--- title: Using AI to Help Run Your Choir description: Learn how one choir uses AI for grant writing, financial reporting, and administrative challenges to save time and strengthen operations. image: https://blog.chorusconnection.com/hubfs/chorus-connection-ai.jpg --- - [About](https://www.chorusconnection.com/about) - [Features](https://www.chorusconnection.com/features) - [Pricing](https://www.chorusconnection.com/pricing) [![Chorus Connection](https://blog.chorusconnection.com/hubfs/Chorus_April2019%20Theme/image/download.png)](https://www.chorusconnection.com) - [Blog](https://blog.chorusconnection.com/) - [Login](https://app.chorusconnection.com/sign_in) - [Book a Demo](https://pages.chorusconnection.com/request-a-demo) [![Chorus Connection](https://blog.chorusconnection.com/hubfs/Chorus_April2019%20Theme/image/download.png)](https://www.chorusconnection.com) - [About](https://www.chorusconnection.com/about) - [Features](https://www.chorusconnection.com/features) - [Pricing](https://www.chorusconnection.com/pricing) - [Blog](https://blog.chorusconnection.com/) - [Login](https://app.chorusconnection.com/sign_in) - [Book a Demo](https://pages.chorusconnection.com/request-a-demo) # Using AI to Help Run Your Choir [Jonathan Bradley](https://blog.chorusconnection.com/author/jonathan-bradley) Oct 15, 2026 Learn more: [choir technology](https://blog.chorusconnection.com/topic/choir-technology) ![robot hand typing on laptop keyboard with hologram of ai floating above](https://blog.chorusconnection.com/hs-fs/hubfs/chorus-connection-ai.jpg?width=700&height=394&name=chorus-connection-ai.jpg)   Choral music is the most human-centered form of music-making. It is built on the simple act of people gathering to make something together. At its heart, it reminds us that every individual voice matters, and that by listening and responding to one another, we can create a musical experience greater than the sum of its parts. That is a powerful affirmation of human dignity, one that feels needed now more than ever. Our job as administrators is to create the conditions that allow this work to flourish and have a profound impact on the lives of others. If we remember that, AI can be a powerful tool for nonprofit choral organizations. Its greatest value is not in replacing the human activity that defines our work, but in reducing the administrative burden around it, making more space for artists, supporters, and administrators to deepen the impact of what we do. We cannot pretend there are not serious social, cultural, and environmental concerns surrounding the use of this technology. At the same time, small and midsize nonprofit arts organizations operate in an environment of persistent resource scarcity, with limited staff working hard to keep ambitious artistic programs alive and thriving while support for the arts remains severely constrained. In this environment, AI tools can significantly extend our administrative capacity by reducing busywork and creating more space for strategic thinking, fundraising, and community building. Used well, AI can give those of us running these organizations more time to focus on the human work that matters most.   ## **How I Started Using AI as an Executive Director** My first real exposure to AI as a management tool came through grant writing. In a previous job, I worked with a fantastic freelance grant writer. Each season, we would research prospects, review application requirements and foundation priorities, and agree on an application strategy. The writer would produce a first draft, I would edit it, and over several rounds we would arrive at a version we both felt good about. Because our writer was a freelancer with multiple clients, it was unreasonable to expect them to know the organization as well as I did. Much of my editing involved replacing generalized language with material that was more specific, relevant, and true to the organization’s voice. Then came the grant budget, which often meant reformatting our financials to match each foundation’s requirements, a tedious and frustrating bottleneck in almost every grant proposal. Nonetheless, we were a great team, and within a season or two, our grant portfolio grew by about 85 percent. But it was a major investment of time. When I arrived in my current position, we did not have a grant writer. Our grant narratives were underperforming, and the organization had been losing foundation support each year. So, I turned to AI and got a [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/overview/) subscription. What had previously taken weeks or months could suddenly be compressed into days or hours. I could conduct much more specific research quickly, eliminating the need for expensive prospecting software. For drafting, I began with a large free write containing what I knew about the program, the organization, the funder, and the case we wanted to make, then used AI to help shape that material into a first draft. Instead of waiting days for rewrites, I could get a new version in seconds. Still, I had to keep sharpening the argument, removing generic language, correcting inaccuracies, and making sure the application sounded like us. That speed of iteration made me a better editor and let me produce stronger text faster. For subsequent applications, I began using past successful grants as source material and context for new drafts, helping preserve organizational voice, institutional knowledge, and arguments that had already proven effective. The financial side also became dramatically easier: instead of spending hours reformatting financial information, I could provide the relevant reports and ask the system to reorganize them into the requested format, then review and verify the result. The results spoke for themselves. In one season, we won back all of the foundations that had stopped supporting the organization, often at higher levels. We secured our first multiyear grant, which came with an additional award recognizing the quality of the application, and we significantly increased the number of grants we could pursue. The process still required substantial work, but it was exponentially faster and gave me back time and capacity for strategy and leadership.   ![round rocks balanced on a wood board](https://blog.chorusconnection.com/hs-fs/hubfs/chorus-connection-balance.jpg?width=1920&height=1080&name=chorus-connection-balance.jpg)   ## **Leveling the Administrative Playing Field** When we decided to replace our modest staff IRA with a more robust 401(k), it was part of a broader effort to make Voices of Ascension a better place to work. Unfortunately, the vendor we hired badly mishandled the implementation. Although we have a small full-time staff, our payroll database includes hundreds of singers and other artists who may, or may not, work for us in any given season. The 401(k) was intended as a benefit for full-time staff members only, but the large company administering the plan failed to understand the distinction between our part-time artist roster and our full-time staff. Workers who should never have been enrolled were automatically added to the plan and had deductions taken from their paychecks. Those improper enrollments also triggered employer matching obligations, compounding both the financial impact and the complexity of correcting the error. What should have been a straightforward benefits upgrade became an extensive correction process. For an organization with five staff members and no HR or benefits department, the administrative and legal burden was tremendous. Resolving it meant identifying and correcting the errors and overcoming the undue bureaucratic hurdles imposed on us by a large, well-resourced company. AI tools were invaluable in helping me to correct this problem, hold the vendor accountable, and ultimately move our payroll and benefits administration to a new provider within the same fiscal year. I used [Claude](https://claude.com/product/overview) to summarize hundreds of emails and reconstruct the timeline, extract contribution histories from payroll records, cross-check figures against source documents, help prepare correction requests and letters of direction, track required notices and deadlines, and draft successive rounds of escalation. Tasks that could easily have consumed months of staff time, or required substantial outside consulting expense, were completed efficiently and accurately. We still had to check every figure against the underlying documents, but the administrative burden became manageable. Ultimately, we reversed every improper enrollment and refunded the money. But we did more than correct the mistakes. We ended our relationship with the large vendor and moved our broader payroll and benefits administration to a smaller firm where we actually know the people handling our account and can speak with them directly when we need help. What began as a serious administrative problem ultimately gave us the opportunity to take greater control of an important part of our operations. We fixed the 401(k), made our employees whole, and emerged with a benefits solution that is more responsive and better suited to the scale and culture of our organization.   ![blue reports binder laying on sheets of paper with graphs and tables with glasses and a pen laying on top](https://blog.chorusconnection.com/hs-fs/hubfs/chorus-connection-reports.jpg?width=1920&height=1080&name=chorus-connection-reports.jpg)   ## **Other Uses** I’ve also found AI tools helpful in these additional ways: - **Board and financial reporting.** Because we have built a high-functioning finance team with strong controls and processes, AI tools are also useful in this area. Working with my Operations Manager and a freelance bookkeeper, we reconcile QuickBooks to the bank each month, keeping our reports and forecasts current and dependable. As a result, our year-to-date Statement of Activity and Statement of Financial Position are highly accurate. We also maintain a version of our board-approved budget in QuickBooks, which allows us to use its detailed Budget vs. Actual reports across all our production and administrative classes. Together, these reports contain far more detail than is useful in a board meeting, so I use AI to condense them and help organize the information into a clear financial picture. Then I can easily speak to any notable variances and changes. This analysis becomes the basis for the financial section of our board materials and for the discussion itself. Rather than asking board members to interpret a dense accounting report line by line, we can focus the meeting on what has materially changed, why certain areas are over or under budget, where risks or opportunities are emerging, and what management is doing in response. (For board members who like the details, I keep the full QB reports in an appendix.) - **CRM, development, and ticketing reporting.** When our CRM cannot produce the reports I need, I can export the underlying data and use AI to identify giving and revenue patterns, provided I validate the results against the source data. Our Operations Manager has also used Claude Code to build a web-based dashboard from raw ticketing data, filling gaps in our CRM and creating a highly readable, dynamic view of sales activity that would otherwise have required new software or outside development. It's important to note that we only analyze and report on aggregate transaction data, not individual constituents.   ## **Some Perspective** Buddhists often say that the ego is a poor master but a good servant. The same seems true of AI. It is a capable servant and a terrible master. AI cannot compensate for bad management or inexperience. Good business practices, strategic insight, and organizational judgment can only come from years of experience. While [large language models](https://uit.stanford.edu/service/techtraining/ai-demystified/llm) can synthesize huge amounts of data, their descriptive outputs tend toward a rhetorical middle. Left to their own devices, they produce readable but generalized language that can sound generic, making your organization sound like just another nonprofit. As chief administrators, our job is to preserve and showcase the unique mission, activity, and voice of the organization we are responsible for. AI cannot help us effectively without clear, specific, and consistent oversight. A good hammer cannot make a great carpenter, and we should not rely on AI to determine what the organization should say or do. Instead, we can use it to increase the speed and scale at which we execute decisions we have already made and move further in directions we have already defined. For nonprofit choral organizations, that distinction matters. Our fundamental job is still a human one: support artists, bring people together, build support relationships, and make extraordinary music possible. If AI gives an Executive Director ten hours back in a week, we can put those hours to work in better ways. What other ways have you used AI? What’s been your experience so far? Tell us in the comments below.   ## [![New call-to-action](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/1860171/f9d3fb88-6947-4fbd-8454-03e1748c7b7c.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/1860171/f9d3fb88-6947-4fbd-8454-03e1748c7b7c) ![Jonathan Bradley](https://blog.chorusconnection.com/hubfs/jonathan-bradley.jpg) Jonathan Bradley is Executive Director of Voices of Ascension, where he guides the organization’s artistic and institutional growth. He has helped develop new programming, including the Choral Visionaries guest conductor series and immersive projects that expand the traditional choral concert experience. Jonathan brings more than 25 years of leadership experience across New York City’s cultural landscape. Previously, he served as Executive Director of Grammy Award-winning ensemble The Crossing, overseeing significant growth, new commissions, recordings, and major collaborations. Earlier, he spent a decade at Carnegie Hall, developing digital and audience engagement initiatives, and later served as Chief Marketing Officer of Primephonic, now Apple Music Classical. Jonathan holds a BFA from New York University and an MBA from Baruch College. He has also spoken on arts leadership, innovation, and nonprofit management at Yale, Columbia, and New York University. 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