Pilot Copilot

Hi Reader,

This week will focus on those of you whose work resides in the Microsoft ecosystem, but will still have plenty available to those who use Google or Apple applications. To help me focus most accurately in future issues, please email me a one-word response noting whether you predominantly use Microsoft, Google, or Apple enterprise applications for your nonprofit.

Below, you will find four items to improve your nonprofit today:

How to get potentially enormous productivity gains by using Microsoft Copilot.
How to get addition by subtraction by culling your email list.
Create a micro-story bank of sharable beneficiary stories.
Create a 1-minute "why we exist" video.

Let's start, though, with "One from the Thumb."

Paying Pantry Leaders to Learn, Collaborate, and Innovate

Michigan’s Thumb region is piloting a new way to improve food access: pay pantry leaders to learn from experts, collaborate across counties, and pitch operational innovations—then fund and evaluate the best ideas (up to $20K each). The goal is to reduce pantry “silos,” increase client choice and dignity, and improve distribution efficiency across 35–40 pantries.

I love the idea of paying nonprofit leaders to learn, instead of the way we usually do it (myself included!).

How would you like to improve productivity 20% in less than three months? That's the promise of CoPilot, which you can license if you have a Microsoft 365 account. I now regularly use CoPilot to:

Evaluate my inbox for items I need to do and draft first drafts of emails.
Find quotations among the 400+ books I have excerpted into Word documents.
Examine an entire folder and compose a draft standard operating procedure.

I find new uses every day. And while I guarantee at least 20% productivity improvement if you follow through on this, my personal productivity improvement has been greater than 50%. Think about that -- I now get a Ted and a Half for each Ted.

You can follow the playbook below, or you can simply do what I've advised my clients to do for years: 1) adopt an AI use policy; 2) choose three to five senior personnel to use Copilot for a period of time; 3) assess the extent to which more (and better) work gets done.

Deploy Copilot to Improve Results: An Operations Playbook

Goal:

Within 8–12 weeks, reduce administrative burden so staff reclaim 10–20 % of work hours (equivalent to 2–8 hours per user per week).

Prereqs:

Lead: Operations or Technology lead; champion in senior leadership.
Tools: Microsoft 365 with Copilot access, an AI-use policy template (you can make one here or derive one from these instructions), basic monitoring dashboard (Excel, Power BI).
Data: baseline logs of hours spent on repetitive tasks, current workflows. (These don't have to be formal "logs," but it is important to quantify.)
Time: ~2 hours/week from 2–3 core adopters over 8–12 weeks.

Steps to Copy the Success:

Scan & prioritize task pain points. The lead and two staff spend a day listing repetitive, manual tasks (e.g. meeting summaries, drafting memos, pulling reports). They estimate hours spent. The output: top 3–5 tasks to pilot with Copilot.
Get Copilot access & set guardrails. Work with your IT or Microsoft partner to enable Copilot in your tenant. (Risk Alternatives pays about $20/month per license, I think.) Simultaneously adopt a simple AI use policy (defining what data may be fed, how reviews must happen, audit logging).
Pilot with a small group. Choose 3–5 “power users” across operations, communications, or admin. Ask them to route their repetitive tasks (e.g. summarizing long documents, drafting emails) through Copilot over 2–4 weeks. Track actual time saved compared to baseline.
Create a feedback loop & content prompts library. Collect common prompts that worked well for your context. Ask pilot users weekly: “What prompt got you the best draft or summary? What output needed major edits?” Build a shared folder or prompt library.
Roll out more broadly & embed in workflows. After pilot success, expand access to additional staff. Embed Copilot steps into standard operating procedures (e.g. “use Copilot first draft → human edit → final”). Train staff in prompt engineering (how to ask Copilot well).
Monitor, review, and iterate weekly. Every week, track metrics (see below). Meet for 30 minutes to discuss where Copilot outputs cause friction, where errors are frequent, and how to refine prompts or usage rules.
Scale to automations and Copilot agents. Once adoption is stable, investigate creating simple Copilot “agents” using Copilot Studio or automation tools—e.g. auto-summaries of a folder, auto-draft replies to recurring support requests.

Measurement Plan:

Primary KPI: Time reclaimed per user = baseline hours on repetitive admin – post-Copilot hours
Secondary KPIs: • Tasks handled via Copilot ratio = number of tasks routed through Copilot ÷ total repetitive tasks • Edit rate = proportion of Copilot outputs needing heavy rewriting • Adoption penetration = eligible staff using Copilot ÷ total eligible
Check-ins: Weekly team sync to validate progress and catch issues early.

Common Pitfalls & Fixes:

Staff distrust or suspicion of AI. Fix: Start transparent: show that Copilot is assistive, not replacement. Begin with low-stakes tasks. Offer drop-in office hours for coaching.
Poor prompts or low quality outputs. Fix: Use the prompt library and provide example prompts. Train staff in prompt engineering (context + ask + constraints).
Overstepping privacy/data rules. Fix: Enforce policy: disallow inputs with sensitive personal data or donor identifiers unless masked. Log and audit Copilot usage.
Tech access conflicts or licensing delays. Fix: Clarify licensing early with your IT/Microsoft partner. Run pilot on minimal user subset while licensing rolls out.
Plateauing gains / diminishing returns. Fix: When gains taper, switch focus to new tasks or build micro-agents to batch automations.

Adaptations by Org Size:

Small (< $2M): Start with just one program area or admin team. Use shared licenses and basic dashboards (Excel) to monitor.
Mid ($2–10M): Expand across 2–3 departments. Use Power BI dashboards and integrate Copilot with other systems (e.g. CRM or case management).
Large (> $10M): Build a dedicated AI/automation team. Use Copilot agents, integrate with ERP, anonymize data pipelines, A/B test prompt variants.

I look forward to hearing your results! If you want to learn more about just how cool Copilot is, you can review this tip-packed explainer video. And if any of you want to talk more about this, please use this link to find some free (in both senses) time on my calendar: https://calendly.com/tedbilich/30-minute-zoom-or-call.

Clean Your Lists

Run a quick re engagement email to inactives; then suppress subscribers who haven’t opened/clicked in your chosen timeframe (e.g., 6–12 months). This improves list health and deliverability; removing inactive subscribers is critical list hygiene. I know it hurts to suppress them, but dormant emails are doing more harm than good.

Create a Micro-Story List

Block 90 minutes to collect 3 short, specific beneficiary stories (quote, photo, consent), then file them in a shared doc with 100-word versions you can drop into email, social, and appeal copy. Specific, identifiable stories motivate giving more than abstract statistics.

Create a 1-minute "Why We Exist" Video

Using a smartphone, film your ED or program lead answering three prompts: problem, solution, how a gift helps. If necessary, have someone off-camera "interview" the ED. Add captions, upload to your Donate page and pin on social. Authentic beats perfect—ship it today.

So besides implementing the improvements above, you have three to-do's for this week:

Let me know what ecosystem you use for work (Microsoft, Apple, Google, other)
Tell me what you liked and what you're working on, since I focus future issues based on what I read in your emails.
Forward this email to someone you know who wants to improve their nonprofit. The more we grow this community, the better the idea flow becomes.

If you have received this email from someone, thank them! Then use this link to sign up for free.

Ted