This case study is funded in part by generous support from Microsoft.
For many small nonprofits, the biggest challenge is not a lack of ideas or passion for their cause — it’s a lack of time. Every hour spent on administrative tasks is time that isn’t available for serving communities. That’s why Love INC and many other nonprofits are adopting AI tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot to assist in scaling their impact.
Love INC (Love In the Name of Christ) of the Cedar Valley in Iowa is a faith-based nonprofit that partners with 45 local churches to transform lives and communities in the name of Christ. With a staff of just three full-time employees and one part-time employee, Love INC is involved in supporting its community in various ways, from coordinating food assistance and emergency financial help to delivering life-skills classes through church volunteers.
As demand for its services continues to expand, Love INC of the Cedar Valley’s executive director, Glen Keith, realized the organization needed a way to increase capacity in a cost-effective manner. He was able to do this by accessing Microsoft Copilot through TechSoup and receiving implementation coaching from Tech Impact. Since adopting Copilot, Love INC has been able to dramatically reduce time spent on administrative work, giving staff more time to focus on their mission.
Eligible TechSoup members can access Microsoft 365 Copilot via the TechSoup catalog.
Like so many other nonprofits, Love INC operates with a limited number of staff members and growing >community needs, which means their three full-time staff members and one part-time have to wear multiple hats.
As executive director, Keith oversees all the day-to-day operations. But, because it’s a small nonprofit, staff members have to wear many hats, and Keith is involved in marketing, communications, preparing reports, technology selection, and more.
This is where AI-powered cloud technology like Microsoft Copilot can be transformative — helping organizations like Love INC to perform daily tasks more efficiently and be more productive — without additional staff salary costs.
Over the past few years, Keith has helped Love INC modernize its technology stack by moving to a cloud-based case management system, adopting a donor and volunteer CRM, and migrating from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online.
Despite these digital transformation improvements, many critical administrative tasks remained highly manual and time-intensive to perform.
Keith realized that fulfilling and expanding the organization's mission would require finding ways to increase productivity without hiring additional staff.
Keith began experimenting with using Microsoft Copilot to help perform various digital assistant tasks. Keith accessed Microsoft Copilot Business through TechSoup and began using its AI capabilities to assist in various of the organization's day-to-day operations.
Keith estimates that he and his team are saving up to 24 hours of staff time a month on administrative tasks and research by using Copilot. “I'm giving it back to our mission,” Keith says.
Working with Tech Impact, Love INC learned how to use Copilot strategically across multiple business processes, including financial reporting, grant writing, communications, and supporting their partner churches and community.
Today, Copilot supports Love INC’s work in several key areas.
Keith uses Copilot to assist Love INC with preparing financial reports for the board of directors. It not only makes it easier for everyone to analyze financial data and trends, it also helps Keith save up to six hours a month.
Rather than manually analyzing financial reports, Keith now exports reports from QuickBooks Online, uploads them into Microsoft Copilot, and uses carefully developed prompts for necessary tasks:
What previously required more than half a day's work now takes around an hour. “That's what really led me to leveraging technology to be able to expand our operations and to actually grow as an organization,” Keith says.
Prior to using Copilot as a grant writing assistant, the process of preparing a grant application was very time-intensive. By deploying Copilot, grant writing that previously took an entire working day can now often be completed in only two hours.
Instead of beginning each new application from scratch, Love INC uploads previous successful grant applications, impact reports, and organizational information into Copilot.
From there, Copilot generates a high-quality first draft using existing organizational knowledge and precise prompts, allowing staff to focus on reviewing, refining, and strengthening the final submission.
Drafting communications and marketing materials also requires significant effort. Whether preparing newsletters, emails, or partner communications, staff members at Love INC were frequently spending several hours drafting and refining content before it was ready to send.
Since adopting Copilot, Love INC staff are now able to perform these tasks more efficiently, saving several hours.
Rather than replacing human writing, staff members often begin with their own drafts before asking Copilot to improve clarity, ensure alignment with their faith-based principles, and maintain their tone of voice.
Love INC has also begun using Copilot to support their work with partner churches.
During meetings with church leaders and congregants, Copilot has helped in these areas:
These practical applications have enabled Love INC to respond more quickly and meet the diverse needs of their faith community.
Since adopting Microsoft Copilot, Love INC has achieved significant improvements in productivity and efficiency across the organization. Keith estimates that Microsoft Copilot saves up to 24 hours in staff time each month — equivalent to three full days — across these activities:
The time saved by using Copilot is now being redirected towards activities closely aligned with Love INC’s mission: meeting pastors, supporting churches, engaging donors, and strengthening community partnerships.
Love INC is working closely with Tech Impact on a framework for leveraging Microsoft Azure to automate some of the Copilot-related tasks that Keith performs manually at present in the hope of unlocking even greater productivity and efficiency gains across the organization. The outputs could be automatically generated and stored in Microsoft SharePoint or equivalent, where they can be reviewed and shared with stakeholders. This approach aims to build a scalable and replicable process for automating other tasks in the future.
Keith encourages nonprofit leaders not to be intimidated by AI. "Don't be afraid. Educate yourself. Learn how to write good prompts and just jump in and try it."
Keith advocates for putting good data governance practices in place early. Knowing where your data lives, keeping it accurate and up to date, and establishing clear guidelines for handling sensitive information can help nonprofits use AI more responsibly and confidently while improving the quality of AI-generated outputs.
Keith recommends starting your journey with AI by using it for tasks that you’re most familiar with, verifying the outputs carefully, and gradually expanding AI use to more complex workflows as you learn to work with prompts and train it on your specific needs.
One of Keith’s concerns with using AI was the need to implement it responsibly, ensuring that data outputs would be accurate. By working closely with Tech Impact to learn how to develop better prompts — then refine and validate outputs — Keith was able to achieve efficiency, accuracy, and enhanced productivity.
As Keith explains, AI assists in producing the first draft — but people always make the final decisions. Every grant application, report, and communication is carefully reviewed before being published.
For Love INC, Microsoft Copilot has not replaced staff. Instead, it has given a small team more time to focus on what matters most: mobilizing local churches, strengthening communities, and advancing its mission.
Through TechSoup, eligible nonprofits can access Microsoft 365 licenses and Microsoft Copilot offers designed to help organizations reduce administrative burden, improve productivity, and increase mission impact.
AI usage disclosure: Microsoft Copilot was used in the early drafting stages of this blog post to summarize the content. The final version you see here is entirely human-edited and verified for accuracy.