AI at Work · October 13, 2026
Thank you for coming to the Nonprofit and Education Breakfast. Here is what we covered, plus a one-page worksheet to fill in with your team.
It is a one-page PDF. You are on the Chief Of Life newsletter list. Trouble with the file? Email brian@chiefof.life.
You hand it a task, it does the work inside the tools you already use, and it tells you what it did.
By text, Slack, Teams or Google Chat, the same way you would message a colleague.
Email, calendar, the donor database, the shared drive. It works where your information already lives.
It keeps working while you are in a meeting, then tells you what it did and what it needs from you.
Like any intern, it needs clear instructions and someone checking the work.
Ask it about every task on the list. The goal is more time for the work only your people can do.
The agent helps with the prep. A conversation with a donor, a conversation with a client, a hiring decision.
Hand it off, and review what comes back. The monthly reports, intake follow-ups, research for grants.
Most teams find their first handoff in one of these. The worksheet has a line under each for your own example.
It lives with one person. Getting it means asking.
Everyone wants it easier. Nobody owns the fix.
Recurring reports, triggered follow-ups, status checks.
There is one right answer. Anyone could give it.
The first and the fourth are the safety answers. They matter most when the work touches donor, student or family records.
Open to the team, or admin only.
Repeating work pays back first.
Hand it your best past examples.
A person thoroughly reads everything that leaves the building.
Decide where the finished work lands and who is told.
Google, SpaceXAI, Meta and OpenAI have each shipped a personal agent since May: Gemini Spark, Grok Bot, Muse and Dots. They are the easy way to start. Before you build your week around one, know what you are choosing.
Ready in minutes, with nothing to set up. Its memory, routines and logins live in the provider's cloud, and it runs on that provider's models only (SpaceXAI has announced that Grok Bot will use more than one model). To change providers, you set it all up again.
Someone has to set it up and look after it. Its memory, files and logins stay on a server you control, and it can use any provider's model. When a better model ships, the switch is small.
The typical gap between major new models from the big US labs. Across every kind of model release, a new one arrives about every 2 days. The best model for your work this month may come from a different company next month.
Start where stakes are low, and let the first result earn the second one.
See what Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace already includes before you buy anything.
High agreement and low politics make a good first project.
Nothing sends, publishes or spends until a person says yes.
Hours returned each month is a number your board will understand.
A 30-minute strategy call. No deck, no obligation.
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