by azadi sheridan
We’ve all spent time with ChatGPT. It’s the "Swiss Army Knife" of AI—it can code, write poems, and plan your grocery list. For many charities and non-profits, you’re likely already using it or its sibling, Microsoft Copilot. In fact, since both are built on OpenAI’s technology, they are essentially the same "brain." This is great news for the sector, as Microsoft often provides non-profits with free or subsidised access to Copilot through their existing 365 licences.
However, while ChatGPT is a great generalist, a new wave of specialised AI tools is arriving in 2026 that are designed to do one thing—and do it better than anyone else. Here is how they compare to the classic ChatGPT experience:
1. For Writing: Claude
The Explainer: Claude is a chatbot built by Anthropic with a focus on "constitutional AI," making it highly steerable and nuanced in its writing.
VS ChatGPT: While ChatGPT can sometimes feel a bit "robotic" or repetitive, Claude is widely praised for having a more human-like, natural writing style. It is often better at following complex creative instructions and keeping a consistent tone across long documents.
2. For Research: Perplexity
The Explainer: Perplexity is an "answer engine." Instead of just generating text, it searches the live web and provides cited answers to your questions.
VS ChatGPT: ChatGPT’s knowledge is based on training data that can be outdated. Even with its browsing feature, it’s a chatbot first. Perplexity is built specifically for accuracy; it lists its sources clearly at the top, making it much easier to fact-check your research.
3. For CVs: Teal
The Explainer: Teal is a career growth platform that uses AI specifically to build CVs and track job applications.
VS ChatGPT: You can ask ChatGPT to "write a CV," but you’ll have to do the formatting yourself. Teal provides a structured interface, helps you match keywords from job descriptions automatically, and keeps your entire job hunt organised in one dashboard.
4. For Workplace Upskilling: Gemini
The Explainer: Gemini is Google’s most capable AI. It is "multimodal," meaning it understands text, images, video, and audio natively.
VS ChatGPT: In a work environment, Gemini is a powerhouse for professional development. Because it integrates with the Google ecosystem, it can "watch" a recorded webinar or training video on YouTube and summarise the key takeaways for you. It can also pull data from your internal Google Drive files to help you get up to speed on a new project or policy much faster than a general chatbot.
5. For Note-Taking: Notion AI
The Explainer: This is an AI assistant that lives directly inside your Notion workspace.
VS ChatGPT: Instead of copying and pasting notes back and forth between a chatbot and your documents, Notion AI can summarise your existing meeting notes, generate action items, and fix spelling—all without you ever leaving the page.
6. For Data Interpretation: Rows AI
The Explainer: Rows is a modern spreadsheet tool with a built-in AI analyst.
VS ChatGPT: ChatGPT can analyse a CSV file if you upload it, but Rows AI works inside the spreadsheet. You can use it to clean data, pull in information from LinkedIn or Google Maps, and generate insights directly in your cells.
7. For PDF Reading: Glean
The Explainer: Glean is an enterprise search tool that uses AI to find and summarise information across all your organisation's documents and PDFs.
VS ChatGPT: While you can upload one PDF to ChatGPT, Glean searches thousands of them across your organisation's Slack, Google Drive, and internal folders to find exactly what you need in seconds.
A Note on Responsibility…
As we embrace these tools, it is important to remember their "hidden" costs:
The Environment: AI tools require massive amounts of computing power and water for cooling data centres. This high energy consumption has a significant environmental footprint.
Data Privacy: Before using an AI tool for work, always check the terms and conditions. Some apps use your data to train their models, while others offer "Zero Data Retention." Ensure the tool’s privacy policy aligns with your organisation's data protection standards.
