Seigle Foundation equips nonprofit leaders with AI skills and tools
Seigle Foundation brought together leaders from its grantee organizations on Sept. 30 for “Managing AI Like You Manage People,” a hands-on, half-day workshop at Elgin Community College.
To make sure the learning continues long after the session, the foundation is sponsoring six months of Claude, Anthropic’s AI platform, for every attendee.
The workshop was built on a simple premise: getting value from AI is a leadership challenge, not a technical one. The skills nonprofit leaders already rely on — setting clear expectations, giving context, delegating, and evaluating results — are the same skills that make AI useful inside an organization.
Nonprofits run on lean teams and tight budgets. When surveyed, 85% of Seigle Foundation grantees said they wanted an AI-focused session. The foundation responded with a working session rather than a lecture, and with the tools to act on it.
“Our grantees do extraordinary work with very scarce resources,” said Mark Seigle of Seigle Foundation. “AI can give them back time and capacity, but only if leaders feel confident using it. This workshop, and the six months of Claude that come with it, are about turning curiosity into everyday practice.”
The session was designed and led by Kwesi Smith, CEO of Greenwood Project, a Chicago-based national nonprofit preparing students from underrepresented communities for careers in financial services.
Smith spent 20 years in global equity research, most recently at William Blair, and is now implementing AI across his own organization.
“Every leader in that room already knows how to manage people,” Smith said. “Once they see AI the same way — a collaborator that needs context, clear expectations and feedback — the technology stops being intimidating and starts being useful.”
Over the afternoon, participants:
• Explored how AI has changed, including new agentic tools built for non-technical users, along with policy, security and staff concerns about adoption.
• Learned a practical framework for spotting where AI creates real value in their organizations.
• Mapped their org charts at mixed-organization tables to identify roles they need but can’t afford to hire, and used an AI agent to explore how to fill those gaps.
• Built a custom AI agent persona for a specific role on their team, then traded feedback with peers.
• Left with one concrete commitment to put their agent to work within seven days.
Six months of AI access
Attendees received Claude through Anthropic’s nonprofit Team plan, paid for by the Seigle Foundation for six months. Access began before the workshop, so participants arrived having already drafted an organizational AI policy, connected tools like Gmail and Google Calendar, and experimented on their own. The sponsorship removes the cost barrier so organizations can keep building on what they started.
About the Seigle Foundation
The Seigle Foundation is dedicated to creating a lasting legacy of charitable support for the Elgin and Dundee area. The foundation invests in the arts, education, food, and housing organizations that work to transform lives and strengthen the overall quality of life in these communities.