The PLAIground · Year-round membership
The PLAIground is a year-round membership. Unlimited live sessions to change how you think about AI, use it, and design solutions with it. Between sessions, a community of 1,100+ peers across the sector backs you up, and access to quality resources to put it into practice the same week.
1,100+ members from 850+ organizations in 50+ countries. Executive directors, fundraisers, comms leads, program managers, publishers, board members.
Tobey runs the Pennsylvania Pardon Project and had never opened an AI tool. Confidence: 1 out of 10. Within weeks of one PLAI session he'd drafted an elevator speech for state representatives, a leave-behind, and a campaign follow-up using GenAI. The new assets he developed were being rolled out for use across 300 volunteers statewide.
Tobey Oxholm, Pennsylvania Pardon Project
Eloco leads a small community organization in Toronto and works in English as an additional language. He came into the community with zero AI experience and low confidnce. He now trains his own staff and volunteers to use AI for fundraising conversation practice, strategy, and language barriers after joining four sessions with PLAI, reporting his confidence as 10/10.
Eloco Issa, CEO, Nuru Association
Jennifer has worked in media for 30 years and came in carrying her team's stigma about AI. She now uses it daily. Since applying what she learned to how she writes, prompts, and makes evidence based decisions, her organization has grown social media reach ten fold with the help of AI tools and a new found approach to how it can be used to drive social media results.
Jennifer Vail-Storrs, ICTV
Live experiences that shift how you think about AI, build the muscle for using it with excellence, and give you all the support and resources you need to put it into practice in the days and weeks after.
What makes this different
You'll see a live demo, then you'll put it into practice on a challenge you brought. Every voice is part of the conversation within the first few minutes. We hold space for the fear and the risk alongside the opportunity, because both are true, and we show you how to work in the middle of that with discernment. The energy is high. There is a lot of laughing going on. People stay past the end.
We build in public. When we solve something live, you get the whole workflow, the prompts, the system instructions, and the tips along the way. Nothing is gatekept. The sessions draw on how adults learn and change, from psychological safety to peak moments, and they're designed to build toward the moment when a switch flips.
WHAT'S INCLUDED
Inside the PLAIground you'll get access to join unlimited live sessions - workshops, labs, candid conversations, and drop in community sessions to get support or connect with others. Here's a glimpse:
Where AI earns its place in a fundraising week, and where it doesn't. Leave with your first workflows.
Past the principles and into practice. What to use, what to protect, and how to explain it to your board.
The thinking behind prompts that work, in whichever tool you use. Leave with prompts for your own tasks.
Exploring our community's questions and concerns around the environmental and planetary impacts of AI.
A framework and methodology to identify, prioritize and scale proven AI use cases.
Design and build an agent for your team. Leave with one running, and its instructions to reuse.
Making AI work for you across context, memory, instructions, and knowledge.
A community conversation around navigating the expected disagreement within your team around AI.
Becoming an AI-native social impact organization without losing your values.
and many more... with new sessions every month, and your say in what comes next
Shape what's next
After every session we ask what's missing. Members vote on the topics, and the most-requested become the next sessions, usually within a few weeks. This is some of what the list has right now.
Requested and already run: the No-Slop Content Guide · a tool translation guide for Copilot teams who saw a Claude demo · When not to use AI.
Who's in the room
The PLAIground community is made up of all kinds of nonprofit professionals and people driving social change. About half lead organizations. Some run programs, raise money, tell the stories, sit on boards, and others report the news. They're driving social change around the world and bring a wealth of wisdom, experience and insights.
members and growing
countries, across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific
leaders - executive directors, CEOs, Heads of Fundraising, Program leads
The people we didn't expect to love it most: community journalists and people working on climate. The parts of the sector that feel the most threat from AI. What they found here was agency: the discernment to know what to use, what to hold human, and how to make new things possible without giving up the craft.
"I learned more in this 90 minutes than I have in the 3 years I've been playing with ChatGPT."
Jo Easton, Senior Director of Journalism Sustainability & Partnerships, Bangor Daily News
leaders and learners across the social impact sector have learned with PLAI
average session rating across hundreds of workshops, immersions and masterclasses
of participants report meaningful improvement in their ability to use AI strategically in their work
Testimonials
A warm, supportive, collaborative and inclusive environment that brought everyone into it. It completely reframes how I interact with, engage with and hone my ability with AI. The reframes were 10 out of 10 - I had never thought to do so much of it. A really good learning experience.
What stood out to me most is that it doesn't feel like another conversation happening above the people doing the work; it actually pulls voices like mine into the room. That's rare. This makes it clear that AI can help bridge a gap that's been there for a long time between the people doing the work and the people with resources.
It reminded me that what I knew about AI was just a drop in the ocean. The sessions were intense and insightful. What I appreciated most was how engaging, interactive, and thought-provoking it was.
A phenomenal introduction to using AI responsibly, professionally, and effectively! PLAI's dedication to helping others produce quality results versus 'AI slop' is commendable, and their positive attitude and encouraging approach is refreshing. Kaz and the team were genuine and provided a truly informative experience that is accessible to users at every level.
It shifted how I've been thinking about AI, and I've been putting what I learned into action over the last week. I'm also impressed by the materials. They're both accessible and full of great information.
I'm still an AI skeptic. And I'm still learning. But I now feel that I am able to apply a much better lens to all of this.
It was exactly the reset I needed… practical, empowering and grounded in how work actually happens.
Kaz and her team were amazing, and this is a fabulous series. For someone like me, who has a nuanced sense of what I'm trying to achieve, these sessions allowed me to see behind the curtain of how to really use these tools. They taught me how to fish and gave me a rod, bait, and a map to the best fishing holes. Thank you!!
Absolutely blew my mind seeing what is possible with AI. Kaz was a great presenter, explaining things clearly and in ways even I could understand and made me excited to see what is possible with AI in my org.
The experience was unlike any other professional, or leadership course I have participated in! A cohesive group, well facilitated sessions and the learnings were structured but held loosely enough to allow for flexibility and difference. I highly recommend to leaders, teams and those wanting to build curiosity and creativity with their team.
Pricing
All prices in USD. Annual membership, rolling start. Renews yearly; you can switch that off any time from your account.
Individual
per person, per year
Everything in the PLAIground, from the day you join.
For groups of 50+ seats
for organizations, networks, and funders
Year-round access for everyone, at their own level. A private branded space, admin view of attendance and progress, sessions co-designed around your people and open to the whole community, and reporting for funders.
Under 50 people? Individual memberships work on a single invoice. Email us and we'll set it up.
For the person who sees the gap first
Here's a note you can send as-is, or change.
For teams of 50 or more, there's a seat rate and a private space. For smaller teams, individual memberships on one invoice work well, and a few colleagues learning together is where the change sticks.
To: [your manager] · Subject: AI learning for the team, one option
I've been looking at how we keep building AI capability across the team without picking one program that only fits some of us.
The PLAIground is a year-round membership run by PLAI, who work only with nonprofits and mission-driven organizations. Members get two to four live, hands-on sessions a month at every level, drop-in office hours, a community of 1,100+ people across the sector, and the workflows and templates from every session to reuse.
It's $365 USD per person per year. For [number] of us that's [total], which is less than a single custom workshop, and everyone gets a year of access at their own level. There's a free open session on November 4 if you want to see how they work first.
I'd like to join and bring [names]. Can we talk about it this week?
Before you join
Two to four live sessions a month, guaranteed, usually fortnightly. Times rotate so that over a month there's something that works for North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. We add times as the community grows in a region. If you miss one, the recording is there, and office hours are a second chance to ask.
A membership. You join once, for a year, and come to whatever live sessions fit where you are, as often as you like. Between sessions you have the community, office hours, and everything we built in the sessions. Think of it as the smallest version of our school: year-round, open, and shaped by the people in it.
Yes. We run free AI Spark sessions open to anyone. The next one is on November 4. Come, bring a colleague, and decide after.
Register for the free AI SparkAll of them, by design. Sessions use Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT, and Gemini, and we teach the thinking that transfers between them. When we build something live, you get the version for the tool your organization uses.
The live sessions are the heart of it, and they're what members come for. Alongside them you'll find the recordings, the workflows and guides from every session, and a community of 1,100+ people. We're building the on-demand side out as we go, with members telling us what to add. Come to a session this month and leave with something you'll use. That's the test.
It renews annually. We email before it does, and you can switch renewal off yourself from your account.
The PLAI faculty: people who've spent their careers in fundraising, comms, programs, and leadership inside nonprofits, and who've gone deep on AI. Plus guest faculty from the sector when a topic calls for it.
PLAIground Team & Faculty
We started PLAI because we kept watching brilliant people in brilliant organizations get handed AI tools by trainers who'd never done the kind of work those people do every day.
Our team and faculty are nonprofit-native and AI-fluent. We understand AI as deeply as we understand the complexities of social change, and we've worked in the impact space our entire careers. We've run campaigns, written grants, and led board meetings.
We've trained 15,000+ nonprofit professionals. We create learning experiences that are memorable, meaningful, and a little bit magic (a participant's words, not ours). We guide you to build things that bring value to your mission while navigating tensions like security, ethics, and organizational readiness. Our average session rating is 9.2/10 and we pride ourselves on bringing the best quality learning experiences to the social sector.
P.S. We're called PLAI (pronounced "play") for a reason. We teach through games, build labs, hands-on work, and juicy conversations, not just because it's fun but because it works!
$365 USD a year. Live sessions at your level, a community of 1,100+ peers to back you up, and the practice to make it stick. Next free AI Spark: November 4.
Teams and funders: talk to us about group discounts and bulk seats.