Missions to Movements
Missions to Movements is the nonprofit marketing and fundraising podcast that helps you grow recurring donors, scale monthly giving programs, and build digital campaigns that convert.
Hosted by Dana Snyder—speaker, strategist, and founder of Positive Equation—this show is packed with actionable nonprofit growth strategies, social media tips, and fundraising best practices.
Each week, you’ll hear how organizations are increasing donor retention, building thought leadership, and using digital fundraising to drive real impact. If you want to learn how to attract monthly donors, master nonprofit marketing, and transform your mission into a movement, this podcast is for you.
Missions to Movements
The Inclusive AI Economy: How Nonprofits Win with Microsoft Elevate's Justin Spelhaug
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
What happens when 1.3 billion people adopt AI in just 39 months… and most nonprofits are still trying to figure out where to even start?
While nearly 90% of nonprofits are already using AI, only 6-7% are seeing meaningful returns, which is why I HAD to sit down with Justin Spelhaug, President of Microsoft Elevate, to talk about why that gap exists, and how nonprofits have a once-in-a-generation chance to shape a more inclusive AI economy.
We also talk about generating personalized donor thank you messages at scale, and how to use predictive modeling to better understand giving behavior. This moment requires all of us to lean in and will challenge how you think about AI.
Resources & Links
Connect with Justin on LinkedIn and learn more about Microsoft Elevate on their website. Justin also recommends Carol Dweck and her work on growth mindsets.
Bloomerang is the proud presenter of Missions to Movements.
See how one team surpassed a $1M match and raised $2.25M for their mission with Penny, Bloomerang’s AI-powered fundraising strategist. Learn more at bloomerang.com.
The Monthly Giving Builder: Generate your comprehensive monthly giving plan and build your program step by step - with a guided companion working alongside you from start to finish.
Let's Connect!
- Send a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn and let us know what you think of the show!
- My book, The Monthly Giving Mastermind, is here! Grab a copy here and learn my framework to build, grow, and sustain subscriptions for good.
- Want to book Dana as a speaker for your event? Click here!
This AI revolution is about more inclusion. It is about human agency. It is about making us more human, not less human. I know there's nobody listening right now whose mission is under less demand than it was last year. It's under more demand. The funding's not always there, and so we have to find another way.
SPEAKER_01Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Missions to Movements. I am your host, Dana Snyder, and I am here at the Microsoft Global Nonprofit Leaders Summit. And I am very excited today to be joined across from me, Justin. I'm so thrilled that you're here, president of Microsoft Elevate. One keynote that you gave yesterday. Phenomenal.
SPEAKER_02Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER_01And you you've been here for a while.
SPEAKER_02Well, I hold on. On that keynote, I had to follow Brad Smith. And if anybody has seen Brad Smith in the audience, he's very good on stage. So it was a bit intimidating. Uh,
Why Inclusion Must Be The Goal
SPEAKER_02but I'm glad that you thought it went okay.
SPEAKER_01It did. Exceptional. You have joined Microsoft in 1997. Yes. That's correct. That's right. That was just to take everyone back. Dial up internet. There were no smartphones, no cloud, no social media. When you look at the landscape of just AI now, technology now,
Live From The Nonprofit Summit
SPEAKER_01how does it feel like a different or maybe in some ways similar shift to how things are evolving right now?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, it's a good question. I think let's start with the similar and then we'll go to different. What's similar across all of the technology revolutions that we've been through, whether it's been the client server, cloud computing, the mobile era, has been that it's about people, it's about process, and it's about tools and getting the alchemy and the mix right in terms of how we drive transformation. That has not changed. What has changed is the speed of the change. I mean, it is incredible to think about 1.3 billion users coming online using these AI tools, large language models, in the last 39 months. And you compare that to something like the mobile phone revolution, which moved super
Why AI Feels So Different
SPEAKER_02fast from pagers to mobile phones where everybody had them, but it took 15 years to get the first billion users. And so the speed itself is one factor. The second factor, and the last factor I'll say, is you know, AI is a pretty powerful tool in doing higher level cognitive functions. It translates, it writes, it analyzes, it responds. And that means it is more disruptive to the workflows that we all have and potentially, and hopefully, if we do all this right, more beneficial ultimately. But those two things are different than what we've seen before.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I love that you brought that up, the speed of acceleration and the all the conversations that I've been able to have here with nonprofits that were sitting in your seat and how they're adapting and responding and wanting to be progressively learning on how to use these tools for good. So 28 years is a long time to stay in technology. Come on.
SPEAKER_00Breaking it down.
SPEAKER_01What about this for you? Like, what does Justin in 2025 understand and realize that maybe Justin back in 1997 couldn't have?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. No. Well, I I think one of the most important roles.
SPEAKER_01And it's wisdom you get over that time.
SPEAKER_02It's wisdom. That's right. It's like fine wine or good cheese. I suppose that's always gets better. Always gets better with age. No, I I think I've learned over the years that Microsoft plays a slightly different role in this industry and in this time in terms of what is being asked of us. And I think we're being asked to be a trusted partner to speak the truth, to bring the community with us, versus just, you know, sling technology out there one way. And I think we have a very special role to play there from the policy work we're doing to try to ensure that AI literacy is a fundamental right, fundamentally for everyone in school systems and workforce systems, to
Microsoft As A Trusted Partner
SPEAKER_02the work we're doing to lean in to the United Nations when everybody has seemed to lean out. And, you know, I met with Dr. Tedros, uh I had the opportunity to go to Davos, and we were just talking about the WHO facing a 25% budget shortfall. And what that meant was critical programming is being cut for critical communities all over the world because they just don't have the funding they need. I think the world expects us to do those things. And I don't think I quite understood that when I started in this job.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and something that came up time and time again in the panel conversations and speaking with other nonprofit leaders was they always said, we called. We called Microsoft and they said yes. Right. They were gonna figure it out. And that's profound to one, know that they can call in the first place, and B, get a response and talk to somebody who's willing to figure it out with them. So for those that are listening andor viewing this conversation right now, Microsoft is a name that I would say pretty much everyone knows, but Microsoft Elevate specifically may not. Can you just share a little bit about what specifically this program of work that embodies?
SPEAKER_02I'll do that, but I want to actually go back to why we pick up the phone. And I want to talk, I want to spend one moment on that. You know, I spent a lot of time with my team on this idea of mission and margin and trying to get the balance right. And every single person on the Microsoft Elevate team, which I'll talk about here in a moment, has a story in terms of why they serve this sector. We all know, and everybody, everybody, all of your audience knows, this isn't the easiest sector to serve. The missions are hard, the funding is constrained, the problems are massive that your listeners are up against and working on each day. But I I I like to think that we've cultivated a special place where I hope that every single person in Microsoft Elevate, I know it's part of our culture as a company too, truly and deeply cares about the work we do and the work that the nonprofits that we serve do. So I just wanted to say that because that will set context for it radiates.
SPEAKER_01It's true.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's true.
SPEAKER_01I've been here this these past few days, and you can tell that in every interaction with the team. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Now, to your question on what is Microsoft Elevate, I think it's important to understand a little bit of the context setting for this, which is part of the discussion we've been having here at the session, has been this moment that we're in, this defining moment of technology transforming everything. We talked about the speed, we talked about the power of it, we talked about the infrastructure investment. But this moment will not be inclusive unless we lean in and make it so. AI, by default, is proving to actually widen divides unless we take action now. And that action has to happen with the nonprofit sector, it has to happen with governments around the world, and it requires the private sector to step forward. And Elevate was built to tackle that problem or be a part of tackling that problem. And we do that by
What Microsoft Elevate Actually Does
SPEAKER_02ensuring that we're focused on really the fundamental agents of building capacity, human capacity to be ready for the AI economy. That starts with schools, that starts with teachers, in fact, in schools, and helping them get equipped with the right tools to ensure that every student that graduates not only knows how to use these systems, but that we've cultivated what we call the metacognitive capabilities, thinking about thinking.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02Those capabilities to critically judge, to critically learn, to learn beside these tools so that they're enhancing their learning outcomes and enhancing their impact. But we know that not everybody's in school. In fact, a lot of people are in the workforce. And so that's where we have our focus with uh labor unions, with governments, going and thinking about the North American Building Trades Union as an example, thinking about pipe fitters, electricians, plumbers, and the fact that we can't leave them behind in that. They're all small businesses. How can they achieve more with this technology? Uh, and then, of course, working with the nonprofit sector who are really supporting some of the most vulnerable communities in this transition and ensuring that we're equipping nonprofits with not only the technology, but with the programming so that they can support the constituents that they support every day better. But that systematic approach, left-to-right approach that brings together policy and technology and strategy and partnerships and grants and capability, I think is unique in the industry. And I hope it actually and I plan it to make a dent in this problem, this challenge that we're facing.
SPEAKER_01It's fabulous. It's fabulous. I was doing some LinkedIn searching on your page recently. Okay. Uh oh. It's all good. It's all good. And you were recently talking about education. You were in Berlin. I was in a classroom, and you were watching teachers, not tech teachers, not necessarily like early adopters, maybe, but they were learning how to use agentic AI for their students. What did you see in that room that you don't see maybe in conference presentations about AI and education? Like when you're on the ground.
SPEAKER_02I think there's two things that really struck me. I mean, there are students there too, working alongside the teachers. Teachers need some help right now. AI is changing everything in the classroom. I was talking to one teacher in Berlin, and he was talking about how students are coming into the classroom, thinking they have information, and expecting their teacher to actually not be the single source of truth anymore, but to be the coach on how to discern information that is truthful
Teachers Facing AI In Classrooms
SPEAKER_02in the first place. Yeah. That's a good example of metacognition, right? And so that's different than teaching history. It's teaching how do you interpret the facts from these systems to discern the right historical lesson. Right. And the rules of the road aren't clear for teachers. The rules of the road aren't clear for students. And so it's a pretty dynamic and frankly very challenging environment. We did some research with an organization called Digital Promise to look at hey, is are teachers and students actually benefiting from using this technology? And the answer was, it depends. If you use AI casually in the learning process, what you end up with is students that are more certain of their answers but learn less. And that's not the outcome that we want. If you build in AI in a way that facilitates critical thinking, judgment, interpretation, questioning the AI, learning alongside the AI, what we see using those metacognitive capabilities again, what we see is learning outcomes enhanced because AI provides a basic scaffolding for a learner to accelerate, but it really requires applying it right. So the final lesson in all of this is we have to focus on building teacher capacity. That was the outcome of that insight, which was okay, we need to go deep. And it's not about training them on one tool or another. It's about training them on a standard that we've happened to build with the European Commission and OECD on how to think about learning and how to think about these tools in the context of the learning process.
SPEAKER_01It's fascinating because my mom was a teacher. Okay. And retired a few years ago. And when the pandemic hit, I mean, even her learning Zoom for the first time. I happened to be in Florida. She lives in Sarasota, Florida, and needed to help her learn how to set it up, talk to the student. And she was so excited to see their faces.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01And adapting and learning this new technology. And that and that was just a few years ago. And now look at where we are.
SPEAKER_02That's right. And that was a game changer in its time. And now we have a new game changer.
SPEAKER_01That's right. So it's always just having the ability to have the resources.
SPEAKER_02That's right.
SPEAKER_01Like within Microsoft Elevate and all the skills learning at your fingertips to tap into that to learn.
SPEAKER_02That's right. And just speaking of your mom and just thinking about the teaching profession or the nonprofit profession out there, like the current paradigm of these tools is going to change. So this lifelong learning skill, learn Zoom, learn Teams, learn how to use these AI tools. Now agents are coming. What's next? It's about accelerating that learning process.
SPEAKER_01That's what Melinda French Gates talked about this morning. It was like, I'm a constant learner.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01Is what she said. And I have to stay curious and hungry for that in the journey.
SPEAKER_02Yes. You know, one book that we use a lot at Microsoft, but I think it's a fantastic read as a nonprofit leader, as a parent. It'll make you question your parenting, probably. It did for my for me. Uh, but it's Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset. It's just a seminal piece of work on how we have a predisposition to kind of be a know-it-all and and put up some barriers and what we can really gain from being a learn at all. And how do you coach your kids? How do you coach your employees? How do you coach yourself to be a learn at all?
SPEAKER_01Wait, I have never heard that term, a learn at all. A learn it all. I love that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Read the book. It's amazing. I really recommend it.
SPEAKER_01Fabulous. On the scale of there's all different sides of organizations that are listening or watching to this right now. And a lot of fundraisers and marketers in the audience might be one to two, five, ten person teams doing the work of many, many, many. And now that can be even hopefully easier to scale with AI.
Growth Mindset For Constant Change
SPEAKER_01If you had to point them to really one place where AI gives this team a truly like outsized return, something that you talked about in the discussion was that 90% of nonprofits are using AI, but I think it was six or seven percent are seeing like big, big returns.
SPEAKER_02Big returns.
SPEAKER_01Not eventually, but like in the next 90 days, in the next month. Like, what's what would be your advice? What would you point them to?
SPEAKER_02Well, and and you're the expert on a lot of this versus me, but you know, a lot of the organizations I've worked with, there is just so much administrative overhead, even in fundraising, right? Just think about one process like donor
Fast AI Wins For Fundraising Teams
SPEAKER_02response. You get a donation and now you want to say thank you, but you want to say thank you in a personalized way. And the way we've always done that is we, if you're good, you write a personalized letter and you know something about that donor, and you're connecting the dot between what they care about in your mission and what they've donated. That's a process now where we can use AI in really powerful ways, connecting into the CRM system or into the Excel file if you're a small organization that has that donor information and creating a custom note that you may uh put some touch up on, but it's generated and that can save tons of hours. Or take, as an example, donor research. Like it took going from source to source. You go to the LinkedIn profile, and then you would do all these different things to figure out what makes this donor tick and how do I engage her in a way where I think I can get a gift at the right size given the mission, the relationship we have, AI brings that together in new ways. On the more advanced side of things, but this also can be done in Excel, by the way. You don't need big systems for this. Donor analytics, looking at the frequency and the uh donor behavior, the average gift size, the timing of that gift to then trigger an engagement with that donor is another critical capability. Predictive modeling using ML to do that, which we've been doing for a long time, but it's just been it's right now built into Excel, easy to do. And you don't write it in Visual Basic, you just write a prompt in English language and you can get the outputs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just start.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just start, just try it. And you know, that that is you know one recommendation of well, how do I get started? You get started by starting, which is pick one process, pick one thing that's creating a pain in your life.
SPEAKER_01One thing do you not like doing in your calendar?
SPEAKER_02What do you not like doing? And and just lean in a little bit to try to use these tools and you know, start with also learning about the capability of the tools, but also the shortfalls so that you can judge these things in the right way.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So this event has been fabulous as a first-time attender. And for all of those that again are listening or viewing that could not be here this week, what is one message that you just want them to hear loud and clear?
SPEAKER_02My ambition, certainly personally as a leader, is that this AI revolution is about more inclusion. It is about human agency, it is about making us more human, not less human, despite what you hear on the news every single day. But it will require a choice for your audience, a choice for your audience to lean in to understand this technology, to skill themselves on this technology, and find ways to apply it in their mission. But I think the nonprofit sector plays actually a really special role in this idea of an inclusive AI economy. They're closest to the communities, their voices need to be heard so that these systems are less biased, because they are biased today in many ways. They're more inclusive, they are the trusted partner in every community, and they actually can
Nonprofits As The Inclusion Engine
SPEAKER_02be the delivery layer for AI skilling at scale for so many at-risk communities. And in fact, the communities they're focused on are often the most at risk, the least resilient uh right now in the economy, and we can lift them up. And then finally, by you know, using this technology in the right way, hopefully we can get a multiplier effect on their mission impact because I know there's nobody listening right now whose mission is under less demand than it was last year. It's under more demand. And I know the funding's not always there, and so we have to find another way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And don't forget, listener, we are part of the third largest sector. That's right. Do not undermine your own possibilities. I think sometimes we forget that, that we have massive power, and that's why this podcast exists, is to let you hear from leaders like Justin to know we're rooting for you, we're here to support you. That's right. I want to wrap with a question that I'm stealing from the keynote this morning because I thought it was good with Melinda French Gates. Justin, what question do you never get asked that you wish you got asked?
SPEAKER_02You know, it's funny because I'll probably say something similar to what Melinda said, because I never get asked it, which is I always get asked about my job and my work and the thoughts, but I never get asked why I do it. Why do you do this work? There's a lot of places you could work in the world and in Microsoft. Why do you focus here?
SPEAKER_01Why do you focus here?
SPEAKER_02Oh, well, thank you for asking me. First person that's ever asked me. Why do you do your work, Justin? My dad set up a uh nonprofit called Senior Services for Snohomish County. It was meals on wheels, minor home repair, uh housing, uh, social services for elderly people. And my my mother was a child abuse investigator, sexual assault, in fact, in uh the Rainer Valley, the roughest part of the Seattle area that we live. And you don't have a lot of money in those families, and and so you go to work a lot with them, right? That's
The Real Reason Justin Serves
SPEAKER_02child care, basically, back in the 80s, I guess it was, right? And they never talked about service or community or anything like that. They just did it. They just did it, you know, and so like through osmosis, you understand the value of that work at a deeper level. And, you know, I hope a little bit of that reflects through what we're trying to do at Microsoft Elevate and reflects through some of the experiences that your listeners have had with us. And if it doesn't, I'm gonna make sure I work harder that so that it does.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for sharing that. And it does. And I hope this just helps to amplify and create further ripple effects into the amazing work that you're doing. So, Justin, thank you, thank you, thank you for your generosity and for being here and continuing to just put time and investment into this sector that's so important to all of us around the world.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of Missions to Movement. If you enjoyed our conversation and found it helpful, I would love for you to take a moment to leave a review wherever you're listening. Your feedback helps us reach more change makers like you and continue bringing impactful stories and strategies to the show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button too, so you'll never miss an episode. And until next time, keep turning your mission into a movement.
