Questions
Answered directly.
Before you book
What people ask before the discovery call.
- Do we need an AI strategy first?
- No. Strategy comes from what worked in the first workflows you fixed, not the other way round.
- Which tools do you use?
- Whatever you already pay for, where it can do the job. I take no commissions, so the recommendation is the recommendation.
- Our data is sensitive.
- That is what the policy is for: least-privilege access, human sign-off on anything customer- or donor-facing, and no sensitive data in consumer tools. During the build, anything of yours that touches AI goes through a commercial account whose terms prohibit training on it, with 30-day retention. What I hand you runs on an AI account you own. My working copies are deleted after handoff with written confirmation. Those are contract terms, not assurances.
- Will this replace staff?
- No. It replaces the parts of the job nobody wanted. PwC's 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer, built on close to a billion job ads, found jobs still growing even in the roles most exposed to automation.
- What do we commit to?
- One phase at a time. Each phase has a milestone you sign off on before the next one starts, and either of us can stop at any milestone. Nobody signs up for sixty days on day one. During the build you see a working demo every week.
- What does it cost?
- Fixed price per phase, quoted after the discovery call. No hourly billing, no retainer. The Fit Check carries a guarantee: if it finds nothing worth building, you don't pay for it. A typical first engagement is the Fit Check plus one workflow: about six weeks.
- What happens after you leave?
- Each workflow has a named owner on your side and documentation the next hire can follow. Thirty days after handoff I check in to see what stuck and what didn't. If something broke, that call is where it gets fixed.
AI, in general
Common questions about AI itself.
- Is it safe to use ChatGPT with sensitive client or donor data?
- Not the free, consumer version — by default, anything typed into it can be used to train future models unless you've opted out. Most teams don't realize this until it's already a problem. Any AI work WiderGood does routes through a commercial account whose terms prohibit training on your data, with 30-day retention, and no client, donor, or beneficiary data is ever requested in the first place.
- What is AI governance, and does a small nonprofit or small business actually need one?
- AI governance is a written policy that says what AI is and isn't allowed to touch: what data can go into it, which tools are approved, who signs off on anything customer- or donor-facing, and what never gets automated at all. Most small teams already use AI ad hoc without one. WiderGood proposes a governance model to your board as part of every engagement, starting with the one decision that matters first — what never goes into a tool — and ending with a policy your board signs before anything is built.
- What's the difference between a chatbot and AI workflow automation?
- A chatbot is a single interface bolted onto a website. Workflow automation replaces one specific repeatable task — the grant report narrative, an intake form re-keyed into a CRM — inside the tools a team already uses, with a person still checking the output. WiderGood doesn't build chatbots for this reason: a chatbot on the website and nothing else is explicitly listed as not a fit.
- Can't I just use ChatGPT myself instead of hiring an AI consultant?
- For a single email draft or a quick summary, yes. Where it stops working is a repeatable task that needs to run the same way every time, inside a real system, with a named owner and a data policy behind it — that's a build, not a chat window, and it's the gap a Fit Check is built to find.
- What tasks should AI never handle without a person checking it?
- Anything customer- or donor-facing, anything that touches money, and anything covered by a regulator or grant agreement should keep a human sign-off — that's the gate WiderGood builds into every workflow. The Fit Check's output includes a do-not-build list: tasks specifically excluded from automation, decided before anything is built.
- How do I know if a task at my organization is a good fit for AI?
- Good candidates are repeatable, low-risk, and currently eating staff time without requiring real judgment — a form re-keyed into a CRM, a first-draft report assembled from numbers you already have. Tasks that require judgment, involve sensitive data, or only happen once usually aren't. A Fit Check ranks every candidate task by hours saved and by risk in two weeks; if it finds nothing worth building, you don't pay for it.
- What's the difference between AI automation and hiring a developer to build custom software?
- Custom software from scratch usually means new tools, new logins, and a maintenance bill. AI workflow automation, done well, works inside the tools a team already pays for and already knows. WiderGood's approach is whatever you already pay for, where it can do the job — no reseller fees or software commissions, so the recommendation is the recommendation.
- Do I need to know how to write AI prompts myself?
- No — describing the problem in plain language and letting the model write its own prompt works better than phrasing it yourself. Model-written instructions have matched or beaten human annotators on the majority of tasks tested (Zhou et al., 2022). The full method, with a copy-paste prompt, is the article "Stop writing prompts. Make the model write them."
- What's the difference between SEO and AEO or GEO?
- SEO earns a ranking in Google's list of links. AEO and GEO — answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization — earn a citation inside the answer itself, where ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or a Google AI Overview names and describes the business directly instead of showing a link to click. The mechanics overlap — structured data, clear direct-answer content — but the goal is different: being quoted, not just found.
- Do I need to redesign my website to be found by AI search?
- No. The audit that moved WiderGood's own score from 8 to 11 out of 20 didn't touch the site's design — schema markup, an already-open robots.txt, direct-answer FAQ content, and page titles that state what the business does. All of it sits underneath the design, not on top of it. The full walkthrough is the article "How Do You Get a Small Business Cited by ChatGPT Instead of Just Ranked by Google?"
- How do you know if AI engines are actually citing your business?
- Ask them the questions a real prospect would ask, never the business name, in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and a Google AI Overview, each in a fresh or incognito session — then log whether the business is cited, in what position, and who comes up instead. A good ranking in ordinary Google search says nothing about this; it has to be tested directly.