Is your organization
actually ready for AI?
Eight quick questions. Same framework we use in client engagements to decide what to build, what to skip, and what to ignore. Honest scoring — if AI isn't the right move for you right now, the quiz will say so plainly.
Do you have a recurring report someone hand-builds from multiple systems?
Weekly board update, monthly KPIs, board-meeting prep — anything that takes hours of manual export-and-pasting.
Do you have data trapped in PDFs, emails, or one staff member's head that the wider team needs?
Tribal contacts, member history, grant deadlines, vendor relationships — information that exists but doesn't reach the right person at the right moment.
Do you have a clear, repetitive workflow that doesn't require novel human judgment?
Lapsed-member outreach, template-based donor thank-yous, event registration confirmations. Inputs map to outputs predictably.
Have you already shipped at least one piece of operational software your staff actually uses?
A working CRM, a member portal, a real document store. (Shared spreadsheets and group inboxes don't count.)
Is there one decision-maker who can say yes to a 4-week project without 60 days of procurement review?
AI projects ship fast or they die. If every decision goes through a quarterly committee, you're blocked on governance, not technology.
Are you primarily looking for AI to '5x' your membership, donor base, or social following?
AI is a productivity tool for work you're already doing. Anybody promising 5x growth from AI is selling.
Can you describe the specific problem you'd want AI to solve in one sentence?
Strong: "We need to know which 2,400 members are at risk of not renewing this quarter." Weak: "We need to use AI."
Is your underlying data clean and consistent, with a single source of truth for the things that matter?
Bad data + AI = confidently wrong answers at scale. If your member counts disagree across systems, that's where to start, not AI.