Pete Schweiss is the Director of Technology Services at Hope Ignites, where he drives the organization’s technology strategy across the United States, Mexico and Guatemala. With a career dedicated to supporting the nonprofit community in St. Louis, Pete is committed to delivering the best solutions through a forward-thinking, efficiency-focused approach that ensures seamless operations. His expertise in building and sustaining strategic partnerships enables him to secure high-quality, cost-effective products and services for the organization. Pete plays a vital role in fostering the strategic growth of Hope Ignites. Now more than ever technology plays a critical role in the future of Hope Ignites, as they work to triple their impact by 2035. Pete’s vision as a technology leader is to deliver a user experience that is efficient for team members across the network, allowing them to remain mission focused and continue to foster growth within the organization.
In this session, discover how our nonprofit organization has transformed user support and documentation by embedding Scribe into our daily workflows. We’ll explore how we leverage Scribe across two major ecosystems—Microsoft 365 and Salesforce—to provide just-in-time, easily accessible guidance that empowers users at every turn. With Salesforce as our knowledge management foundation, we developed a custom Lightning Web Component that dynamically displays embedded Scribe guides linked from Knowledge Articles—bringing help content directly into the user's workflow. On the Microsoft 365 side, we’ve built out a centralized SharePoint Library of Scribes, giving users on-demand access to tutorials whenever they need them. You’ll learn how our small but mighty team implemented this low-lift, high-impact solution to increase user adoption, reduce friction, and improve internal support—all while keeping pace with the needs of a lean nonprofit environment. As a bonus, we’ll share how our help desk team uses Scribe to rapidly develop clear, consistent tutorials for a wide range of processes. Whether you're looking to improve user training, reduce help desk tickets, or scale your documentation strategy, this session will offer practical tips and inspiration to help you meet your users where they are.
Read moreUsing AI Agents to Transform Nonprofit Donor Recruitment Introduction: AI is Here—What Does It Mean for Nonprofits? AI-powered agents have revolutionized the for-profit world, driving efficiency in sales, field service, and customer engagement, all with measurable ROI. But what about nonprofits? We don’t sell widgets—we create impact. We change lives. So, what’s the ROI of AI for a nonprofit? The answer isn’t immediate financial gain. It’s about long-term sustainability—getting the right information to the right people at the right time and making it effortless for them to engage when they feel inspired. The New Reality of Information Discovery Gone are the days when Google was the sole gateway to information. People now turn to AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and others to answer questions that once required search engines. For nonprofits, this shift presents both an opportunity and a challenge. Every piece of public data about your organization is now fair game for AI models, but how they present your information is beyond your control. If someone asks ChatGPT, “Should I donate to this nonprofit?”, what answer will they get? Taking Control of the Narrative with AI Agents While we can’t control how external AI models represent our organizations, we can guide how people engage with us. Imagine a Donor Engagement Agentic Experience—an AI-powered agent that: ✅ Knows everything about your nonprofit ✅ Communicates in your branding, voice, and tone ✅ Understands your impact model and financials ✅ Seamlessly connects potential donors to real people Rather than relying on a generic AI response, this agent becomes a direct extension of your workforce, nurturing relationships at scale.
Read moreIs your organization struggling to manage a vast amount of paper records while the promise of deploying AI technology for relief seems elusive? Hope Ignites, a non-profit supporting 1200+ motivated young people in need through middle to high school, post-secondary education and career launch, faced the gigantic task of modernizing its information management systems for incoming paper documents, and archiving decades worth of historical documents. Pete Schweiss, Director of Technology Services at Hope Ignites, understood early on that before leaping into deploying AI technologies, they needed to quickly and accurately digitize documents to unlock the power of AI to classify, tag, and route critical information. An important step in Hope Ignites' Digital Documents Initiative was utilizing Ricoh’s advanced, cloud-ready document image scanners and software tools to transform paperwork into data that is easily accessible, managed, and shared across the organization. With AI-driven automation in place, Hope Ignites can handle terabytes of data, reducing manual intervention and improving data accuracy, speed, and accessibility. These automated processes, from document classification to nuanced tagging using document AI, streamline operations and enable Hope Ignites to focus on what truly matters: empowering young people. Schweiss will outline Hope Ignites' journey in modernizing its information management system and the benefits and learnings of how digitization served as an on-ramp to AI-driven data automation. Participants will gain actionable insights and strategies for developing their own digitization and AI-driven data automation plans to streamline information management, increase access to data, and improve collaboration and information sharing across the organization.
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