By Debbie Snyder
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way we live and work. The nonprofit sector is no exception. Nonprofits use AI to gain donor insights, automate tasks, and increase fundraising revenue.
Despite its potential benefits, many nonprofit professionals are unsure of what AI is, how it works, and might be hesitant to embrace it in their day-to-day work and operations. AI is not something to fear. It is not going to lead you down a dark path with no return. AI will not cause you to lose control of your messaging or your donors or turn your donor management system into HAL 9000. There are many benefits of AI for nonprofits, including increased efficiencies, decreased costs of fundraising and increased revenue.
Here’s how to implement AI at your nonprofit and a look at some examples of AI use in fundraising and donor management.
First of all, let’s take a look at the mystery of AI. Artificial intelligence is the ability of a computer, or a robot controlled by a computer, to perform tasks usually done by humans. These systems use algorithms and statistical models to identify patterns and make predictions based on data inputs. By learning from experience and adjusting to new inputs, these systems imitate intelligent human behavior.
AI systems learn from data and improve their performance over time, allowing them to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as understanding natural language, recognizing objects and images, and making decisions.
AI systems typically require large amounts of data to learn and improve their performance. This data can come from various sources, including sensors, databases, and the internet. AI systems can also learn from human interaction, such as feedback and correction.
The rate of nonprofit digital transformation has dramatically accelerated in recent years. AI technology has become mainstream, and you should consider this an opportunity to unlock new means to reach your fundraising goals and better serve your constituents. If used effectively, AI-driven technologies will allow you to have substantially more mission impact by accelerating daily processes and uncovering strategic insights. The end result will increase your organization’s ability to raise funds, streamline operations, and create sustainable change.
AI allows nonprofits to accomplish some powerful objectives including:
- Increasing Efficiencies
- Decreasing Fundraising Costs
- Increasing Fundraising Revenue
- Better Serving your Beneficiaries
Increase Efficiencies
One of the most significant advantages of the successful utilization of AI is the increased efficiencies. If you are like many nonprofit managers, you entered this profession because you enjoy working with people and serving a worthwhile cause. This purpose isn’t fulfilled by completing mundane tasks such as data entry and cleanup, gift entry and acknowledgment.
AI-powered technology can automate many of these tasks saving you time, resources, and energy that can be redirected towards more critical, rewarding work such as building stronger relationships with donors.
AI systems can also learn from your donor interactions and provide valuable insights, informing future communication strategies. By utilizing machine learning algorithms, AI can analyze vast amounts of data and identify patterns that might be difficult or impossible for humans to detect. This data analysis can help you make better-informed decisions, improve your outreach strategies, and identify new donor opportunities. Using AI, you can nurture donor relationships through task automation, allowing you to provide a more personalized donor experience.
Decrease Fundraising Costs
Imagine if you could make the right ask to your donors at the right time. They would have a difficult time not saying yes to your ask, right? This would benefit your organization tremendously as you would decrease the number of appeals sent while you increase fulfillment rates and donor retention, all resulting in a decreased cost of fundraising.
This is all possible with the power of AI. Instead of repeatedly sending donation requests to the same constituents without response, AI algorithms can analyze donor behavior and preferences to suggest the best time and best approach for a successful ask. Previous giving history, donor sentiment, interactions, engagement, and affinities all inform the ask, making your messaging personal, meaningful, and achievable for your donors.
By utilizing AI in your fundraising efforts, you can realize a significant reduction in overall fundraising costs while achieving better results and better serving your donors.
Increase Fundraising Revenue
AI can significantly increase fundraising revenue for nonprofits in several core fundraising functions including donor acquisition and donor retention. You know that it costs more to acquire a new donor than it does to retain a donor. AI offers opportunities to augment both processes.
To uncover new donors, AI can use social listening and social analytics to gather and analyze data from social media platforms. Social listening monitors these platforms to understand the conversations users might have on a specific topic or even organization.
Let’s say you are a development manager for an environmental stewardship organization. You have been tasked with expanding your donor base to include Millennial and Gen Z donors. By leveraging social listening, you can monitor social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for hashtags related to environmental activism. These tools allow you to identify the users that engage most with these posts. Sentiment analysis allows you to identify users who express a positive sentiment toward environmental causes, and you can target messaging directly to these users.
Beyond acquiring new donors, AI can help you develop strong donor retention rates. AI can help organizations identify trends within their own internal CRM data and offer personalized asks tailored to their interests and preferences.
Imagine if AI could identify the exact moment before a donor lapsed. Your constituent relationship management (CRM) could send an automated email message that speaks directly to that donor’s interest in your cause and impact this donor has had on your mission. This direct, personal, timely ask will strike a chord with your donor and save this potential lost donor.
Overall, AI can help you increase fundraising revenue by enabling you to identify and target potential donors more effectively as well as retain and engage your current donor base through personalized communication informed by social listening and your CRM data.
Better Serve Your Beneficiaries
The final and perhaps most important benefit of leveraging AI-driven technology is the ability to better serve your beneficiaries. If you understand the needs of the communities your organization serves, you can deliver more targeted programming. With more effective programming, you create sustainable outcomes which ultimately increase donor trust and loyalty. An increase in donor trust will fuel more giving to further sustain your mission.
Here’s how do you get started. There are a few simple steps that you can take to start your organization down the path toward the successful and beneficial use of AI tools.
Conduct A Database Audit: Before you get started executing any of these AI-driven strategies, you must have a clear understanding of your database’s health. If you don’t trust or understand your data, you should not use AI to act upon that data. Consider conducting a database audit with the goal to fix any inaccuracies and validate your data. Look at formatting inconsistencies, duplicates, or missing data. Delete accounts and contacts that have no real, viable data.
Consider The Number Of Databases You Have: Take a step further back and evaluate how many databases you have. More than one can lead to naming inconsistencies and lack of understanding. With one source of truth, your teams can trust the data is complete and accurate.
Evaluate Internal & External Database Sources: Beyond evaluating your internal data sources, reevaluate your external data sources (wealth profiling, data verification). Ensure these sources harvest data according to your organization’s own privacy standards and procedures.
The emergence of AI as an enabling technology is the most significant technological development in recent years. This will bring fundamental change to nonprofit fundraising and development. This change affords you a tremendous opportunity to catapult their operations, fundraising, and programming efforts.
However, this opportunity is not one to be taken lightly. Don’t let the promise of this new technology and the potential to find new funding sources blind you from what’s most important – serving your donors and constituents. If your organization prioritizes your mission, values, and key priorities above all else, you will leverage this new technology as a tool for transformational change.
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Debbie Snyder is group vice president at StratusLIVE. Her email is [email protected]
