Speed vs. Sustainability: Building Strong Foundations for AI Adoption in Social Impact
⚙️ Salon with Héc Maldonado-Reis: Speed vs. Sustainability—Building Strong Foundations for AI in Social Impact 🏗️🤖
🔥 What Is This About?
AI adoption is racing ahead—but are our social impact foundations strong enough to support it?
In this practical and provocative salon, Héc Maldonado-Reis (Tech Impact) invites us to explore the tension between fast AI deployment and the slow, careful groundwork needed to do it right. If AI is a house, data is the foundation. And too often, we’re building on sand.
🧠 About the Speaker
Héc Maldonado-Reis (they/them/elle) is the Managing Director of Tech Impact's Impact Strategy Team which assists and advises our clients with the strategic technology assessment & planning, measurement and evaluation services they need to design and advance their social impact missions. Héc is an engineer, data scientist, and population & public health professional experienced at facilitating collaborations between government, nonprofit and private sectors.
Former Director of Operations at NTEN (Nonprofit Technology Network)
Advocate for ethical tech and nonprofit readiness
🔍 Key Themes We’ll Explore
🏗️ The Data Foundation – What must be in place before organizations responsibly implement AI?
🔐 Risk, Regulation & Readiness – Navigating the blurry AI policy landscape with transparency and care.
🧑🤝🧑 People, Process, and Power – Why technical solutions must be grounded in organizational culture and ethical design.
📉 Why Speed Can Backfire – The hidden costs of rushing AI adoption without capacity or safeguards.
🪨 Building Durable Infrastructure – Models for sustainable digital ecosystems in the nonprofit sector.
🧭 Salon Format
1️⃣ Opening Framing – A core dilemma: faster is possible, but is it wiser?
2️⃣ Catalytic Spark – Héc shares real-world lessons from the front lines of nonprofit AI transformation.
3️⃣ Breakout Dialogues – Exploration of key tensions and your organization’s readiness.
4️⃣ Synthesis & Seeds – We harvest themes, surface experiments, and identify triad or lab connections.
🎯 Why It Matters
🧠 Supports Social Impact professionals working on AI standards and readiness frameworks
🤝 Helps align your AI strategy with mission, not hype
🛡️ Reinforces prosocial principles: slow down to build with care, consent, and context
📚 Resources
🌐 Tech Impact – Nonprofit technology capacity-building
📘 Responsible AI in the Nonprofit Sector (upcoming white paper preview during session)
✨ Final Reflection
What’s one “foundation” your organization needs to strengthen before you can responsibly use AI?
Let’s pause, dig deep, and build from the ground up—together.