Shut it out or learn from it?

A topic I've been mulling for a long time is what charities, and specifically fundraisers, can learn from populism. You might hate what (right-wing) populists say, so can be forgiven for trying to shut them out. But what I've been thinking about is that there are, in fact, lessons that progressives and charity activists and campaigners can learn from the way they say what they say, and the success of those messages.

I gave the closing plenary at the BOND conference on this topic a few years ago during Trump 1.0. Now we're enduring Trump 2.0, I applied earlier this year to speak about it again at a different conference but was turned down so I put it on a back burner.

In the meantime, I've been playing around with AI to see what machines can help me with. I've been enjoying being part of Cohort 2 of Get Good with AI and learning about which tools are good for deep research and which are good for writing. Here's a worldwide crowdsourced leaderboard of which tools are good for which things. It's changing all the time as the tools evolve. Here's a review of Claude vs Chat GPT.

I've been learning about how useful the different models can be but you need to give them good prompts. I've used this very web site full of my actual writing to help Claude write me a Lucy tone of voice briefing document and yesterday I used to it to brief Manus to write What charities can learn from populism, a 2500 word reference article, in about 30 minutes. It even produced some powerpoint slides for me in case anyone does want me to give a key note on the topic. I've got some credits here if you want to try Manus out for yourself.

I then asked my Copywriter chum (Claude Sonnet 4) to draft me something about what charities can learn specifically from right-wing populism.

It asked me if I was sure:

Bless. It's good to have it looking out for me.

I gave it some answers and it's written me this version, What charities can learn from right-wing populism. I've tweaked them both so they do sound like me but it's interesting. A human needed to have the initial idea, give the effective brief, do some iterating, and edit the final draft, but the in between bit is amazingly fast.

Anyway so that's what I've been up to this week. Playing with machines. They're kinda handy.

Maybe I'll ask Elon's Grok next 😬

Day of the Week 📆

It's 65 years ago since Belka and Strelka became space celebrities.

Their story is a lot happier than Laika's.

What am I reading? 📚

I'm doing a course on coaching starting in October so I can actually be accredited for something I've trained it and done a lot of over the years so I've been reading Effective Modern Coaching in preparation.

What am I watching? 👀

Lovely to see some people being positive about Birmingham for a change.

What am I listening to?👂

Nimrod, by Edward Elgar, performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, which never fails to make me cry.

Joy-giving things 😍

Last weekend we went walking in the Malvern Hills, hence the Elgar, who grew up near there and is buried in Little Malvern.

Here's my reel about our walks over the hills.

Have a great long weekend

Lucy

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ChangeOut is created by Lucy Caldicott. You can find more about my work at ChangeOut.org. If you’re looking to have a chat about culture, leadership, purpose, equity, or a facilitated team discussion about any of those things, get in touch. You can also find me on Bluesky, Instagram, and, LinkedIn.

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