CHATGPT AND YOUR NONPROFIT!

The management and stewardship of ChatGPT within nonprofits is becoming a hot topic. Nonprofit Thought Leader, Anne McCauley Lopez, brings us up-to-date and shares her early chatgpt experiences as a professional content producer focused in the nonprofit sector.  More about Anne McCauley Lopez

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Telecast Transcript:

Julia Patrick
Welcome everybody to another episode of the nonprofit show. We’re really excited because today is another and albeit rare, episode that we do called nonprofit thought leader. And today we have Anne McCauley Lopez back with us, somebody that I love working with. I love her. Energy and her her mind and the things that she brings to our sector. And today we’re going to talk about ChatGPT. And your nonprofit, how you can be looking at this tool and, you know, we went right to the source and is a writer, agency content writer. I mean, that’s the name of her business. And so this conversation is going to be really powerful because we want to find out really what she thinks and and how we can navigate. This whole thing again, I’m Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. Jarrett ransom. The nonprofit nerd is off today, but she’ll be rejoining us. We want to thank all of our presenting sponsors who really join with US day in and day out. They include bloomer. American nonprofit Academy your part time controller nonprofit thought leader, fundraising Academy and National University Staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd and nonprofit Tech Talk. Also super, super cool and we have a new app out and it is so marvelous. Our team at the American nonprofit Academy, led by Kevin Pace, put this together. You can download this app, you can wherever you like to to get your your apps. Or you can even take a quick screenshot here with this QR code. Of course you can find us on our podcasts and all of our streaming podcast platforms. More importantly, we have Ann McCauley Lopez back with us. I love that I love that image agency content writer. You know, it’s so funny. And I was thinking about this this morning. You know, for all your wisdom and all the things that you’ve been able to talk to us about, it’s been fascinating to see how they’ve grown in concert and in harmony with tech. And and I was thinking about that and then I was like and today we’re talking about ChatGPT. I mean, so moving the concept of communication, how we share our stories. But at the heart of it and it’s really become a tech issue.
Anne McCauley Lopez
It is, it is ChatGPT is. It’s moving fast. And I think. There are we talked about it. There are people who are innovators and they move fast with the technology and then there’s others of us who are later adopters or ask some questions kind of test it out and see where it fits. And for nonprofits, I think. Some of us will lean one way and some of us will lean the other way. I think there’s caution we have to express some caution. Use caution when implementing anything new, right? I mean, we have to be careful. About everything, we’re all. Worried about everybody having a website or social media or donations? Through Facebook or through apps, I’m still not like I don’t. I love that you have an app. I’m going to try that one out. I don’t use a lot of. Apps, so I’m very excited. But it’s those kind of things, right that are tech. Based and we wonder, can we use it for our organization and I and this is one of the biggest ones and it’s moving really. Fast, which is I. Don’t know about you, but it’s a. Little scary to me, right?
Julia Patrick
Well, you know. I keep hearing about like it used to be back in the day. You know, your technology had to change. Every four years. And then it moved to two years, and then it was like, you know, updates that we could be doing digitally and then would be updating throughout your machines. And now it’s like down to. Hours, you know.
Anne McCauley Lopez
And it really is.
Julia Patrick
And reading like Chachi EBT, the the iterations are like now 72 hours. On some of these things. And so it’s astonishing and I think it’s really an important thing to be watching and to be understanding and learning about it because it’s not going away. So let’s dig into this concept first and foremost, ChatGPT. You know, there’s so much about it. We’re not going to go and and get into what it is and and and explain it that way, but we’re really going to be talking today more about the stewardship and the management of it. We were talking in the green room chatter. The fear of jobs. Always comes up in the conversation. Oh my gosh, the robot robots are taking over and we won’t be working. Nobody will be working. What do you say to that?
Anne McCauley Lopez
I say what I thought is there were some CEO’s that came out recently. And said that and. I kind of they weren’t very specific like which jobs is chat GBC’s artificial intelligence taking? I’m not entirely sure. So that was part of. The other thing was I thought about it from the perspective of when we got self checkout at the grocery store and with, oh, my gosh, everybody works at a grocery store. It’s union. It’s good pay. It’s a great job, you know, for job growth, all these people will be out of work. No, my grocery store in my city is all self checkout and there are people walking around. And are very helpful about products and they keep the shelves stocked and they help when the automated system doesn’t work or. You buy a. Bottle of wine. You know, they check your ID. And all that. So I don’t. I think the jobs will shift. What do you think? I think we’ll have different jobs. We had websites. I know we have website designers, OK.
Julia Patrick
Right. I agree with you. I think that it’s not an either or. I think that it just changes the way we think and the way we work and I think you know you and I are on the same page about communication. You know we we think about this because of who we are in our careers. I I feel like you’re my soul. Sister in that you know, so it’s the words and it’s how we communicate. But for me and. There’s still the human element. I mean, we still need an editor, if you will. We still need that person that you run. It up the flagpole as they. Say and you get things checked. And so.
Anne McCauley Lopez
I’ve been, I completely agree. I completely agree. And it’s not just cause. That’s my business either. I think as a whole, when we talk about nonprofits, a lot of times we’re telling stories and we can’t tell the story of those we serve. With a bot. You know, maybe some basic content, maybe we use the technology in the little responses at the bottom of our website. Are you interested? Tell us what you need. You know those kinds of things. But ultimately we’re telling stories, and that bot isn’t going to be able to hold the story. We can use tools like Grammarly, which are AI based to do a grammar check or a spell check. I also put it into good old Microsoft Word because it also has a plagiarism check. I’ve experimented and had articles. Just dump them right out of ChatGPT, put them in a plagiarism checker and it is. It comes up as original content. I’m wondering how long does that last if we’re using that raw data? If someone else goes in and types the same thing? Yeah, I did. You know how to donate to the Red Cross. And it was a beautiful article and it hit all the points and it probably took it right. On their website because it knows this large entity. Could the Red Cross take that and put it on their website? Probably it may be even. Be there in some form, probably right. I mean, no, no, I have to tell you, I have to tell.
Julia Patrick
Yeah, right.
Anne McCauley Lopez
I took American nonprofit Academy and it gave me some sort of like nonprofit certification. So I took the word Academy and dove in on that, so it’s not perfect. So we do need humans. The other thing is, even if we go to.
Speaker
OK.
Anne McCauley Lopez
If it is a great blog post, if it’s American Red Cross in Phoenix, AZ or whatever city you’re in, you want to put your affiliate information in that article, right? Like there’s there’s some branding and personalization that happens, that chat TBT is not doing yet. I say that with caution.
Speaker
Yet yet.
Anne McCauley Lopez
So there is, it is definitely. It is definitely editing it. Some of it is a is a. Chunk of the writing as well. Yeah, for those stories.
Julia Patrick
It seems to me that I love that you. Use the word tool. And it seems to me understanding like how it works within a bigger picture and not just the actual specific, what is it going to spit out but how it can work for you? And I’m really interested to hear more about this. I mean, you bring up the piece of like, what are other people? Talking about or, what do other people want to know? And I remember when we first met you three years ago and we had you on. You gave us. The tip about using Google to to to research what are the questions that people are asking? And I thought that was genius. Can you do the same thing here with that?
Anne McCauley Lopez
In fact, I compared, I asked it for ideas related to the power of blogging, and it came up with a list. And there are a couple things that. I hadn’t thought of there were. Which I thought was interesting and it didn’t bring up some. Items so you can when I use it as a tool, I use it for. I’ve used it for idea generation. So tell me about this, but also use those other tools. Like Google and. Google’s it. That’s that. That’s the AI that there’s AI behind that I watched a webinar and he talked about how. Google has moved from like a literal translation of what you put in the search engine, and I was like, Oh my gosh, there were times when we had to. OK. How do you make a pizza? What is in? You know, like whatever it is. Yeah, and it will come up. Literal or come up with gibberish because people were doing things on the Internet with keywords and stuff that we don’t have. To get into. And then it moved to. How do you make a pizza? And now it’s you just put pizza in and it’s pizza near me. How to make a pizza. What is pizza dough? Can I make gluten free pizza and all these different things? And each of those we can, and that’s all AI. That’s that’s Google changing its algorithm. It’s Google, Google’s technology learning. What are we asking and how are we? How are we humans asking it to create answers that. That are useful to us that are relevant to. Us that helps too, where we use those best practices of blogging, we combine all our tools and then we’re coming up higher in the search engine results. How do you donate to? The nonprofit podcasts you know all of all of the things we’re doing in terms of the structure of the website and the content we’re producing, chat. GBT can be used like we use that Google Tour or in conjunction with it and in conjunction with other SEO tools. Search engine optimization tools that we’ve talked about like keywords everywhere Uber suggests. Those kind of things that the. Super SEO experts use. But we can combine those and tell those stories, but also use those keywords and answer those questions that people are asking, or that cat GPT is saying people are asking.
Speaker
You know.
Anne McCauley Lopez
So ways to use it, but I think we’ve got to. Be strategic, yeah. For sure.
Julia Patrick
I I think it’s interesting that you. You have helped us draw the the arc. Of we have already been working with AI. This is not chat. CPT is not at the forefront of this. This is just using that same technology and I’d love that you drew that back to how we used to use Google. We would. I would. I remember you full sentences and then you’d go back. Oh, no, wait, let’s change that. Now you literally can put in one word in it. Yeah, that’s that’s.
Anne McCauley Lopez
You had to say what is the cap? You know, like it was these long sentences. And if it didn’t do it, you’re like oh. I gotta try something else. And you got creative, but now it’s just no. So I don’t know if maybe we’ve gotten lazy, but. But use it differently.
Julia Patrick
Well, a little bit of both. Yeah, knowing how to use our technology, talk to us a little bit about this because this seems to be one of those things. I mean, you and I have talked offline about this and that’s creating social media posts, so many nonprofits that I speak with, it’s one of the questions that comes in a lot too at the Friday ask and answer. Episodes how do I manage blog posts? How do I get this content created social media posts? Where do they live within that chat LGBT ecosystem, I guess.
Anne McCauley Lopez
There I came across an article I have and I know you mentioned the article I wrote and I’m pretty sure the resources LinkedIn there just just Google it ChatGPT prompts and it was an article that included a chat prompt, social media prompts. So I conducted a little experiment and I. That’s exactly what I put in. Social media posts about nonprofit gala. And it actually.
Speaker
Pushed out a.
Anne McCauley Lopez
Pretty good post, it says looking for a way to support a great cause while enjoying a night of elegance and entertainment. Join us for our annual nonprofit gala on this event will feature blah blah blah in support of our Mission 2 blank, it says insert mission. Don’t miss the opportunity and it included hashtags. So of course the next thing I did was I went in and I said OK. Let me see what it can give me. For those hashtags. So it could? I asked it also for social media posts. For blog writer for small businesses in Charlotte, NC, that’s where I am and a lot of them were salesy. But if you’re looking for a call to action post once a week, which is like the 8020 rule, then you just grab one of these. It gave me 10. It would have kept. Going or or had more and it says hey. Charlotte small business owners. Are you struggling to keep up with your blog content? Let me help you out. Offer affordable blog writing service tailored to your business needs. Contact me to learn more. I know.
Speaker
I don’t know.
Anne McCauley Lopez
That I could have written a better one and then you put your link or you, you know, phone. Number or e-mail. So I think. It can really ease that pressure of creating social posts that we can have some that are generated like this because that’s a great one. There’s other ones that are fantastic in here. The hashtags on that gallop post. Instead of saying social media posts. 5K the benefits such and such, or whatever it is and it can generate now, is it going to be perfect every time? Absolutely not. It writes like a high school or struggling to write a paper. Often is what I found. Someone told me there’s on the paid version. It it is better. So if you’re willing to to pay chat. GTA I’m not there yet. I’m a little cheap. I want to see what the free version does so. They lock me out, right? And then I’ll go through the pay wall to see what it does. I’m just playing right now just to see what it does. And I’m a writer, right? I can rewrite.
Julia Patrick
Right.
Anne McCauley Lopez
But I think for a nonprofit, you might get your social posts or get your. Your post that. You Evergreen is the word I’m looking for. I’m having trouble with words already. The the Evergreen post. So you say every 3rd Monday we post about this every 4th Tuesday. We post about that and you plug them into your calendar. Your scheduler take those from ChatGPT and then. The others are the ones that you hire A blog writer, or you have a staff person write or about your mission, or pictures of an event that you had, along with a little article, that sort of a thing to fill in those blanks on social. And work that with your blog calendar. So if you’re you know the theme is a, then your social media is about a your theme is B or your blog theme is B. Social media is B and go into chat TPT for each of those to get those Evergreen posts and then just reuse them. We don’t. I have someone that I follow it. Look closely and she told me that’s her secret, she said. Ohh, I don’t come up with original content all the time. I have certain things that I post on certain days and certain times. Of the month. I said I follow you and I didn’t even know that. And it’s a reminder to me. Oh yeah. She said something about that last month. I didn’t know the exact same post.
Julia Patrick
You know and.
Anne McCauley Lopez
Social media posts now blog posts social media. So I was like what?
Julia Patrick
It speaks to you listening to you. It really it. It makes me back up and and and this is something that you’ve talked with us about before and that is having that editorial calendar. I mean, looking at ChatGPT obviously as a way to generate some stuff, but. At at the end of the day, you still need to have a content direction and a flow, and I would also argue it probably would help you to get better chat. TPT results because you would be putting in more specific things. So for example Mother’s Day is coming up. You could say, you know, talk about how our nonprofit can be support supporting Mother’s Day. Issues or you know whatever, I mean, but.
Anne McCauley Lopez
If you don’t, women.
Julia Patrick
That, yeah, if you don’t have that editorial calendar, I can see where things just kind of become a little bit more. And then you can focus.
Anne McCauley Lopez
On you focus on a particular. Program or mission, or if you’re serving women, then yes, you build up to that Mother’s Day. If you there’s a particular time of year that you like to fundraise, or you have that gala coming up or or whatever it is. Focus the calendar there. I remember we talked about it. You said, well, what if I, how do I fill my calendar or what if? I don’t have. Enough. And we don’t leave that space because we can put in these ChatGPT prompts we can put in other articles. You know what I mean? And it really. I think it could be super helpful for for nonprofits and for profits to get those to get those profits. Now, always add your own spin like for all. If everybody put in social media posts for small businesses in Charlotte and got the same. Thing I did.
Speaker
Well, exactly.
Julia Patrick
Well, you know, I think that’s I think that’s you know, coming down the Pike and we talked about that a little bit as well in the green room chatter. And that is, you know, you you again goes back to the management, the human management piece of this. But yeah, as we become more and more adept at using this tool and it becomes part of our own system. Where do we? Draw the line between plagiarism original content and and you know. Being unique, one of the things before we let you go and we don’t have that much time. But you mentioned this and I’d love for you to help us out a little bit because I know this is something that plagues a lot of us. You talk about chat, cheap PBT, helping us to generate hashtags and headlines.
Anne McCauley Lopez
Oh yes, I used chat GPC. I’m going to this little document cause I got to play Julia. Thanks for letting me give me permission to play. So I said OK, let’s we’ve been traveling a lot this year. So at my request. Specifically, ChatGPT was hashtags for travel bloggers and it said here are some effective hashtags for travel bloggers that can help increase visibility engagement on social platforms. Give me 20.
Speaker
OK.
Anne McCauley Lopez
And it said using knees you can reach a wider audience, but it said also consider region or city specific hashtags industry specific for a nonprofit, it would be mission specific. But give me 20 and they’re good. So you could take that and pair it with a hashtag generator. That analyzes hashtags and see OK which of these are the best performing and is there something better? I mean don’t overthink it but this will give you some hashtags which I thought was really it. I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have thought to use. It for that and. Then in this article I was like, oh oh, it will do that. So there’s prompts you. Can put in and just to kind of. And I spent an hour and I got so much information from it I was like, OK, I’m going to include this now in my process. Now for headlines I use a. Uhaioseo.com they have a free headline analyzer tool. They have an article that says, hey, you need more emotional words in your headline. Here’s some ideas and you can track your different headlines and it says. A score over 70 is better, so add. An emotional word at a power word, you. Know untold secrets about the American Red. Cross like I don’t know. Whatever it is to kind of jazz it up and then it performs better in terms of SEO, but you’re not sitting there going, OK team, we need a jazzy. Title for our. Article you write the topic you get the. Headliner tool and you know you get that, do the headline. And then write. It, but ultimately you’re answering the same question no matter the headline. Right. And it’s it’ll perform better. Because it’s got all those words that Google analyzes and you can use AI for that.
Julia Patrick
And for it, it’s for 30 years as a publisher. I can’t tell you the the numbers of hours that my team and I would sit around and come up with headlines. I mean, we would. Literally I could. I can see the tables and we would ask the question. No, that’s not sexy enough. Well, that’s not, you know, juicy. Yeah, that doesn’t really tell the story I mean. I am fascinated. Can you repeat that that site again?
Anne McCauley Lopez
Sure, it’s a I/O seo.com and I just put it in free headline analyzer tool and maybe free AI headline analyzer tool. It was a little farther to I really, I love it. I absolutely love it. So you can go. Play in there.
Julia Patrick
I love it. I think that’s genius and I think we know, especially with just being barraged day in and day out with all of our digital. Those headlines become your best tool because if you don’t get people to open, if you don’t get people to engage, it doesn’t matter what your mission is. It doesn’t matter how amazing your content is if you don’t get them. With that hook. They’re moving on to something else.
Anne McCauley Lopez
And it’s really within seconds. That’s what they say.
Julia Patrick
Oh yeah.
Anne McCauley Lopez
Use it for your newsletter headline.
Julia Patrick
Yeah. Oh yeah, it’s.
Anne McCauley Lopez
Share that blog post and that’s an easy way to keep in contact, too. We’ve talked about all that repurposing content and all that. Yeah, I mean, it’s easy. So instead of your team looking at. Now they can actually create content. Do social posts, whatever it is, there’s still jobs circle. Back on that still jobs.
Julia Patrick
Well, you know, we’ve only had 30 minutes with Anne, but she has written a really cool article and you can access it on her blog agency contentwriter.com. And I would imagine that they’re. Going to be more. Articles like this coming down the Pike from you. But let’s chat. Let’s talk ChatGPT was just posted recently, and it’s really an interesting look at. At this process and in your blog post, you brought up different ways of using this that I had not considered, and so it’s really worth your while to to take a peek at this because the way you framed it up with how we can use it and how we can maximize this technology speaks to a bigger issue. Of communication and I thought it was beautifully done. And like I said, it really made me think of not just one or two new things, but several new things. And so thank you, I know.
Anne McCauley Lopez
Ohh, poor Kevin.
Julia Patrick
I know my team is like Julia.
Anne McCauley Lopez
This time went so fast. Julia, it’s so great to see you.
Julia Patrick
I know it really is. I you always like, totally engage me and get me going and and get me so excited about what our nonprofits. Do how we do it, but more importantly, how we tell the story, how we communicate because it’s it’s such an important part of this overall mission that we that we work on and it’s somehow falls to the bottom and we don’t spend enough time on it. So I love love, love your. Your brain. Hey, another thing. Anne McCauley is a published author, and she has this amazing book called We Don’t Get to Ring the Bell. My CML story, you know, and we put this up, but we don’t really get ever get enough time to talk about it in the very few minutes we have left. Can you share with us? Your book and and and how we get it and what it means.
Anne McCauley Lopez
Thank you. I really appreciate that. Yes, this book is about my story of having a typo. Leukemia called chronic myeloid leukemia. The reason it’s called we don’t get to ring the bell is that for most CML patients, we take a pill to keep us in remission and we never get the. OK, you’re done with your chemo. You’re done with your radiation. We the treatment is to take a pill so we don’t. We don’t ring. Well, and it’s so it’s different, it’s different than other cancers. And essentially now at my point in my journey, seven years in, it’s really how to manage a chronic illness. So I think it speaks to a few different audiences and it’s really just the story of me and how we handled those first few years having CML and. I just been married for four months and what we what we did to navigate it and how you find a doctor and navigate prescriptions and and all that fun healthcare stuff that I thought was important to share.
Julia Patrick
You know, I love this. I love that you shared this piece of your life and this part of your life. I think a lot of times in the nonprofit sector we get so exercised about what it is that we’re doing in our mission that a lot of times we forget to circle back to our actual clients and learn about their journeys. And and and this goes across the board on all of our sectors within. The nonprofit world. And so it’s really a rich experience. And of course, who better than a writer, a professional writer? So I mean, it’s a really amazing thing and thank you for sharing that story with us. It’s it’s really, it’s really, really powerful.
Anne McCauley Lopez
Thank you.
Julia Patrick
And McCauley Lopez, CEO, content writer with agency content. Writer’s amazing, amazing free resources on her website agencycontentwriter.com. Check it out because there’s so much knowledge that Anne is beautifully articulated. That will help your nonprofit and your management of it, no matter where you are on. The trajectory of your work. I it’s a remarkable thing and I go back to your site often to kind of sometimes refresh or you know, I’ll remember something I’ll be like, yeah, how did you navigate this? And so great, great pieces of information. Again, I’m Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. You’re a ransom, the nonprofit nerd. We’ll be back with us shortly as she likes to say. She’s everybody’s nonprofit nerd. I claim her as my own personal nonprofit nerd, but she can be yours, too. And again, we have amazing sponsors, and they are with US day in and day out. They include the folks at Boomerang American nonprofit Academy, your part time controller nonprofit thought leader, fundraising Academy at National University. Staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. These are the folks that are with US day in and day out and. Again, and Macaulay Lopez, you are part of that family with us today. Being a nonprofit thought leader. Thank you so much.
Anne McCauley Lopez
Thank you, Julia. It’s great to see you.
Julia Patrick
It’s been a lot of fun. Hey, get don’t be afraid to ChatGPT be looking into it. I I think that’s for me. That’s my message today that I received from you.
Anne McCauley Lopez
For sure. For sure, bloggers aren’t going away. Writers still have jobs. We’re all good, but we can use the technology with our other in our tool boxes, right? And and reach the people we want to reach.
Julia Patrick
I agree, and I agree. Hey, everybody. Another great episode of the nonprofit show. And as we end every episode, we want to remind ourselves, our viewers, our listeners, our guests, our sponsors. I should add them too. To stay well. So you can.
Anne McCauley Lopez
Do we can do well?
Julia Patrick
And have a great day, everyone, we’ll. See you back here.