C-Suite Perspectives On AI: Libby Hikind Of GrantWatch On Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on Humans

An Interview With Kieran Powell

Program development and responsibilities of the organization should be human-centric.

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance and integrate into various aspects of business, decision-makers at the highest levels face the complex task of determining where AI can be most effectively utilized and where the human touch remains irreplaceable. This series seeks to explore the nuanced decisions made by C-Suite executives regarding the implementation of AI in their operations. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Libby Hikind.

Libby Hikind, often referred to as the “Queen of Grants,” is the Founder and CEO of GrantWatch.com, the leading grant funding search engine for nonprofits, businesses, and individuals with more than 230,000 monthly visitors. Libby has been a trusted guest on TV news segments for outlets including Bloom TV and Lifestyle Today, has been a guest on podcasts and radio shows including Shrimp Tank and Do Good Better, and has been featured online in by Forbes, Inc, and Business Insider among others. Libby’s new book, The Queen of Grants: From Teacher to Grant Writer to CEO, was released on Amazon on February 1, 2024.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you tell us your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I started my teaching career as an after-school and Sunday school teacher. Then I taught Nursery, Kindergarten, and 5th grade and was a student teacher and Paraprofessional for the NYC Department of Education. When I graduated, I obtained a special educator teaching position.

Once I saw that I couldn’t use the school computer lab with my students for word processing, I started to look for funding. I was trained by the best at the school district office, and the rest is all in the book. One grant led to another and another and another, and here we are today. I am CEO of GrantWatch and with the publication of my book, The Queen of Grants, I am still educating! I’m teaching people how to write a grant and sharing insights on how others can learn from my experiences.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

In the early 1980’s, my first computer was a Commodore 64. A family member who liked to buy the latest electronic gadgets and camera equipment, which our family could not afford then, brought home a new computer and printer. Needless to say, everyone was very upset.

I took it and placed it outside our front door. I didn’t want it in the house. I wanted to return the computer and have the thousand-dollar charge removed from our credit card. This is a real Jack in the Beanstalk kind of story. But a few days later, when I needed to start writing my first grant, I was having a lot of trouble with my typewriter. I was typing and retyping. The computer and printer were still on the porch, and I brought them back into the house and unpacked the boxes.

I won that first grant, and today, amongst my friends and family, I am considered a techie. The lesson I learned was to be open to new technologies, and not every new expenditure is a waste of money.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I am currently working on some children’s books with my grandchildren. When they call or visit, we talk through the storyline and the lessons within the story that will help other children. Once the story completely gels, I will write the text and see if they want to illustrate the pages.

Professionally, I am now working on designing the studio set for “GrantTalk,” and ordering equipment, which will be our weekly podcast sponsored by GrantWatch. We are going to interview funding sources to learn about their mission and vision; eligibility for their grants; and their experiences with reviewing grant applications and how they determine who gets funded.

We will also be interviewing people representing organizations who have written and won a grant that they found on GrantWatch. I want them to share more than what they won; I want them to talk about the collaboration and the grant writing experience. To let us know your interest in being on our podcast, write to support@grantwatch.com

Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. In your experience, what have been the most challenging aspects of integrating AI into your business operations, and how have you balanced these with the need to preserve human-centric roles?

We, at GrantWatch, produce fresh new human-centric content daily. I have made it very clear to my staff that they must write independently because they are communicating with our subscribers, not AI.

My staff creates new titles for articles daily in our Asana content creation list based on subscriber needs. I permit the use of different forms of AI; like ChatGPT or Grammarly, for the sake of tightening a sentence or paragraph, but the writing and ideas must be our own.

How do you navigate the ethical implications of implementing AI in your company, especially concerning potential job displacement and ensuring ethical AI usage?

First, we do have a concern that proprietary information that we are inputting into AI might become available to others using AI and could be misused. AI does open the door to scammers.

Second, ChatGPT can be very confusing. If you give it a whole document each time, you will get a new document. It can really confuse you.

We were creating our list for a page called, Is GrantWatch Worth It? Which appears under the “About” tab on GrantWatch. I wrote a list of 30 reasons why it is worth it and a full description. A competitor thought they were funny and created a similar page on their website, so I was adamant that we would set the record straight with positivity. Although livid, I was going to take it slow and get it just right.

Each time I gave my completed text to AI, it changed it to another version and another version, and I was baffled. It didn’t sound like what I wanted it to say. When I got my list down to 20, I took another approach.

Finally, I said to ChatGPT, “Do not change anything! Tell me what is incorrect and the changes you recommend.”

That worked out very well, except some of the changes suggested were exactly what we already had; others were helpful in tightening the text; and some changes were not correct, as they changed the intent.

I did like the compliments, though, that I got as a response to my prompt. When you are working remotely, it’s nice to hear your writing is good. I find myself saying please and thank you to Chat.

Could you describe a successful instance in your company where AI and human skills were synergistically combined to achieve a result that neither could have accomplished alone?

My husband Jacob — who has a master’s degree — was helping with the final edits of the modeling grant section of the book, after it had already passed review from so many staff members. He said he was totally confused.

That chapter was needed to demonstrate my mapping technique for someone not familiar with grant applications. I understood it in my sleep, but I was using words like “Sample City” and “Made-up School” in my samples, which were taken from various successful grants, to remove all possibility of privacy issues. It confused the reader. Besides that, taking a segment from this grant and another from that wasn’t promoting clarity of mapping.

I was at my self-imposed deadline, and I was about to scrap a lot of work. Instead, I created a profile of all proper nouns and started to assign appropriate fictitious names. I asked the staff to help me with some choices. I started the “find and replace” feature within my document. That started the uniformity.

Next, I taught ChatGPT using my sections already written to create uniformity. There were a lot of conversations back and forth until I whipped about six different proposals into one cohesive application for my readers.

I believe that I was successful in creating the samples for the book with a fictitious community and my made-up stats and sources. I wanted to demonstrate full alignment. It was a very difficult task to create a fictitious scenario and grant proposal.

Since I didn’t need to collaborate with anyone other than myself, I also had the free hand to obligate a fictitious school to activities and budgets and create a sample program to demonstrate alignment that no human would have to implement.

I later went on in the last chapter to demonstrate how to prompt chat with your already original, written work.

Based on your experience and success, what are the “5 Things To Keep in Mind When Deciding Where to Use AI and Where to Rely Only on Humans, and Why?” How have these 5 things impacted your work or your career?

1 . Program development and responsibilities of the organization should be human-centric.

You need the organization to be fully onboard with the program. All Board members have to sign off from the beginning.

Many years ago, I was hired to locate grants and then approved to write a grant proposal to retrofit a building being offered by the federal government GSA for a housing program for single adults. We had architectural plans and beautiful pictures, and everything was wonderful. The organization won, but they had to raise the matching funds. That was when the trouble within the organization began. In the end, after paying me the grant writer, they did not accept the building. I did not see the outcome of all my work and research. The problem was that not everyone was in agreement from the beginning.

Imagine if you create programs with AI and no one is in on the planning or agreement. Programs should be birthed from within the organization, and everyone should sign on.

2 . Research-based references should be fully verified by humans. I believe a few journalists have already been bitten by ChatGPT on this. I think if Chat can’t find it, it might make it up.

3 . Budgets and equations should be human-centric.

In-kind donations and obligations should be human. Again a budget model or a pledge of a donation must come from people within and outside the organization.

4. Community needs and statistics need to be verified by a human

While general needs might possibly be available on the web, the primary source must be checked. You don’t want to quote a blogger who quotes another blogger. You want to quote the City department or the Census or the responses to a local survey. Each community has its own unique needs and priorities that need to be reflected in your grant.

5. Only humans can portray passion, creativity, and an experiential understanding of your target audience.

I think about The Wizard of Oz when I think about artificial intelligence. AI is not going to give you the sensation of having a feeling-heart or brain. You have that; use it! Your passion needs to jump off the page. Use AI as a language model and read every single word it gives you. Failure to do so could mean your grant isn’t going to represent your organization correctly and could be out of your reach.

Looking towards the future, in which areas of your business do you foresee AI making the most significant impact, and conversely, in which areas do you believe a human touch will remain indispensable?

I believe AI can help with searching data. While we have very extensive searches, drop-downs, and categories within our systems, it’s more intuitive for a person to type a brief question, as opposed to a Boolean search with “OR”, “AND”, “NOT”. I want to move away from the formality of searching to a more mindful stream-of- consciousness search and let people write their own questions, the way they think.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I think mental health is very connected to financial stability. There are many families affected by children in crisis. These children require very expensive therapies, rehab, special needs, mentoring, and other expensive services that can be out of reach for middle-class families. I would like to see drug companies and other major corporations step up to the plate through their foundation with grants for the forgotten middle-class families in crisis.

Recently, I met a family who were so strapped financially that to help their son in crisis, they fully mortgaged their home and sold off all their furniture just to pay for his stay in a facility. The outcome for their son was thankfully positive, but now they are in serious debt. Families shouldn’t have to make those hard choices.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Readers can check out my website, GrantWatch.com, connect with me on LinkedIn @LibbyHikind, on Facebook @GrantWatch, or Instagram @grantswatch.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

About The Interviewer: Kieran Powell is the EVP of Channel V Media a New York City Public Relations agency with a global network of agency partners in over 30 countries. Kieran has advised more than 150 companies in the Technology, B2B, Retail and Financial sectors. Prior to taking over business operations at Channel V Media, Kieran held roles at Merrill Lynch, PwC and Ernst & Young. Get in touch with Kieran to discuss how marketing and public relations can be leveraged to achieve concrete business goals.