AI Essentials Workshop

December 4, 2026
9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.
Community Foundation for Monterey County Monterey Office – 2354 Garden Rd, Monterey
$50 per person, includes lunch
Register

Schedule:
9-9:30 am Arrive (with laptop and power cord) and set up
9:30-11:30 Modules 1& 2
11:30-1 Lunch with time for networking with fellow nonprofits
1-3 pm Modules 3 & 4

This workshop is designed specifically for nonprofits, so you and your team can learn to use Artificial Intelligence efficiently and also responsibly. It pairs instructor-led content (Ken Krugler of AI for Community) with hands-on lab exercises covering ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Participants will also receive a post-training digital resource packet, including prompt templates and reference materials.

Audience: This hands-on workshop is for beginners. For instance, rate your AI experience on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the least experienced and 5 the highest. This AI Essentials workshop is for the 1s and 2s, and sometimes a 3. An In Depth workshop will be offered in 2027 for others with more experience

Outline:

Intro: What AI Actually Is (and Isn’t)

An accurate mental model of AI, without the jargon. Why it’s more like a conversation than a command.

Prompting: How to Have a Productive Conversation

A practical prompting framework: role, task, constraints. How to iterate when the first response misses.

Analysis: Getting AI to Work on Your Actual Data

Feed AI your real materials – grant apps, surveys, meeting transcripts – and get structured output back.

Issues: The Things That Can Go Wrong

Hallucination, sycophancy, bias, privacy, cognitive decline. Covered practically, not glossed over.

About the Presenter:
Ken Krugler heads AI for Community as Director/President and lead instructor. Ken is a professional software developer, startup founder, open source enthusiast, and a software trainer with over 15 years of experience teaching technical classes. He has a Bachelor of Science in EECS from MIT, and previously worked at Apple on the original Macintosh, started TransPac Software/Scale Unlimited, founded a VC-backed code search startup, and was on the board of the Bear Yuba Land Trust.

This training is offered by the Center for Nonprofit Excellence (CNE) of the Community Foundation for Monterey County.