# AI for not-for-profit

> We help charities use AI within their obligations.

- Type: Sector
- URL: https://www.blackmountainai.com.au/sectors/not-for-profit

You want AI to improve services without creating risk the organisation cannot carry.

The opportunity here is large, because so much charitable effort goes into administration that takes time away from services. The obligations are real as well, and most organisations have nobody in house who can work out where the boundaries sit.

That leaves boards choosing between prohibiting AI and losing the benefit, or allowing it informally and hoping nothing goes wrong. There is a better answer and it usually starts with understanding rather than technology.

We ran sessions with chief executives across the Canberra community sector through Hands Across Canberra, working through what they are allowed to do with AI and where it helps.

## You get the same rigour at a size you can afford.

Charities carry many of the same duties as government around privacy, duty of care and working with vulnerable people, and they carry them on a fraction of the budget and usually without a lawyer or a technology executive to ask. We bring the governance we write for Commonwealth agencies and the delivery pragmatism of our commercial work, sized so a small team can use it.

## The pressures we hear about

### There is nobody in the organisation to ask

Few charities have a lawyer, a privacy officer or a technology executive on staff, and AI raises exactly the questions those roles would normally answer.

### You hold information about people who cannot absorb a mistake

Community organisations often hold some of the most sensitive personal information there is, about clients who are least able to bear the consequences if it is mishandled.

### A failed project costs you services as well as money

Money spent on technology is money not spent on the people you exist to help, so the value has to be clear before you commit to it.

### Demand keeps rising while funding does not

AI is one of the few realistic ways to increase what your team can handle without increasing headcount.

## What we bring

### We run sessions for chief executives and boards

We cover what AI can and cannot do, where the legal and ethical lines sit, and how to make a decision you can defend to funders and to the people you serve.

### We point you at the work AI is good at

Drafting, summarising and searching your own records are low risk and use information you already hold, and we bound them so staff can start safely.

### We write guardrails a small team can follow

You get an acceptable use position and a simple risk approach that works without a compliance function behind it.

### We prefer to teach several organisations at once

Working with a group shares the cost and lets chief executives compare notes with peers who are facing the same questions.

## Where engagements start

- [Education and Capability](https://www.blackmountainai.com.au/services/education-and-capability.md): We get your people leading the work, not waiting on us.
- [Governance](https://www.blackmountainai.com.au/services/governance.md): We help you use AI without putting trust at risk.
- [Strategy and Discovery](https://www.blackmountainai.com.au/services/strategy-and-discovery.md): We help you work out what to do with AI, and why.
- [Delivery](https://www.blackmountainai.com.au/services/delivery.md): We build the systems, then hand them to your team.