now it it's it's prone to breaking. It's not the easiest thing to to maintain. But at its basic level, it can do some of that automation. It's not AI. It's not machine learning, but it's really so to learn basic, like, VBA coding and macro coding can go a long way. Even if it's just like, I wanna put a head a header and footer on all my slides, it can do that. It can do things like like, change the heading on every tab or things like that. I've also seen some workbooks that it's very, answer dependent what tabs you see. So it's, hey. I'm we're filling out at the year end. We're doing data collection from our program. I only want them to see what they need to see. So it's really that it's it's asking that. And going back to the other example is, how can one of these large language models, pull out the key points of a presentation? That one I use a lot. Or even the other place I've used it, and it's not so much here, but when I have to write a very long email, hey, I ask it to reread it because my writing on the base of it is not good. But also, I have very much asked it when I've written a long email, I ask my co pilot, hey, can you pull out the key points of this? And what are the follow ups? Because I wanna make sure that if somebody's actually gonna read my email, that they're gonna take away the right message and know what needs to be done. So really thinking about it that way. Time check. Okay. So that brings us to how can you use this to both, boost efficiencies across the organization? We're talking a lot about finance because that's where that's where I eat, sleep, and breathe. Well, I don't sleep right now, but that's where I eat and breathe is finance. But thinking about how I can stretch out to the rest of the organization because I think, especially nonprofits, when you're not in the finance team, a lot of it is this snowball down the hill that people can never really stop and examine what they're doing or how they're doing it. And it makes it hard for other programs, for other departments to change. So sometimes they just need that little push and that can come from finance. Scheduling automation. How can you automate scheduling of meetings or canceling a meeting? I know it it seems simple, but it's there are tools out there. I think there's one in within Outlook that can be a voting button for meetings. And once everybody agrees, it just automatically schedules the meeting. And you know what that does? It takes away a step. We've all had it where you send out a bunch of times for a meeting, and then by the time you get all your answers, those times no longer work because you don't wanna put 15 holes on your calendar. There are tools that can do that. Data entry automation from any aspect of the organization. Even some something as simple as rather than using, email to answer things, are you using some sort of ticketing system or task system that can build on automations based off who you ask, who's it go to, based off the response, who's who's whose bucket does it fall in? And it can really get to enhancing staff productivity. And I'm gonna give you a little preview. One of one of my sessions at, BBCon is about how to retain staff using epi to its fullest. But thinking about how can we get away from data entry and mundane tasks for staff to really get them to an analysis and doing more higher level work that's gonna usually, if you give people that, they're gonna do more because it's more interesting. Now there are select few that love that kind of routine day to day data entry, but I'd say most people I've ever dealt with really like to sink their teeth into actual work. And when you give it to them, they usually do better. Thinking about how you can use these tools for cross departmental collaboration. Thinking about how, like I said, can you use a task or ticketing system to really when you need something from somebody else, it's not getting buried in their inbox. Like, I know I have my email close right now. I'm gonna come back to about thirty. About two of those are actually going to need to be things I need to act on because I get cc'd on a lot. If we had some form of ticketing system or a task system, I could just pull that up and know what do people need from me and when did they need it. And really using some of these automation tools to cut through this overdose of information we all have to really get to the heart of what we have to do. And really allowing these kinda connected tool thinking about even something as simple as Google Drive or OneDrive or Box or, blank on some of the other ones. But thinking about how to have everything in one place so there's not these departmental silos. Like, I know one of the things is I have access to our development team's files, which makes it easier come out of time when I need a contract. I can just go and get it rather than asking them. So there's just so many ways you can work together. I'm gonna jump to the third polling question to make sure I get it in, and then I'll go back to the real world examples. And I think I caught Sarah there, so give her a minute. Oh, there she is. AI can increase efficient generator area. Thinking about some of the things we've talked about, where do you think it can be, your help your team the most? And I think there's so many places it can, and there's so many tools out there. It's really hard to and I feel a lot on the chat. What what should I use? What should I use? Especially nonprofits, there's so many tools out there, and there's new ones being created every day that I always say, a, let's try to use what you're paying for today to its fullest extent because your budget's not unlimited. But finding the thing that truly works for your organization, figuring out what those one or two things you need in a system before diving into it, I think, is really key. So going back, what are the real world applications? Using an automated scheduler, can you get to that? Asking Copilot, I've done this too. You you've been away from your desk for four hours. I have asked the Copilot technician in in Outlook, hey. Is there anything that needs to be done today? It hits about 60 to 70% of the actual emergencies. Any calendar invite for my wife, it calls an emergency, which I like. But thinking about can you I haven't sat at my desk. How can I cut through the 100 emails I have to see if there's anything I need to do before I go home and work for three more hours? And I also say a big thing I use it for, and I said that's why if my prompts ever become public, I will not like it, is I will put emails into it asking for, hey. Can you make this English? Because I don't think what I wrote is. And, b, can you make sure that my key what is the key idea to make sure that if somebody's gonna read my email, they're taking away what I need to? Alright. So this is fully AI generated. This slide, I did not touch. So I asked them for the key takeaways. So I'm just gonna I'm gonna read them and I'll then we'll talk about it. So it's really automation streamlines financial management and reduces errors. We talked about that. AI enhances grant management by identifying new funding and tracking deadlines. We hit that. Compliance is approved through automated checks and transparent audit trails. Hit that. AI powered insights support timely data. At that, and operational efficiency rises as routine task and collaboration are automated. So really, I think we hit all that, but you'll see, I asked them to spit this out. This did not provide any new information where had I made a key takeaway slide? Usually, I try to wrap it up, combine them, but I wanted to leave this in to really show there are limitations to what we use right now. Now mind you, is there some tool out there that I could pay a thousand dollars a month and would get what I need? Probably. Because I work at a nonprofit. I don't have that kind of money to throw around on tools. So, really, this is what I got out of a basic tool just to give you an idea of where the limitations may lie. Did this sum up the key takeaways? Yes. But it's really not offering anything else. So that that kinda brings us to the end here, and I think there's one more slide. But really thinking about a lot of this is looking at, okay, what processes do we have? And I feel like I harp on this a lot. Where are we wasting time or where do people say they hate? And really thinking about, is there something we have today that can do this for them? Is there a tool that we can speed up some of the process or we can do that first pass of data entry? The machines aren't coming to take over. The machines aren't doing entries, everything. But can we free up one minute if it takes us three minutes to code an invoice, can we free up one minute? Can we free up somebody's brainpower throughout the day? Can we get some of that basic data entry done so so it can be reviewed rather than done by somebody who's overworked and tired as we all are at this point in the nonprofit world? So really thinking about that. And I think there's one more slide. And, Sarah, let me know if you want me to hit this with your cold. I'm more than happy to. I'll I'll make an attempt, and thank you everyone for their patience. Yeah. I just wanted to cover, some of the stuff that Blackbaud is doing right now to embed artificial intelligence directly into our software. For those of you going to d b con, either in person or virtually, you will hear about this a lot more in detail in two weeks. And then I encourage you all when we send invitations out for the product update briefings after b b con, sign up because they're going to go into this in so much more detail than I am right now in two minutes on this slide. But some of the things that we've got coming that we're really excited about are anomaly detection, smart reconciliation, and month end closing assistance, to help you do all of the things you need to do. We're also gonna be introducing chat with Blackbaud AI. So this is a virtual assistant that will respond to the questions you input, and they're almost like a product expert at your fingertips for, like, how do I do x, y, or z? So a lot of the things I see people asking in chat, this is a quick place for you to start. So if you have any questions about these things and wanna know what's coming, I did open a poll for me to connect you to talk with somebody, and then also just highly encourage you to listen to the sessions at BDCon and then sign up for product update briefings. He made it. He did. So okay. If you have any I would say non Blackbaud questions. This is a lot of questions. I'm willing to talk to anyone about what I use, what I've seen. Feel free to reach out. Even if Blackbaud related, you just wanna talk to somebody else, reach out. If you don't need me but appreciated me, my executive director would love since I took the time. You can make a small donation. That's what the QR code is there. Really just my goal of Innovate for Good is really just trying to help nonprofits, a, use the software they're paying for and maybe hash out some processes or tweak some things. But if what you're using isn't working, either fix it or find you find you something that will. Because I think a lot of the questions I saw on the chat, we'll get to some of the q and a, is really, what should I use? What should I do? And I always say it's so specific to your nonprofit that what I use might not work for you, and what you use might not work for me. So I really wanna make sure that what you are investing in is going to work for you, not just today, but long term. And if you are at Blackbaud Conference, I will have two sessions. I will be at the I think this is announced, and hopefully, I'm not getting in trouble. I will be moderating the, luminary panel opening luminary panel for the finance track, and then I believe Tuesday afternoon is my panel on talent retention and how to use Financial Edge. Or if you just wanna come by and get some swag for my company, I'll be right by the black box right in the head of the Exhibitor hall. So come by and say hi. Anything else, Sarah, before I hit the q and a? No. Let's dive into q and a. Alright. And I'll I'll answer a few questions, yeah, while you look through it. Liz, Daniel, and I will get you connected with someone. Colleen, if you're gonna be at Blackbaud Conference, go to, Andrew's session. And if not, we'll pin this for a future webinar ID as well if you're not gonna be able to make it there. Let's see. Article. Best way to view outstanding AP and Financial Edge, I would always just say the AP agents probably best. It's gonna give you when things came in and when they're due. Has anyone encountered an AI training tool? It really depends. What I would say when you think about AI training tool is what do you have access to today? Like, do you have a version of Microsoft that gives you that kind of next level of Copilot? Because I found when you can do that deeper thinking or the full on research, it gives you some better answers. So see if you have that. I think it's more what tool do you wanna use and pay for and then get training on that because I think they each operate a little bit differently. So and some of it's just like, googling, how can I use this? Like, one of the things I talked about, the Google form or the Microsoft form for expense reporting, that was me. I was just like, my team, we have an AP automation tool, but they're still hand doing voucher forms for expense reporting. There's gotta be a way they could fill out a form online. It turns it into a PDF, takes the attachments, combines them, and emails them. Now I have to pay an extra $2.09 9 a month to get it to work, but I got it to work. And now they can just go online and fill it out, and it just it's, a, made it a breeze for the people in the field who need reimbursement. I don't have to pay, like, $500 a month for a new tool, and I get things quicker so I know what we spent money on. Somebody asked for a cash flow budget template, more than happy to talk to you separately about that. It kinda depends on what your inputs and outputs are. I think that I'm just looking through. A lot of these are very specific. We just saw one from Robert That was good. I'm processing this. So my messaging it it can go to a way two ways. One, my messaging is, a, there is a laundry list of stuff you want me to do that I can't do because I'm doing x, y, and z. Like, one of the things I've talked to my executive director about is there are a lot of compliance things. I say a lot of nonprofits. There might be some compliance things that have gone by the wayside and no one's ever really cared about. But we all know in today's climate that there's really more scrutiny over a lot of things. So one of the things I said is, like, hey. If we get some of these tools, I can make sure everything else in the background is buttoned up. And one of the big things is, how do I move my organization that's always been very year end audit focused to actually having gap financials on a monthly basis? So it's really getting to what does your senior leadership want. What is the goal? One of the reasons I was brought into my nonprofit is the person I took over for had been there for twenty five years. They knew they needed change, so I can be the wrecking ball I wanna be of change. But it's knowing what and sometimes it's starting small. Hey. Can we do something that's just within finance that maybe doesn't cost much and prove that this works? Because I think some of that reticence is they've all been through bad technology changes, bad implementations, and it just lead leads to that PTSD. So I think it's figuring out what they wanna hear and crafting your message. Oh, I know that's not the best answer, but alright. Well, I think that about does it for today. And, if you're if you're at BBCon, I hope you come by and say hi, and I thank you guys for everybody for taking the time today. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Bye.