Newsletter preparation
Bring approved messages, programme facts and publishable stories into a draft with source references and questions where information is missing.
Your editor checks facts, consent and tone before anything is sent.
For charity communications, operations and leadership teams
Help your team use AI with knowledge it can trust.
A fixed-price consulting engagement with David Lema to organise your team's knowledge and working context, configure agreed AI-assisted workflows, and test them with the people who will use them.
The scope and fee are agreed before work starts. The engagement includes setup, testing and handover.
This is consulting work, not a software product or subscription. Your organisation continues to pay its chosen tool providers separately.
Book a knowledge base discovery call
Illustrative uses
Begin with a job your team recognises.
A newsletter, a programme-page update or a message for a new audience can be a useful place to start. Each draws on information the team already holds.
These are examples to scope with your team. The wider engagement is being developed from funding knowledge work already in practice.
Programme-page updates
Compare an existing page with current programme information and prepare suggested changes, with discrepancies flagged.
The programme owner confirms the facts. Your communications lead approves publication.
A message for a new audience
Use approved source material and an audience brief to prepare a supporter email, trustee briefing or short social draft.
A reviewer checks that the meaning and facts still hold.
How a knowledge base is built
Build in modules.
I reuse relevant documents and other material your team already holds to draft the initial content of your knowledge base. Your team checks the facts, reviews the drafts and approves what becomes accepted content.
The Orchestration Module comes first. The foundations describe the organisation as a whole and its case for support. Areas of work are added when needed.
Nobody needs every area at once. A communications team can start with communications, engagement and advocacy.
Explore a fictional workspace →
Recommended
Orchestration Module
- Which module to open
- Writing rules that avoid AI-sounding text
- What needs a person's approval
Foundations · For every organisation
The organisation as a whole
The case for support
Add areas on top
Example
Communications, engagement and advocacy
Including voice and writing style
Example
Funding and income generation
Example
Programmes and services
As needed
And the other areas
- Strategy, leadership and organisational development
- Governance, risk and assurance
- Impact, evidence and learning
- Partnerships and community relationships
- People and volunteering
- Finance and stewardship
- Resources, procurement and environment
- Digital, data and knowledge
- Organisational performance and improvement
The organisation as a whole
- Mission, vision and values
- theory of change
- what you do and for whom
- governance and policies
- safeguarding
- people and structure
- partners
The case for support
- Evidence of need
- activities
- the difference you make
- who you reach
- how you measure it
- track record
- added value
For policies, the knowledge base records metadata and a pointer to the authoritative document. Anyone who needs the detail follows that pointer. Policy text and personal records stay in their existing systems. This picture explains the record a team would keep; it does not show areas already built for a client.
Knowledge first, then assistants
Change the assistant. Keep the knowledge.
Knowledge base
Orchestration
Foundations
Areas on top
Working context
Sits outside the knowledge base.
Current instructions, decisions and pointers to sources.
↓ Both inform the task ↓
Swappable
ChatGPTClaudeGeminiCopilotOther
Examples a team may already use, not a recommendation. There are other assistants.
The knowledge base holds accepted information. Working context sits beside it. Either can inform a suitable assistant within the access your team agrees.
The right knowledge, carried into the work.
Your knowledge base
Agreed facts, evidence and reusable material.
Working context
Current instructions, decisions and pointers to sources.
↓ Inform the task ↓
Inform the task, within the access you agree
Your AI assistant
↓ Supports the work ↓
Work you return to
- Donor emails and appeals
- Supporter newsletters
- Social posts
Work that arises
- A press statement
- A partner request
- A question about your evidence
↓ Outputs go to a person ↓
People review and decide
Check before anything is used or sent. A person approves a retained change.
↶ Agreed and lasting
Back to the knowledge base, after approval.
Back to the knowledge base, after approval.
↶ Current and tactical
Back to working context, after approval.
Back to working context, after approval.
Operational records remain in their existing systems and are supplied where needed.
The assistant draws on relevant material while helping with the task. People review outputs and decide which changes belong in the shared record. A chat does not write itself back.
Knowledge and working context, used together.
The engagement sets up and tests that arrangement with your team. You keep the result and continue to use your chosen tool providers.
Beyond the jobs already set up
Bring a new question.
"Which programme description is current, and what does my colleague need for a briefing?"
The assistant uses relevant sources it can access and asks when information is missing. You check the answer before relying on it.
When the job becomes regular
Work with the assistant to propose the inputs, steps, output and human checks. Review and test the workflow before keeping it for reuse.
New connections and actions need their own agreement.
Operating Knowledge Engine™
How the work runs.
Six stages take a team from a first conversation to a working setup.
Discover
Choose the work and agree the boundaries.
Review and capture
Decide what is current and write down what is not.
Structure
Give each piece of knowledge a home.
Build
Move the agreed knowledge into your workspace.
Set up workflows
Choose the jobs and design how each runs.
Test and hand over
Use it on real work, then hand it over.
The build is done in the Operating Knowledge Studio Content Workshop. The finished knowledge base lives in the workspace you choose and own. One team and two recurring jobs is the proposed starting point. You can arrive at the conversation with one problem.
See what the engagement includes →Other areas a team can add as the scope grows
- Strategy, leadership and organisational development
- Governance, risk and assurance
- Programmes and services
- Impact, evidence and learning
- Funding and income generation
- Partnerships and community relationships
- Communications, engagement and advocacy
- People and volunteering
- Finance and stewardship
- Resources, procurement and environment
- Digital, data and knowledge
- Organisational performance and improvement
What your team keeps
Your knowledge, working rules, change history and client-specific workflow instructions. The handover includes the agreed tool setup and guidance for maintaining and extending it.
Your organisation pays its own tool providers. Any later support is scoped separately.
Where this began
I am David Lema. I offer funding-focused work through Grant Resource Studio and support a wider range of organisational work through Operating Knowledge Studio.
Funding knowledge, working-context routines and selected connected workflows are in use in my practice. The wider engagement for another organisation beyond funding has not yet been run.
The funding origin at a small community interest company →Bring a job your team repeats.
You and I can discuss the information it needs, who should take part and whether this approach fits.
Book a knowledge base discovery call