Community IT Innovators Nonprofit Technology Topics

In the first part of this two-part conversation, Carolyn Woodard and Matthew Eshleman, CTO of Community IT, take on a question many nonprofits are asking: does AI change what it takes to stay secure? This episode comes from the Community IT webinar celebrating the re-release of our Cybersecurity Readiness for Nonprofits Playbook, updated for AI. It looks at how the threat landscape has shifted and why the fundamentals still matter most. Whether or not your organization uses AI, the scam...

Carolyn Woodard covers what the newest wave of AI money could mean for nonprofits, starting with Anthropic's new Public Benefit Fund. Pending stockholder approval, Anthropic will commit 5% of its shares to a fund that grows with the company's value. It is a wholly owned LLC rather than a 501(c)(3), which means flexibility for Anthropic but no 990s, no payout requirement, and no public grant process. With co-founder pledges and an employee giving match, roughly 20% of the company is committed ...

Carolyn Woodard explores the operations essentials of nonprofit IT with Johan Hammerstrom, CEO of Community IT. If you are new to managing technology at your nonprofit, or you oversee an IT vendor without a technical background, it can be hard to know where to start. Before any conversation about transformation or AI, there are basic requirements your organization needs in place just to run, and none of them require technology expertise. Johan walks through ten essentials that keep IT m...

Carolyn Woodard covers a question on many nonprofit minds right now: is AI coming for our jobs? Headlines are full of tech layoffs, and recent graduates are finding entry-level work harder to land. For nonprofits the picture is more complicated, both for workforce development organizations training people for jobs that are changing and for the rest of the sector, where funding cuts seem more responsible for reshaping who gets hired than AI. Carolyn starts with recent layoffs at HubSpot,...

Carolyn Woodard explores the ethics of online fundraising platforms with Sarah Saadian, Senior Vice President of Public Policy and Campaigns at the National Council of Nonprofits. Hundreds of platforms now solicit and collect donations in the names of nonprofits, often without asking first, and with AI a new one can appear almost overnight. The issue came to a head in October 2025, when GoFundMe created fundraising pages for 1.4 million nonprofits without their consent, then removed the...