AI & Automation Training for Non-Profits

No two nonprofits operate the same way. Your organization has its own policies, software systems, data requirements, and workflows and your AI training needs to reflect that. Off-the-shelf corporate AI courses don’t account for the tools your staff actually use, the privacy concerns your clients depend on, or the specific challenges your team faces every day.

STEM Translation Co. builds fully customized AI and automation training programs for nonprofit and social service organizations. Every engagement starts with learning how your team works so that every session is immediately relevant, practical, and grounded in your real operations.

Step 1: Job Shadowing Day

Every engagement begins with a full day of on-site job shadowing. Before any training is designed, Jessica spends the day embedded with your team.  She observes workflows, learns your systems, understands the tasks that take up the most time, and identifies where AI and automation can make the biggest impact. This isn’t a questionnaire or intake form. It’s real observation of how your organization actually operates, which means your training program is built on reality, not assumptions.

Step 2: Your Custom Training Program

Based on what’s learned during the shadowing day, Jessica designs a training program tailored to your organization’s specific needs, tools, goals and budget. Your program may include any combination of the following, depending on your budget and your teams highest needs:

• AI Foundations: What AI is, how it works, and what it can and can’t do—explained in plain language for your team’s starting point
• Privacy Framework: A customized privacy framework built around your organization’s specific data policies, including what’s safe to use with AI, what isn’t, and how to de-identify sensitive information
• AI Acceptable Use Policy: Development of a clear organizational policy for how staff can use AI tools responsibly
• Prompt Engineering: Hands-on training using a proven framework for getting better, more useful results from AI tools
• AI for Writing & Communication: Using AI to draft reports, grant narratives, board communications, client-facing materials, and other documents your team produces regularly
• AI for Data: Summarizing, visualizing, and presenting program data using AI tools
• Workflow Automation: Identifying repetitive tasks and building automations using tools like Microsoft Power Automate to save your team hours every week
• Multimodal AI: Working with images, documents, and audio using AI tools

The number of sessions, the depth of each topic, and the pace of the program are all shaped by your team’s needs and comfort level. Nothing is cookie-cutter.

Step 3: Office Hours with Jessica

Every engagement includes a dedicated Office Hours day where your staff can book one-on-one time with Jessica to get help with specific cases, projects, or questions. Staff bring the real work sitting on their desk and get hands-on guidance applying what they’ve learned to their actual responsibilities. It’s one of the most valuable parts of the program, because it bridges the gap between “I understand AI” and “I’m using AI to do my job better.”

We’re not a tech company selling software. We’re educators who understand how mission-driven organizations work. Our CEO, Jessica Burgess, has 15+ years of experience making complex STEM topics accessible to real people, from classrooms and science museums to a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory. That same approach drives our AI training: clear, practical, jargon-free, and built around how your team actually works.

• Truly customized: We shadow your team before we train them. Your program is designed around your systems, your policies, and your people.
• Privacy-first: Every engagement includes a customized privacy framework so your team knows exactly what’s safe to use with AI and what isn’t.
• Hands-on, not theoretical: Your staff will leave every session having actually used AI tools on their real work.
• Meets people where they are: Whether your team has never opened an AI tool or is ready for advanced automation, we design training for your starting point.
• Nonprofit-native: We understand grant cycles, lean staffing, board reporting, and the operational realities of social service work. Our training reflects that.

We recently completed a customized AI and automation training program for a Chicago-area social service agency. After shadowing staff and assessing their needs, we designed a multi-session program covering AI foundations, privacy protocols, prompt engineering, and workflow automation, all tailored to the agency’s specific systems and client data requirements. Staff members who had never used AI tools went from uncertain to confident, and the organization now has a clear privacy framework and AI acceptable use policy in place.

This training is designed for nonprofit organizations, social service agencies, community-based organizations, and mission-driven teams that want to bring AI into their work responsibly and effectively. Whether you’re a small team looking for a focused engagement or a larger organization with multiple departments to train, every program is built from scratch around your organization.