Optional companion to the AI Lab session
Make one thing your team can use next week.
The AI Lab session on the official site sets the agenda. Use this page beside it to draft an R-T-C-F prompt, pick a recipe, and practise on made-up examples. You type and decide. Coaches ask questions.
Working on education-grant writing?
Practice funding requests, donor emails, applicant help and newsletters. Build a reusable guide for your organization’s voice.
Start the writing practice →What you could make next week
Pick one person and one moment when they would use the result. Finish this sentence out loud: we are building ___, for ___, and done looks like ___. If you cannot show it working in 15 seconds, make it smaller.
Role · Task · Context · Format
R-T-C-F prompt builder
Fill in the four boxes for a task you actually do. The prompt assembles below as you type. This page does not send or save your text.
A preset is a starting prompt, not an AI answer. The organization and every fact in it are invented. Replace them with your own structure, keep the values made-up, then paste the prompt into your own workspace.
Who you want the AI to be. Example: a grants officer who reviews youth program proposals.
The one thing you want it to do, with a limit. Example: draft the outcomes section in under 200 words.
What it cannot guess about your organization, audience and tone. Most weak results come from a thin Context box.
The shape of the answer. Example: three short paragraphs, plain words, ending with one measurable target.
Made-up data only
Do not put real names, contact details, student or family records, donor records, payroll data or attendance sheets into any AI tool. Keep the real field names and use invented values in them.
Before anything leaves the table
The output reviewer checks three things: is it accurate, does it contain anything private, and does it sound like your organization. If the answer to any of them is wrong, they can say 'do not send that'.
Continue in the official AI Lab
Choose one build recipe
These nine recipes live on the AI Lab Build page. Open it, then choose the recipe there.
Grant and proposal drafting assistant ↗
Outline a new proposal and draft its two hardest sections in your own voice.
Optional practice →Funder report and impact update assistant ↗
Back every stated outcome with a number and, where you can, a story.
Optional practice →Recurring document assistant ↗
Turn a document you write again and again into something a colleague can run.
Optional practice →Multi-audience rewriter ↗
One message in four versions, with the same facts framed for each reader.
Optional practice →Spreadsheet question assistant ↗
Ask leadership's real questions of a made-up sheet, then check the answers by hand.
Optional practice →Month-end documentation pack ↗
Turn your chase email into a template and a checklist that get complete submissions.
Workflow automation in your own workspace ↗
Automate one small thing, with one trigger and one action, in the workspace you already use.
Responsible AI use policy ↗
A one-page first draft, a plain-language staff summary and a red-lines list.
Optional practice →Organization knowledge base ↗
Set up a Project that knows your organization, the way you would onboard a new hire. Use this as the smaller fallback.
For coaches
- Coach, do not drive. The representative keeps the keyboard and makes every decision.
- Ask which box is thinnest. It is usually Context. Do not fill it in for them.
- Ask early whether the project touches real records. If it does, build the same thing with the same fields on made-up data.
- If someone is hesitant about AI, treat it as a considered position and talk it through. Do not argue them out of it.
- Push on the 'for whom'. 'The team' is not an answer. A named role and a moment of use is.
- If the table is stuck between two recipes, choose the smaller one. If they cannot show a working piece in 15 seconds, switch to the knowledge base and call it banking a win.
Keep it with your team
- Copy the prompt and paste it into your organization's own AI workspace or Project.
- Run it there, then have the output reviewer check accuracy, privacy and voice.
- Save the prompt and the reviewed output in your own Project so they stay with your team.
- Within 48 hours, try the structure on one real task, following your organization's data rules. Save the prompt to your library.
Prompt School, The Build, Mentor Resources and The Sustainable Stack are on the official AI Lab site. Follow your host. Terms for tools change, so check the Stack page for current terms instead of relying on this page.
Official session links need internet. This companion and its prepared prompts work offline.