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Hello and welcome to the Community IT Innovators Midweek Tuesday nonprofit AI check-in.
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I'm your host, Carolyn Woodard.
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I am do not have a tech background.
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I've been in nonprofits for 25 years working in technology and just nonprofits generally.
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And I have been using AI for about two years now, and I'm just fascinated by this intersection of this new technology tool, this moment that we're in, and how the philanthropy sector and nonprofits are reacting to, using, and have doubts about AI as a technology.
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So every week we try to bring you some headlines, maybe some resources that you can use, some issues that nonprofits are thinking about or worrying about.
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And this week, I think the only story is the United States midterm elections and the implications for data centers specifically, but AI regulation also.
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So it might be a short one today, I hope.
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Sometimes I say, oh, it'll be a short one, and then there's just seems like so much to talk about.
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But I kind of want to get back to this feeling that I feel, and I know many of you do too, that AI is just this tidal wave that's washing over us.
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You can't resist it.
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You can't, it's everywhere in everything.
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It's really hard to opt out.
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And that's all very true.
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I also have been talking throughout this year, doing this podcast, about agency and about gaining AI literacy that helps you make those decisions and really understanding your values, yourself as a person who works in nonprofits, your nonprofit as an organization that cares about communities and cares about causes, and how AI is impacting every single one of those sectors.
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And that, you know, knowing, understanding how AI works can help you make a better informed decision.
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Understanding the environmental trade-offs, the power trade-offs, the racism, classism, sexism that's built into the models as we have them now, and the power imbalance of the very, very wealthy people who own the models that were scraped with all of our information that we had been putting online for all of these years.
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So I think nonprofits, and hopefully you listening to this podcast, have a pretty good grasp of all of those issues.
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And I really just wanted to, you know, touch on this, the midterm results, um, because it was really nonpartisan.
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And I I used to do some work with the League of Women Voters, and I had a mentor there who would always say nonpartisan doesn't mean neutral.
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So if you as a nonprofit staffer are kind of struggling with how partisan, what is partisan and what is nonpartisan, um, you know, definitely nonprofits can and should be involved in advocating for the causes that we care about, which often means advocating to our elected officials, getting involved in elections, providing voter guides, um, helping people turn out, helping people understand the issues that they're voting on.
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All of those things are completely acceptable if you if you look up the 501c3 guide.
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Uh, League of Women Voters has really good information on that as well.
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The results uh were really astonishing in terms of the data centers and communities that where data centers are impacting the community, and that was a nonpartisan across the board issue.
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I think I saw one place uh statistic was that three-quarters of United States voters oppose the construction of a new data center in their community, and that was from the AP, and it was in red and blue states alike.
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So majorities of voters are opposed to data centers where they live.
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If you're not going to put them where you live, where are you gonna put them, right?
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So states are kind of waking up after, you know, I live very close to Loudoun County in Virginia, which is data center highway right now, pretty much.
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I we're in a race with Texas to have the most data centers in the world.
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Um Loudoun County is very populated county.
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And so for about a decade, you know, their code, building codes were written with this, you know, kind of alternate light industrial use clauses where you could build a data center.
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And a lot of them got approved before people really understood.
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You should not have six data centers in a ring around an elementary school using diesel generators that are creating this noise and uh, you know, high decibels, noise pollution, and uh pollution pollution from the diesel.
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So it's very interesting that it has really turned.
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You want to say like it turned on a dime, but it's just, you know, people are like, I don't want this next to my house, next to my school, next to the hospital, you know, all of these places that were approved and now, you know, have created this backlash.
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Um there were several uh moratorium uh ballot measures that were out, uh have a statistic that 40 out of 41 local ballot measures limiting data center development were approved.
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Um that's from Ballotpedia.
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And uh in a lot of these places, the margin, it was not
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a close contest that when the voters were given a candidate or a ballot measure about regulating data centers.
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Uh in you know, Edgewater, Florida, 77% of voters approved a ban on new data centers.
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In Alhambra, California, 82% uh you know approved a ban on new data centers.
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There are states that now have moratoria in that they didn't before.
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So um it's uh it carried over.
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This was in a non, as I said, a bipartisan, I should say.
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Um so both parties faced opposition and questions about from you know from their constituents on um data center development.
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And uh according to one tracker, uh 78% of elected congressional candidates who who won last week in the United States support regulation on data centers, or restrictions on data center development.
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Um this is from the Data Center Watch, which is AI security consultancy.
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Um, but you know, they they did this.
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The AP also is uh reporting on how salient this was as an issue across the board to voters.
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And so it's um, you know, it'll we'll see.
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I I always say on this podcast, let's let's keep an eye on it.
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We'll see.
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But you know, as these um congressional representatives, state representatives, local representatives, governors are gonna come into office, uh, how quickly are they gonna move on some of these campaign promises?
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And how quickly are they going to be able to move?
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So it's definitely if you've been involved in advocacy around you know, better locations for data centers, better uh regulations and restrictions on what power grid they can, you know, access, they have to do their own power, how they do that, their own power, if they're gonna bury the power lines, if they're gonna bury the data centers, which some places are recommending.
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So just something to none of that can happen quickly.
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Of course, existing data centers and data centers that are already being, you know, like in the pipeline are gonna happen anyway.
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So um it's something to, if you've been advocating for this, you I'm sorry, you can't give up.
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It's very promising that we elected a bunch of people who take it really seriously and have this mandate now to shut down the out-of-control building of the data centers, but it's not, it's not gonna continue unless we keep the pressure on.
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So uh get out there, show up.
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You've been showing up, which is amazing.
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This is you know an example of where we have agency and where we can really make a difference, and where the nonprofit sector is good at turning out people and keeping them informed and helping them know when those crucial votes are coming up, because you know, for most of these data centers, it's a local decision.
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And so you need to know when is that planning committee meeting, when is the working meeting, when is the vote coming, and how can you make your voice voice heard to your local officials, which sometimes they can be hard to figure out who they are.
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But with an issue like this, where it's really important to people's quality of life, uh, you know, you have you have nonprofits helping you understand where to go, when is the meeting, and and how to let them know your feelings.
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So I want to make sure to touch back in on my kind of constant refrain that opting out is a valid decision.
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I I think it is best practices to be fully informed, to make an informed decision when you opt out for you, yourself, or your organization.
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Some of these issues are just too important.
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They're too important to the communities you care about, environmental costs, labor costs, privacy, values, power, imbalance, um, you know, racism built into the LLMs.
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All of that, all of those just that decision-making process is legitimate.
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But what I've said a couple of times, and I feel like this election bears out, is that showing up is way more effective and has a bigger impact if you care about these issues than just opting out as an individual or as an organization.
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So if you do opt out, make sure you're also showing up, I guess is what I want to say as my little piece of advocacy around AI decision making.
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So, you know, opting out for yourself, it sends an infinitesimally small signal to those companies because most of the data centers are being built out for corporations, for for-profit corporations.
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You know, if you don't want a data center built near you or in a community that you care about, there's a lot of evidence that they are moving into locations where people have less ability to organize and resist.
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And a lot of that is more poorer rural communities and tribal lands where the AI data centers, now that they're getting rebuffed in populous and uh and wealthy communities like Loudoun are looking for those more, you know, areas where their tax money is gonna be a bigger draw and make people have a harder conversation and a harder decision to make.
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Um, in Loudoun County, that was for a decade, they were welcomed in because the county government loved the tax revenue.
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So it is something to be aware of.
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And um, yeah, just keep showing up and um taking collective action.
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I feel like this is another kind of win for nonprofits in the nonprofit sector because you know, when we show up together, we make a bigger difference than showing up on your own.
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And I think that's similar to what we've talked about before with learning AI is that learning AI can lend itself to being a very individual endeavor.
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And in your organization, as much as you can have these open conversations and really talk about your values in AI and sharing and learning together, it takes effort to make it a joint project.
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Um, but it really is the best practices to try and get there together, collective action.
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Um so if you want to see something that's happening near you or report something, I did report on this before, but Erin Brockovich, the Erin Brokovich from the movie, the not Julia Roberts, the actual Erin Brockovich, um, she has this website that has a data center map.
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It has not been updated yet, as of this taping from uh last week's news.
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The last update they have to their map of citizen wins is from the end of October.
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So I'm sure they will be updating it soon.
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It's a great resource.
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You know, whenever they do get it updated, they do have local groups that you can join.
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They have, you know, the citizen action uh wins map where they show the different places that have moratorium or have been able to limit where the data centers can be built or how loud they can be, what water they can take, and what electricity they can use, all of those things.
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So that's a really great resource, and I will share it in the show notes.
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Um I did also want to do a little callback to we talked about the community benefit agreements.
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There's a big article in Brookings Institute, uh, which I will share with you again.
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It's getting a it's I think it's a year old now about how community benefits or agreements work and some examples of communities that have used them.
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I read that there are several incoming state representatives and governors that are really interested in this model and maybe even mandating that if you are going to build a data center, you have to have a community benefit agreement.
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So I will share some of those links with you to explain what a community benefit agreement is.
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It's basically a you know binding contract that the county or the city or the town uh creates, rights.
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Um, there's some templates out there.
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Brookings has a template in that article.
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And then uh it is a way to hold that data center corporation accountable.
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They agree to certain standards and rules, and you know, it's a breach of contract if they don't hold to those rules.
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So if you want more information on community benefits agreements, I will share that information and you can use it in a location near you.
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Uh hopefully there's a lot more.
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It seems like at first there were only a few localities that had used this, but there's so much more interest now, and um they really do protect the community uh and give you, you know, legal standing as the data center exists into the future, and you can hold them accountable for that.
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So um I think nonprofits and community groups just really need to continue to push for that seat at the table.
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Community benefits agreements are one way to do that.
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You know, going to see and talk to your Congress person or your state representative or your governor, also great way to, you know, let them know how you feel.
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And um you are going up against very, very well-paid PR and advocacy negotiators for the data centers.
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So this election that we had last week in the United States, I think was just a resounding, I hope it made you feel good because it means that even, you know, community groups that don't have a lot of funding behind them, if you get a lot of people behind your idea, you can really make a difference uh against those well-funded um advocates.
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So um I hope this makes you feel uh better about data centers.
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There's a whole other podcast I can do about AI regulation.
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There's just a lot coming in and lots of ideas that are out there.
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Um I will be keeping an eye on that and try to do a wrap-up at some point as we know more what's going to happen with this new Congress and with some of these states that are going to be taking a different approach to AI regulation.
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And um there's you know some great models out there.
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California passed that slew of bills last summer or signed them last summer.
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They wouldn't, they're going into effect next summer around AI regulation.
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So there's um templates out there for other states to look at and start holding these companies more accountable.
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Um and I just what a great moment that communities really showed we have a say, we have agency, um, we we can do things that we care about.
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So I hope that also you know holds over for nonprofits in general.
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Sometimes this work, especially after 2025 and all the funding cuts, um, a lot of this mission-based work can feel you know heavy or you know, like you're just the little guy fighting against these great big corporate interests that are you know going to be difficult to fight against.
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So um hopefully you took a little bit of hope out of this election and people power.
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And you know, that's what the nonprofit sector does in general.
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So uh congratulations to all of you for the hard work that you do.
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You know, we see you and um we support you in it, of course.
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And uh we'll be back in your feed on Friday with our regular technology topics podcast, and back here again on Tuesdays with Nonprofit AI.
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Until then, take care.