For almost the past two years, the Goldhirsh Foundation has offered free AI (artificial intelligence) consulting, training, and workshops to LA’s impact community.⁠⁠ The work is led on the Foundation’s behalf by Jen García, Goldhirsh Foundation’s AI EIR (executive-in-residence).

[Read about some of these efforts in this collection of blog posts, and watch this video.]

Today, in the second of a planned series of short Q&As about AI with leaders of some of the groups the Foundation has assisted, García checks in with 9 Dots’ fundraising and development manager Ashley Leon.

Goldhirsh Foundation: Earlier this summer, we partnered with OpenAI for its Los Angeles-area AI Nonprofit Jam. We invited you and your colleagues to participate, and you said yes. Why?

Ashley Leon: 9 Dots is an innovative edtech nonprofit, and we’re interested in continually improving our use of AI. Although we already use gen AI in many areas of our organization, training non-technical team members on new use cases can be difficult, especially when the technology keeps advancing so quickly. When our team learned of this event, we were thrilled for the opportunity to explore how AI could support many of our nonprofit’s initiatives. There is a whole world to discover in the AI space, and we’re looking to see how it can help us deepen our impact.

Goldhirsh Foundation: What is something specific that you learned at the Jam that you have decided to implement?

Ashley Leon: I initially thought AI, specifically ChatGPT, was just a smart search engine. I didn’t realize it could be set up to perform automated tasks amongst many other things. We are testing this out as we speak.

Goldhirsh Foundation: Beyond that one day, what is something else involving AI that your organization has already implemented? And, how does that implementation help you?

Ashley Leon: One of our team’s interests is how AI can help strengthen our fundraising strategies and streamline efficiencies. As I previously mentioned, I learned that it was possible to automate tasks such as grant research. After attending this workshop, I set up an automated system that uses AI to regularly scan the web for grant opportunities that align with our nonprofit's work and sends them over to me at the start of each month. I even set it up in a way where it can organize the information it finds into a chart, including: the description of each opportunity, deadlines, points of contact, links to actual applications, and websites. Just one of the many insights I’ve gained through this event.

Goldhirsh Foundation: Please share an anecdote about how using AI has made a difference – either directly in the communities you served, or indirectly, if it helps your team behind the scenes and frees up more time for community work. 

Ashley Leon: As we begin our 2025-2026 fiscal year, we’re hitting the ground running with outreach for upcoming field trips, guest speaker events, our end-of-year appeal, and so much more. Last week, while planning our highly anticipated annual award ceremony, I had to concurrently plan this large-scale event while building social media posts and balancing other key tasks. Using ChatGPT, I was able to save valuable time as it helped me turn my ideas into polished captions by proofreading and editing, allowing me time to focus on outreach and meaningful in-person engagement during one of our busiest weeks of the entire year. Behind the scenes, ChatGPT’s automated weekly search was also surfing the web and sending over grant application opportunities – all of which were happening simultaneously and helping me maximize my time while managing many priorities at once.

Goldhirsh Foundation: In what ways is AI not proving to be helpful to you and your organization, or, what concerns do you have about this new technology?

Ashley Leon: One of our main concerns is data privacy and always ensuring AI is being used ethically. Here at 9 Dots, we’re constantly improving our use of AI and are integrating AI tools across our organization’s departments. We’ve established AI guidelines and view them as essential in this day and age. Protecting the privacy of the communities we serve is of utmost importance to us.

Photos: Ashley Leon (top); children and technology (bottom), courtesy 9 Dots