Technology and AI from the nonprofit operator’s chair

Writing and consulting for nonprofit leaders making decisions about AI, operations, and responsible systems.

Recent essays

Ideas for making better decisions about AI, organizational capacity, and the systems that serve a mission.

How to Choose Your Nonprofit's First AI Project

The best first project is useful, low in consequence, and something your team can actually check. Here is how to find it.

What Is AI For in a Mission-Driven Organization?

Most nonprofit staff are already using AI. The leadership question is what it should be for.

Field Notes

Screen the data before you compare tools

FIELD NOTE 004 / PROJECT SELECTION / 2026.10.20

A sound first AI project faces staff rather than the public, draws only on documents the organization controls, and leaves a person deciding what to do with each answer. Settle what information may go into a tool before anyone compares products; if client data would enter it…

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The Operator-Scholar

Mission & Machine brings an operator’s perspective to technology and AI in mission-driven organizations.

By La‘akea Yoshida

Operator

Ideas must survive contact with real budgets, teams, workflows, and consequences.

Scholar

Technology belongs inside a wider conversation about institutions, power, culture, and justice.

Translator

Complex tools become useful when leaders can ask better questions and connect strategy to practice.