Initiative

AI Stewardship Practice Program

Creating practice infrastructure for ongoing, peer-to-peer support as leaders navigate the disruption and opportunity of AI.

The Need

Navigating AI Together

Despite the explosion of AI-related resources, many of us are still left to navigate the disruption and opportunity of AI largely on our own.

This program is designed to change that by creating a practice infrastructure for ongoing, peer-to-peer support. It begins with a simple but powerful step: making time to pause, connect, and practice together.

Program Goals

Launching or Strengthening Your Stewardship Practice

The AI Stewardship Practice Program v2.1 is designed to help you launch or strengthen your stewardship practice with a focus on AI at the personal level.

Personal Practice - Deepen your exploration of the evolving AI landscape and clarify what it means for you, your role, and your next decisions.
Community of Practice - Experience peer learning during the six-week journey and consider how your own practice could seed wider practice within your groups, organizations, and networks.
Broader Contribution - Join hundreds of leaders who've helped shape the Tech Stewardship movement over the past decade and contribute to its ongoing evolution and focus on AI.

Program Overview

The Heart of the Program

The program is structured around a simple, powerful format:

6 participants per cohort, plus facilitators (Mark Abbott and Alex Tveit)
6 core practice questions explored over
6 weeks, including
6 x 1 hr group sessions (Zoom) and
~1 hr of independent practice per week

This round of the pilot includes just two cohorts of six participants each. We've designed it this way to allow for meaningful connection and individualized support.

Who's Behind This

A Communal Journey

The concept of stewardship practice and its application to tech broadly and AI specifically has emerged and been developed by hundreds of leaders over the past decade.

This program represents a next step in the communal journey. It is being facilitated by Mark Abbott and Alex Tveit with the support of Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF), Community Foundations of Canada (CFC), MaRS Discovery District, and Mastercard.

The Platform

Stewardship Practice Hub

The Stewardship Practice Hub is hosted on the Coda platform. We picked Coda because it is a Wiki-based platform, which fits with our intention of this Hub being a resource to support stewardship practice that evolves based on feedback, input, and co-ownership by the community of practice.

For the duration of this pilot, the site is a private invite-only Coda page accessible only to the facilitators and cohort members. Our goal is to eventually have public and member-facing versions of the evolving Hub available.

Origins

From Tech Stewardship to AI Stewardship

This program grows out of the broader Tech Stewardship movement that has been shaped by hundreds of leaders over the past decade. The stewardship practice approach creates space for leaders to develop their own informed practice through experimentation, reflection, and peer learning.

As AI has emerged as a transformative force, we've focused this practice specifically on helping leaders navigate the unique challenges and opportunities that AI presents for the social sector.

Related Focus Areas

Connected themes

Digital Stewardship

Building digital infrastructure that serves communities rather than extracting from them.

Explore

Relational Infrastructure

Strengthening the ways communities participate in decisions that affect them.

Explore

Interested in joining?

If you're a nonprofit or philanthropic leader interested in exploring these questions with peers, we welcome your interest. Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions, ideas, or suggestions.

Get in Touch