Automated Meeting Minutes: How AI Can Revolutionize Note Taking for Nonprofits
AI technology can help nonprofit leaders work more efficiently with limited resources. YANA summer intern Benjamin Hernandez highlights four such note-taking tools.
One thing has become clear to me in the time I’ve spent as one of YANA’s interns: nonprofit leaders are constantly on the lookout for ways in which to improve the efficiency of their organizations in the hopes of maximizing their impact.
Artificial intelligence continues to receive an increasing amount of attention in the media. Some of the attention attempts to explore the ethical and social implications of the burgeoning technology, while some of it has focused on the potential positive uses of AI. Although ChatGPT has stolen the spotlight in recent news, nonprofits should take note of the various AI transcription and note-taking services available online that are capable of organizing the wealth of information that nonprofits amass in the abundance of meetings, conferences and workshops that they host.
So, without any particular endorsement, here are a few of the AI transcription tools capable of streamlining the process by which nonprofits collect and organize meeting information.
Otter.ai is a relatively well known transcription tool utilized by many college students, including myself and my peer reporters at the Yale Daily News. The technology is capable of joining and recording your meetings on Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet to create automated meeting notes and — particular to this technology — a summary with key information that saves the time of reviewing the entire meeting transcript. Otter.ai also has a feature that allows it to automatically capture and insert meeting slides shared during a meeting to the meeting notes while also providing context of the content that was discussed in relation to the graphic.
Otter.ai’s basic, free subscription is limited to 300 monthly transcription minutes and 30 minutes per conversation. For individuals seeking more minutes and enhanced features, the Pro subscription is available for $99.99 per user annually ($8.33 /month). With the Pro subscription, users can enjoy 1200 monthly transcription minutes and 90 minutes per conversation. To cater to small teams and organizations that require sharing and collaboration, Otter.ai offers the Business subscription at $240.00 per user annually ($20.00/month). This subscription plan allows for 6,000 monthly transcription minutes and provides a generous four hours per conversation. It also offers a seven-day free trial.
MeetGeek.ai, also powered by ChatGPT, is much like Otter.ai in that it can join your meetings on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meets and provides a meeting summary, which will include a meeting digest, key topics discussed and action items for every topic. The technology allows you to automatically share the video recording, along with a full transcript and meeting summary, to your favorite tools — including Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook, document repositories like Google Drive, collaboration tools like Slack, CRMs like HubSpot and task management tools like Trello.
Meet.Geek.ai’s basic, free subscription is limited to five hours of transcription per month and three months of transcript storage. Their Pro plan for professionals and small teams extends to 20 hours of transcription per month and one year of transcript storage along with six months of video storage for $180 per user annually ($15/month). Their Business plan, available for a 14-day free trial, allows for 100 hours of transcription per month, unlimited transcript storage and 12 months video storage at a cost of $348.00 per user annually ($29.00/ month).
Fathom, like the previously mentioned tools, also works with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meets. It operates in much the same way alongside the meeting tools to summarize your entire call. Its major difference is the highlight feature, which allows you to select portions of a call to be summarized during your call. The tool also allows you to copy and paste its derived summaries and action items to Google Docs, Gmail, or your favorite task manager, and it will automatically generate and sync call notes to your CRM. The technology will let you share clips of the highlights that you created throughout the call as well by generating a link that can be shared with others.
Although Fathom is free, Fathom Team Edition contains additional features — such as a single repository to store all calls, metrics to track employee performance during calls, keyword alerts and highlight compilations — that make it easier to roll out the technology across an organization. The paid version includes a two-week free trial and costs $19 per user per month with no commitment.
Read.ai connects to your calendar and allows you to choose meetings that the technology will join as a participant (which can be jarring to those on a call and worth explaining to participants ahead of time) to take notes and provide you with a summary, transcript and playback. Read.ai works with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Webex. The meeting notes that Read compiles contains a summary, along with topics, action items and key questions posed throughout the call. Similar to the tool on Fathom, its AI highlights feature allows you to easily review key moments from any meeting through short video clips. Its meeting analytics feature allows you to rewatch your meetings with highlights, provides advanced transcripts with audience reactions and compiles meeting analytics and trends over time.
On top of their free plan, Read.ai’s Pro plan, priced at $120 per person annually ($10/ month), allows for up to 10 seats to be added to your workspace and unlimited measured meetings. The Enterprise plan, priced at $198 per person annually ($16.50/ month), allows for unlimited seats in your workspace, as well as other advanced features, prioritized support and controls designed for scale. Both plans are available for a 14-day free trial.
A frequently raised concern about inviting AI technology “participants” to meetings is how sensitive information, data security and privacy are all handled (not to mention the odd appearance of an AI attendee window at your ZOOM meeting, which can take a bit of getting used to). For the most part, these AI technologies employ robust security measures to protect data, including encryption, secure cloud storage and user access controls. If you wish to learn more about the specifics of how the different tools store and protect your information, I recommend visiting the privacy and security sections of each application’s website.
If you look online, you’ll come across numerous other AI notetaking technologies that are similar to those that I highlighted here. In the end, the tool that your organization could utilize will depend on your particular needs and what your budget limitations allow. And although it is not absolutely necessary to make use of this technology, taking advantage of AI note-taking tools represents a transformative opportunity for nonprofits to efficiently alter the way that information is captured and stored to continue driving meaningful change in communities across the globe.