In many social impact organizations, teams spend significant time on routine tasks such as drafting reports, summarizing meetings, and searching for internal information.

That’s why as a first step in their AI journeys, organizations often turn to AI to improve everyday workflows. These changes can ease administrative load and create more time for higher-value work.

This approach is central to a three-part webinar series by Dalberg Advisors and IDinsight, which explores how organizations can progress from practical use cases to responsible governance and ultimately to organization-wide AI adoption.

In episode 1, ‘From fear to familiarity: Overcoming skepticism and identifying practical entry points’ Rob Sampson (Senior Director, Transformation and Impact Improvement, IDinsight), Ben Brockman (Head of AI, Clinton Health Access Initiative), Shyam Sundaram (Global Operations Partner, Dalberg Advisors) and Jeannie Annan (Senior Vice President, Research & Innovation, AI, and People & Culture, International Rescue Committee) discuss how teams can experiment with AI in ways that are low-risk, practical and immediately useful.

A few things that stood out from the conversation:

-Experimentation is key to large scale adoption, and the role of leadership is to make space to allow for that experimentation to happen.

-Start with a few hard guardrails, not a comprehensive governance framework. Overly detailed policies slow adoption before it begins.

-Peer-to-peer sharing moves organizations more than top-down mandates. Colleagues who have found genuine value in a tool and share that experience with their teams tend to build momentum more effectively than centralized training or mandates.

-AI is more useful for reviewing work than generating it. Asking AI to critique, stress-test, or identify gaps in something already written tends to deliver more value, especially for experienced staff.

-Navigating skepticism and resistance is a core part of this journey. Leaders who lean into those conversations make more progress than those who try to resolve them prematurely.