 Hey welcome everybody to another episode of the non-profit show. We're really excited because today is another and albeit rare episode that we do called non-profit thought leader and today we have Anne McCauley Lopez back with us, somebody that I love working with. I love her energy and her mind and the things that she brings to our sector and today we're going to talk about chat GPT and your non-profit, how you can be looking at this tool and you know we went right to the source Anne 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 how we can navigate this whole thing. Again I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American Non-profit Academy, Jarrett Ransom the non-profit 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 Bloomerang American Non-profit Academy, your part 10 controller, non-profit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, non-profit nerd and non-profit tech talk. Also super super cool and we have a new app out and it is so marvelous. Our team at the American Non-profit Academy led by Kevin Pace put this together. You can download this app wherever you like to get your apps or you can even take a quick screenshot here with this QR code. Of course you can find this on our podcast and all of our streaming broadcast platforms. More importantly we have Anne 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 that 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 I was thinking about that and then I was like and today we're talking about chat GPT. I mean so moving the concept of communication, how we share our stories but at the heart of it Anne it's really become a tech issue. It is chat GPT 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 we some of us will lean one way and some of us will lean the other way. I think there's a 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 know I love that you have an app I'm going to try that one out I don't use a lot of apps but 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 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 and really reading like chat gbt that 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 um so let's dig into this concept first and foremost chat gpt you know there's so much about it we're not going to go and get into what it is and and and uh 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 I say what I thought is there are some CEOs that came up recently and said that and I kind of they weren't very specific like what jobs is chat gbt is artificial intelligence taking I'm not entirely sure so that was part of it uh 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 and we have website designers okay 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 feel like you're my soul sister in that you know so it's 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 I've been I completely agree I completely agree and it's not just because 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 a 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 tell 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 chat GPT 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 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 from their website because it knows this large entity could the Red Cross take that and put it on their website probably it may even be there in some form probably right I mean yeah right now now I have to tell you I have to tell you I took American nonprofit academy and it gave me some sort of like nonprofit certification so it 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 if it is a great blog post if it's American Red Cross in Phoenix Arizona 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 GPT is not doing yet I say that with caution yet yet 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 yeah for those stories 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 that 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 research what are the questions that people are asking and I thought that was genius can you do the same thing here with that sure in fact I compared I asked it for ideas related to the power of blogging and it came up with a list and there were a couple things that I hadn't thought of there were which I thought was interesting and it didn't bring up some other 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 say what how do you make a pizza what is in uh you know like whatever it is 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 um 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 or the non-profit podcast 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 tool 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 samaraj those kind of things that the super seo experts use um but we can combine those and tell those stories but also use those keywords and answer those questions that people are asking or the chat gbt is saying people are asking you can use it but i think we've got to be strategic yeah 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 gbt 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 yeah 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 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'm gonna try something else yeah what and you got creative but now it's just no so i don't know maybe we've gotten lazy but well a little bit of both differently yeah knowing how to use our technology um 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 to the friday ask an answered episodes how do i manage blog posts how do i get this content created social media posts where do they live within that chat gpt ecosystem i guess there uh i came across an article i have and i know you'll mention the article i wrote and i'm pretty sure the resource is linked in there um when you just just google it chat gpt prompts and it was an article that included hashtag prompts social media prompts so i conducted a little experiment and i just exactly what i put in social media posts about nonprofit gala and it actually pushed out a 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 to 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 okay let me see what it can give me for those hashtags so it could um i asked it also for social media posts for uh for blog writer for small businesses in charlotte north carolina that's where i am um and a lot of them were stale see 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 for affordable blog writing service tailored to your business ease contact me to learn more wow i don't i don't know that i could have written a better one and then you put your link or you you know phone number email 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 gala post instead of saying social media posts for five cave 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 schooler struggling to write a paper often that's what i found now someone told me there's on the paid version it it is better yeah so if you're willing to to pay chat gbt i'm not there yet i'm a little cheap i want to see what the free version does till they lock me out right and then i'll go through the paywall to see what it does i'm just playing right now just to see what it does because i'm a writer right i can rewrite right but i think for a nonprofit you might get your social posts or get your your posts that you evergreen is the word i'm looking for julia i'm having trouble with words already the the evergreen post so you say every third monday we post about this every fourth tuesday we post about that and you plug them into your calendar your scheduler take those from chat gbt and then the others are the ones that you hire a blog writer or you have a staff person right or about your mission or pictures of an event that you had along with a little article that's 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 your your blog theme is b social media is b and go into chat gbt for each of those to get those evergreen posts and then just reuse them we don't i have someone that i follow i thought closely and she told me that's her secret she said oh i don't come up with original content all the time i've 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 you know social media post not blog post social media i was like what it speaks to you listening to you 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 chat gbt 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 gbt 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 if you don't win yeah yeah if you don't have that editorial calendar i can see where things just kind of become a little bit more nebulous and then you can focus 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 gal coming up or whatever it is yeah focus the calendar there i remember we talked about it you said well what if i well 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 chat gbt prompts we can put in other article 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 prompts 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 well you know i think that's i think that's you know coming down the pike i right and we talked about that a little bit as well in the green room chatter and that is you know you again goes back to the management the human management piece of this but yeah as we become more and more um 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 gbt helping us to generate hashtags and headlines oh yes i used chat gbt i'm going to this little document because i got to play julia thanks for letting me give me permission to play so i said okay let's we've been traveling a lot this year so at my request specifically chat gbt was hashtags for travel bloggers okay and it said here are some effective hashtags for travel bloggers that can help increase uh visibility engagement on social platforms it gave me 20 and it said using these uh you can reach a wider audience but instead also consider region or city specific hashtags industry specific for a non-profit 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 um that analyzes hashtags and see okay 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 jet that was really i wouldn't have i wouldn't have thought to use it for that no 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 play it i spent an hour and i got so much information from it i was like okay i'm going to include this now in my process now for headlines i use a uh a i o s e o dot 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 add 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 s e o but you're not sitting there going okay team we need a jazzy title for our article you write the topic you get the headliner tool and you know or 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 and for that 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 enough oh that doesn't really tell the story i mean i am fascinating can you repeat that that site again sure it's a i o s e o dot com and i just put in free headline analyzer tool and a free a i 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 i love it i think that's genius and i think um we know especially with just being barrage day in and day out with all of our digital lives 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 and it's really within seconds that's what they say oh yeah use it for your newsletter headline yeah oh yeah 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 headlines now they can actually create content do social posts whatever it is there's still jobs circle back on that still jobs well you know we've only had 30 minutes with ann but she has written a really cool article and you can access it on her blog agency content writer dot com and i would imagine that there are going to be more articles like this coming down the pike i'm from you but let's chat let's talk chat gpt was just posted recently and it's really an interesting look at um at this process and in 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 um the way you framed it up with how we can use it and how we can maximize this technology um 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 for having i know i know my team is like julia this time went so fast julia it's so great to see you i know it really is i you always like totally engage me and get me going and get me so excited about um 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 um and mccally 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 um 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 thank you i really appreciate that julia yes this book is about my story uh of having a type of leukemia called chronic myeloid leukemia the reason it's called we don't get to ring the bell is that uh for most cml patients we take a pill to keep us in remission um and we never get the okay 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 the bell and then so it's different it's different than other cancers and essentially now at my point my journey seven years in it's really uh 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 uh i thought was important to share yeah you know i love this uh i love that you shared this piece of your life and this part of your life um 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 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 um and thank you for sharing that story with us it's it's really it's really really powerful and macaulay lopez ceo content writer with agency content writer amazing amazing free resources on her website agency content writer dot com check it out because there's so much knowledge that ann is beautifully articulated that will help your nonprofit and your management of it no matter where you are on the trajectory of your work 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 sure it ran some the nonprofit nerd we'll be back with us shortly um 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 blooming 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 thank you julia it's great to see you it's been a lot of fun hey get don't be afraid of chat gpt be looking into it i i think that's for me that's my message today that i received from you for sure for sure the bloggers aren't going away writers still have jobs we're all good we can use the technology with our other in our toolboxes right and and reach the people we want to reach 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 do well you can do well