Note: general recommendations only, not professional advice. You are responsible for checking before use. For financial statements, compliance with the Registrar of Nonprofits and Section 46 donation receipts, consult a certified accountant; for privacy, consult a lawyer. The full text is at the end.
Who this is for
For the director of a small or mid-sized nonprofit, an operations manager, a development coordinator or a board member who wears several hats at once. If the same three or four people write grant applications, thank donors, schedule volunteers and write reports, this guide is for you.
It's written for Israeli nonprofits, so a few local terms come up: the Registrar of Nonprofits (the government body that registers nonprofits and collects their annual documents), the "proper management" certificate it issues, Section 46 of the Income Tax Ordinance (a tax credit for donations to approved organizations) and Amendment 13 to the Privacy Protection Law (which tightened the rules for organizations that hold data about people). Each is explained briefly where it appears.
No technical background needed. You need one shared folder, one spreadsheet, a shared calendar and an account with an AI tool for drafting. Think of this guide as a map: it turns the four areas into one routine, and each area links to a detailed playbook.
The problem in three lines
Each area lives somewhere else: grant calls in someone's inbox, donors in an old spreadsheet, volunteers in group chats and reports in the folder of whoever wrote them last year. Work happens according to whatever is on fire this week, so a donor thank-you slips, a grant call is missed and a report to a foundation gets written the night before. AI can save a lot of the writing, but without order it only adds more drafts nobody can find.
The method in 6 steps
Step 1: One folder, one sheet and rules for AI
What to do: Before touching an AI tool, set up the base: one place for every document, one sheet that shows what's open in each area, and one page of rules about what may and may not go into an AI tool.
How:
- One shared folder with four subfolders: Grants, Donors, Volunteers, Reporting. Plus a fifth one called "Facts about us".
- In the facts folder, keep what comes back in every application and every report: a one-paragraph and a one-page description of the organization, goals, programs, participant numbers by year, the approved annual budget, stories cleared for publication and short bios of key people. This is the raw material for every draft AI writes.
- An "Operations" sheet with four tabs, one per area. Each tab has the same basic columns: what, owner, due, status, link to the document.
- A rules page for AI that everyone who uses the tool has read: what may be pasted (general descriptions, totals, texts already published), what may not (identifying details about people), and who reviews each draft before it goes out.
- One owner per area. Not "everyone". A named person, with a backup.
What AI actually does at this stage: almost nothing, on purpose. You can ask it to condense your existing documents into a one-paragraph and a one-page description, and the facts folder starts from there.
What stays out of AI: names, phone numbers, addresses and ID numbers of donors, volunteers and participants, what a specific person gave, and anything about health, criminal background or financial situation. Amendment 13 to Israel's Privacy Protection Law raised the bar for organizations that hold data about people, so the rule is simple: general descriptions and totals go into the AI tool, people don't.
Common mistake: starting with a new tool. A new tool without an organized folder and an owner just moves the mess somewhere else.
Further reading: How a nonprofit gets started with AI · Amendment 13 to Israel's Privacy Protection Law: a checklist for donor and volunteer databases
Step 2: Grants and calls for proposals
What to do: Turn searching and applying into a fixed routine, instead of chasing every call someone forwarded in a group chat.
The routine:
- Weekly, half an hour: scan your regular sources (foundation sites, newsletters, professional groups) and log every relevant call in the Grants tab: funder, deadline, amount, fit, link.
- Weekly, ten minutes: decide: apply, skip or check. A call that doesn't fit is closed right away, with one line on why.
- Monthly: look at the next three months. Which applications are coming up, what they still need (budget, support letters, certificates) and who owns them.
What AI actually does: compares the call's requirements with your facts and flags the gaps, breaks the call into a list of requirements and documents, and drafts each section from the facts folder. It doesn't invent numbers, doesn't make promises on your behalf and doesn't decide whether to apply.
Here is the text of a call for proposals: [paste]
Here is our description, programs and numbers: [paste from the facts folder]
1. List the eligibility criteria, and for each: we meet it / we don't / unclear.
2. List the required documents and certificates.
3. List the scoring criteria, if any.
4. In three lines: a fit, not a fit, or needs checking, and why.
Mark anything not stated in my text as [to check]. Don't guess.
How: Once you decide to apply, open a folder for the application, copy the requirements list from the prompt into it, and build the draft section by section from your facts. Every number in the application is checked against its source before you submit.
A few habits that save time on the next application:
- A folder per application, with the call, the requirements list, the drafts and the version actually submitted.
- A paragraph bank: the description of the organization, of each program and its success measures, as submitted and approved. The next application starts from them.
- A summary line after every answer: approved or declined, how much, and what the reviewers said. After a year you can see which foundations are worth applying to again.
- A last read by fresh eyes: someone who didn't write the application reads it against the scoring criteria and marks every vague sentence that could be replaced with a fact.
What stays out of AI: identifying details of participants, personal stories not cleared for publication, board members' ID numbers and bank account details. An application needs totals and one cleared story, not lists of people (Amendment 13).
Common mistake: applying to every call that looks close. An application that fails the eligibility criteria takes as long as a good one and ends in a rejection. Fewer, better-matched applications win more.
Further reading: How a nonprofit finds grant calls and applies with AI · Writing a foundation or grant application with AI
Step 3: Donors: asking, thanking and dormant donors
What to do: Give donors a fixed schedule of thanks, updates and asks, so the relationship doesn't depend on one person's memory.
The routine:
- Weekly, half an hour: thank this week's donors. A receipt and a short thank-you for everyone, and a personal thank-you for a new donor or a significant gift.
- Monthly: the dormant donor list, people who gave before and not in the last year. Pick five to ten and call them, with a script that opens with thanks, not an ask.
- Quarterly: a short update to all donors, with one story and one number from the field.
- Before every campaign: decide who you're writing to, through which channel, and who signs.
What AI actually does: drafts thank-you notes and updates by donor group, prepares a call script for dormant donors, and condenses call notes into one line in the sheet. The personal touch is yours: the name, the history and what they said last time.
Write three short versions of a thank-you message to a donor, warm and plain, no superlatives.
Donor group: [new / regular / major / foundations and companies]
What the gift was used for: [program and what happened, one or two sentences]
Channel: [email / text message / letter]
No name, no amount and no identifying detail: I'll fill them in myself where it says [name].
No request for another gift.
How: In the donor sheet, add a "Group" column with four options only: new, regular, major, foundations and companies. Two more columns help: "Last thanked" (a date) and "Why they gave". That way you see each week who hasn't been thanked yet, and each month who hasn't given in a year.
Save the version you chose as a template in the Donors folder. Next time start from the template, not the prompt. If your nonprofit holds a Section 46 approval, which gives donors a tax credit in Israel, the receipt has to meet its requirements. Check exactly what must appear on it with your accountant.
What stays out of AI: a donor's name, phone, email, address and ID number, and what a specific donor gave. To summarize a call, replace the name with a code (Donor 17) and delete identifying details before pasting (Amendment 13).
Common mistake: calling a dormant donor with an ask in the first conversation. The first call is a thank-you and a question. The ask, if any, comes later.
Further reading: Thanking and reporting to donors without burning days · Dormant donors: bringing them back with a phone call
Step 4: Volunteers
What to do: Move volunteer management out of the coordinator's head and the group chats into one scheduling sheet and a routine anyone on the team can pick up.
The routine:
- Weekly: fill in next week's schedule in the sheet, with a backup for every shift, and send reminders.
- Within two days of any sign-up: a welcome message, and a short intro call.
- Monthly: who hasn't shown up in a month, who is marking a year of volunteering, and who deserves a word of thanks. In the same sitting, check which roles are missing.
- Quarterly: a short volunteer survey, three questions at most.
What AI actually does: writes recruitment posts from a role card, suggests a schedule from an availability table with first names only, writes reminders and thank-you messages, and summarizes survey answers. A person approves the final schedule.
Here are next week's shifts (day | time | role | people needed): [paste]
Here is volunteer availability (first name | days and times | suitable roles): [paste]
Suggest a schedule as a table: day | time | role | volunteer | backup.
Rules: no one more than twice a week. Don't assign anyone to a role not listed for them.
Mark understaffed shifts [missing]. At the end, list the missing shifts.
How: Before recruiting, write a short role card for each type of volunteering: what the person actually does, when and for how long, where, what's needed, and who the contact is. AI writes the recruitment post from the card, and a short sign-up form built from the card feeds the volunteer sheet. The form asks only what you need to get back to the person and schedule them.
Copy the schedule suggestion into the scheduling tab, fix it by hand based on what you know and AI doesn't (who's tired, who works well with whom), and share the sheet view-only with the people who need it.
What stays out of AI: volunteers' phone numbers, addresses and ID numbers, anything about health, limitations, criminal record checks or certificates, and details about volunteers who are minors. Keep that information only in a restricted place in the organization, accessible to those who must see it. What you may collect and how to store it is a question for a lawyer (Amendment 13).
Common mistake: scheduling through a group chat. After three days nobody knows who said "I'm coming", and when the coordinator is sick, there's no schedule.
Further reading: Managing volunteers with simple tools
Step 5: Reporting to foundations and donors
What to do: Put every reporting obligation on one calendar, and track budget versus actual every month, so reports get written from data that's already in order.
The routine:
- Monthly, after the month closes: update budget versus actual for each program and each grant, and log activity numbers (participants, sessions, volunteer hours).
- Monthly: look at the reporting calendar: what's due in the next two months, what's missing and who owns it.
- Quarterly: collect one story and one photo from each program, with consent, for the facts folder.
- Yearly: the annual narrative report, which sums up activity by program, and an annual report to donors.
The reporting calendar: a tab in the sheet with these columns: body (foundation, donor, authority), report type, date, what's submitted, owner, status, link. Copy the dates from the grant agreement or the foundation's letter, not from memory. The reporting terms of each grant are set with the funder, so any question about what's allowed and what you need to show is one to settle with them.
The Registrar of Nonprofits: a registered Israeli nonprofit submits annual documents to the Registrar, usually including financial statements and a narrative report, and a nonprofit that wants a "proper management" certificate has to meet the Registrar's requirements. Check the current list and dates on the Registrar's site and with your accountant, and add them to the reporting calendar as ordinary rows. This guide doesn't determine what applies to your organization.
The annual narrative report: this is the document that tells what the organization did during the year, not only how much money came in and went out. Build it through the year rather than at the end:
- In the Reporting folder, open a document "Narrative report [year]" with a heading for each program.
- At the end of each quarter, add three lines under each program: what was done, how many participants, and what changed. Totals only.
- At year end, ask AI to merge each program's four sets of lines into a paragraph, without adding numbers you didn't write.
- Someone who knows the field reads it, corrects it, and passes it to your accountant to check that the numbers match the financial statements.
Budget versus actual: give each grant its own line or section in the budget sheet, so at any moment you can see how much of it has been used and on what. A foundation that asks mid-year "where do you stand?" gets an answer the same day. If there's a large gap between the budget you submitted and the actual, talk to the foundation before the report is due, not in it.
What AI actually does: drafts a report to a foundation from the data you paste and from what you committed to in the application, puts budget versus actual into words, and drafts the narrative report from the program summaries. Every number is checked against the sheet and every claim against its source.
Write a draft report to a foundation on a grant for the program [program name], for the period [from date to date].
What we committed to in the application: [paste goals and activities]
What actually happened (totals): [paste]
Budget versus actual for the grant: [paste table]
The foundation's format requirements: [paste, if any]
Copy every number from my data, no new calculations. Where commitment and delivery differ, say so plainly, with a reason only if I gave one, otherwise [to check].
Structure: summary, activity against goals, budget, challenges, next steps.
What stays out of AI: identifying details of participants, names of service recipients, ID numbers and a specific employee's salary. A foundation report works with totals and stories that were cleared (Amendment 13).
Common mistake: writing the report from scratch once a year. When budget versus actual is updated monthly and stories are collected quarterly, the annual report is a day's work, not a week's.
Further reading: Budget, actuals and goals in one sheet
Step 6: A monthly routine calendar
What to do: Put all four areas on one monthly calendar. Each week of the month gets a fixed task in each area, and a fixed slot in the shared calendar.
How:
- Copy the table at the end of this step and adapt it to your organization. If you have less time, remove tasks from the cells. Don't add any.
- Each cell goes into the shared calendar as a recurring event, with the owner's name.
- A 30-minute routine meeting at the start of each month: go through the four tabs of the "Operations" sheet, what closed, what's stuck and what's coming up.
- A monthly summary for management and the board: one page, using prompt 5 in the prompts section. Numbers from the sheet, three questions for a decision.
- If the team already works with a task board, each cell in the routine is a recurring task with an owner and a due date.
The first month, week by week:
- Week 1: Step 1. Folder, sheet, rules page and an owner for each area. No AI yet, except condensing your documents into the facts folder.
- Week 2: grants and donors. Fill the Grants tab with the calls you already know about, and run prompt 1 on one of them. Prepare one thank-you template with prompt 2.
- Week 3: volunteers and reporting. Move one week's schedule into the sheet with prompt 3, and build the reporting calendar with prompt 6 from your existing agreements.
- Week 4: the first routine meeting and the first monthly summary for management with prompt 5. Note what didn't work and fix the calendar.
After the first month, don't add tools or processes. Let the routine run for three months, and only then decide what to deepen, using the detailed playbook for that area.
How you know it's working: every relevant grant call is logged and decided on. Every gift is thanked within a week. Every shift has a backup. No report is written the night before it's due. And the monthly summary goes out in week four, even when the month is busy.
What AI actually does: condenses the sheet into one page for management, and flags what's coming up on the reporting calendar. Decisions stay with management.
Common mistake: a routine calendar nobody checks. Without a fixed monthly meeting, it becomes one more file.
Further reading: Your own projects and tasks system, with no per-user fees
The monthly routine:
| Week | Grants | Donors | Volunteers | Reporting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Scan grant calls and decide what to apply for | Weekly thank-yous, plus a check that no donor from last month was missed | This month's schedule and reminders | Budget versus actual for the closed month |
| Week 2 | Work on the next application | Call five dormant donors | Intro calls with new sign-ups | Update the reporting calendar and what's due in two months |
| Week 3 | Weekly scan and check for missing documents | Short donor update, once a quarter | Thank volunteers and check missing roles | Draft reports for foundations with dates coming up |
| Week 4 | Look at the next three months | Next month's dormant list | Next month's schedule | Monthly summary for management and the board |
Ready-made prompts
One rule for every prompt: don't paste names, phone numbers, emails, ID numbers or what a specific person gave. Only totals, general descriptions and texts already published. The first four prompts are inside the steps. Here are two general ones.
Write a draft monthly summary for the nonprofit's management, one page at most.
Here are the four tabs of the "Operations" sheet (grants, donors, volunteers, reporting), with no identifying details: [paste]
Here is budget versus actual to date: [paste]
My notes on the month: [paste, optional]
Rules: copy every number from the data. Give a reason for a gap only if it's in my notes, otherwise [to check]. No recommendations, only questions for a decision.
Structure: three lines on where we stand, a short paragraph per area, what's coming in the next two months, up to three questions for a decision.
Here are excerpts from grant agreements, foundation letters and commitments to donors: [paste]
Build a table: body | report type | date | what's submitted | owner (empty) | source (which document).
Copy every date exactly from the text. If there's no clear date, write [to check] and don't guess.
At the end, list every [to check] so I can ask the funder.
One-page checklist
Base
- One shared folder with four subfolders and a facts folder
- An "Operations" sheet with four tabs and an owner for each area
- A rules page for AI that the whole team has read
- No identifying detail about a person was pasted into an AI tool
Grants
- The weekly scan is logged in the Grants tab
- Every grant call has a decision: apply, skip or check
- Every number in an application was checked against its source
Donors
- Every gift this week got a receipt and a thank-you
- Five calls to dormant donors this month
- Receipt wording was checked with your accountant
Volunteers
- Next week's schedule is in the sheet, with backups
- Every new sign-up got an answer within two days
- Sensitive volunteer information is kept in a restricted place
Reporting
- Budget versus actual is updated for the closed month
- The reporting calendar is current, with dates taken from the documents
- Registrar of Nonprofits documents are on the calendar, after checking with your accountant
- The monthly summary went to management and the board
Disclaimer
This content is general recommendations only, not professional, legal, accounting or tax advice. It doesn't determine what applies to your organization, and it doesn't replace your financial statements, your bookkeeping or your accountant. Every nonprofit is different, and you are responsible for checking that the content fits your situation, and for checking the data, prompts and drafts before you use them. The Registrar of Nonprofits' requirements, the conditions for a proper management certificate, the Section 46 rules and the law may change, so check the current text at the source. For financial statements, proper management, Section 46, donor receipts and reporting to the Registrar of Nonprofits, consult a certified accountant or tax adviser. For privacy, collecting and storing data about donors, volunteers and participants, and Amendment 13 to the Privacy Protection Law, consult a lawyer. Grant reporting terms and how grant money may be used are set with the funder, and any question about them should go to the funder. Outside tools, prices and terms of service change, so check them at the source.
The content, prompts, templates and code are provided as is, with no warranty that they fit a particular purpose or are free of errors. Gindi Innovation and Aviad Gindi are not liable for any damage, direct or indirect, arising from using them or relying on them, including output from AI tools. Use is subject to the site terms.
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