AI for NFP Directors - Course

AI is the biggest productivity opportunity the sector has seen in a generation. For organisations that run lean and stretch every dollar, it can cut administrative load, sharpen reporting to funders, and free up time and money for frontline work. The charities moving early are already seeing the gains. A resource-constrained sector has the most to win.

AI use across the sector doubled in a year. Only 14% of organisations have any AI governance in place. This program closes that gap so your board can capture the upside with confidence rather than caution. You leave with both practical AI skills and board-level governance knowledge: a draft AI policy, a board oversight checklist, and the right questions to put to management.

Across Australia's 60,000-plus charities and not-for-profits, AI is already in use on the frontline. Governance has not caught up. Most boards have no policy, no oversight framework, and no shared language for the questions AI now puts in front of them, all while the sector holds some of the most sensitive data in the country.

This program is built for the people responsible for getting that right. It teaches directors how to oversee AI, meet their duties, and turn adoption into real mission impact without taking on unmanaged risk. Built by AITAI, an NFP, for the boards of other NFPs.

What the program covers

The four sessions move from hands-on capability to board-level oversight, so directors learn AI by using it before they govern it. The throughline is opportunity: knowing where AI genuinely advances your mission, and how to back it with sound governance.

• Session 1: AI, grounded. A plain account of what current AI can and cannot do, where it is heading over the next year, and how it fails. Directors spend hands-on time with the main tools so everyone on the board has used the technology directly. The goal is shared literacy. No director should be overseeing something they have never touched.

• Session 2: AI at work in your organisation. Real not-for-profit use cases across fundraising, service delivery, administration and reporting, including organisations already getting time and dollars back. What AI does well, what it does poorly, and how to tell the two apart. Directors build a clear view of where AI advances the mission and where it adds cost and risk for little return.

• Session 3: Duties, data and risk. How director duties and ACNC Governance Standard 5 apply once AI enters the organisation. The privacy and data-security exposure charities carry, the cybersecurity gap running across the sector, and the obligations that gap places on a board. Vendor lock-in and procurement risk covered in practical terms.

• Session 4: Governing AI in practice. Building a right-sized AI policy and oversight framework for your own organisation. Reading a management AI proposal with a critical eye. Setting the standing questions a board should ask every quarter. Directors finish the session with a draft policy and checklist in hand.

What you walk away with

• Direct, hands-on experience with current AI tools

• A clear view of where AI can lift your organisation's capacity and impact

• A draft AI governance policy template built for NFPs

• A board oversight checklist

• A procurement and vendor-risk screen

• A one-page set of questions to put to management

• An AITAI certificate of completion and a pathway into the Fellows network and member events

Who it is for

Chairs, board members and senior executives of not-for-profits and charities. The program is built for small and medium organisations that are adopting AI faster than they can oversee it. No technical background is assumed.

Format

Four half-day sessions, cohort-based, 15 to 25 directors per intake. Delivered at St Catherine's College, with an in-house option for larger boards.

Register your interest

Places are limited to 25 per intake. Register your interest to be notified when applications open and to help shape the first cohort.