Advancing Our Work with Intention. Introducing ZIM’s AI Taskforce

This spring, we formally launched ZIM’s AI Taskforce to ensure we engage with artificial intelligence (AI) in a strategic and responsible way. As new tools and technologies continue to emerge, we see an opportunity to enhance how we work and support our clients while also continuing to center the human and relationship-driven approach to our work. 

How Are We Approaching AI with Intention and Strategy?

The pace of change in AI is significant, and many organizations are still figuring out how to integrate these tools into their day-to-day work. For us, the question was how to use AI in a way that aligns with our values and standards: How do we use these tools to create efficiencies while still representing individuals and communities in a personal, emotional, and human way?

Our team is responsible for producing high-quality, tailored work across grant writing, research, and strategy. That requires accuracy, nuance, and a clear understanding of each client’s mission and goals. We created the AI Taskforce to explore where AI can support efficiency and consistency, while still allowing us to represent our clients in a way that feels true to ourselves and the communities served. 

The taskforce brings together team members across departments to test tools, evaluate use cases, and develop internal guidance. By prioritizing the exploration of these tools across teams, we hope to adopt AI both with intention and in a way that is truly productive, for both ourselves and our clients. 

ZIM’s AI taskforce will also develop a clear external statement on how we use AI in our work, so that our clients and partners understand both how we are using these tools and how we continue to champion our own expertise and skills in supporting the communities we serve. 

We also recognize the importance of protecting client information and maintaining confidentiality. Our internal policies reflect this, with clear boundaries around what information can be used within AI tools, how outputs are handled, and what tools should be used under certain circumstances.

How Can Artificial Intelligence Improve Core Functions?

One of our primary priorities is improving internal efficiency. This includes identifying ways AI can support early-stage research, summarize large amounts of information, and help organize data. By streamlining these front-end processes, we are working towards getting to a place where our team can spend more time on strategy, alignment, and storytelling. We are working on building AI-based efficiencies that help our team compile historic information, summarize extensive documents, and outline grants, so that we can continue to focus on strategically working with our clients to tell their stories and enhance their impact.

We also plan to use various AI tools to share information across our teams. Our team holds a significant amount of institutional knowledge across sectors, funders, and strategies. We are exploring how AI can help organize and surface that information more effectively, making it easier for staff to access insights and build on past work.

One of the primary goals of the Taskforce will be training all staff and setting clear internal guidelines. We acknowledge that keeping up with AI changes and learning how to use various tools can feel overwhelming, if not impossible, at times. The Taskforce is working to set standards and best practices so that every team member engaging with AI tools is doing so within a shared framework that outlines appropriate use, expectations for review, and quality control standards. We hope to build not only guidelines, but a system of efficiencies and workflows so that all of our staff have the same access and capabilities with set tools that can lead to quality and consistent outputs.

By setting an organization-wide policy for AI use, we hope to ensure that all of our staff can grow with the changing times while also adhering to our best practices as they relate to all of the ethical considerations that come with AI use.

Why is AI a Tool and Not a Substitute for Human Expertise?

As we integrate AI into our workflows, we are aware of and prioritizing the strengths of the tools vs. those of our team. Anthropic, one of the leading AI developing companies, states that humans provide critical thinking, judgment, creativity, and ethical oversight; and AI provides speed, scale, pattern recognition, and processing abilities.

Our deliverables are built on human expertise, critical thinking, creativity, and a deep understanding of each client’s goals and community context. AI can support certain parts of the process, but it does not replace the strategy, judgment, or relationship building that define our work.

While we work to integrate AI into the spaces where it can build efficiency, we believe it is the human-driven voice that can truly portray the stories of the communities and organizations we work with, so will continue to establish processes that elevate the voices of our team, our organizations, and our communities.

How will ZIM's AI use evolve?

The launch of our AI Taskforce is one step in an ongoing process. We acknowledge that with the pace that AI tools are evolving, we will likely never have a 100% set policy, but will have to continue adapting our approach as well.  That said, we will continue to use AI tools strategically to improve efficiency and to highlight our team's strengths in quality and strategic deliverables for our clients.