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The nonprofit sector’s most pressing challenge isn’t a lack of donors, it’s a severe shortage of frontline fundraisers. Only 2% to 3% of most organizations’ donor bases can be actively managed because there aren’t enough gift officers to cultivate the remaining 97%.
According to Adam Martel, CEO, Givzey | Version2.ai, this talent crisis exists because there’s virtually no educational pipeline producing frontline fundraisers.
“Who went to college to be a gift officer?,” Martel asked development professionals at the recent Association for Healthcare Philanthropy’s International Conference. No hands went up. “That’s the number one problem facing our industry. People typically arrive in fundraising by happenstance or passion, meaning nonprofits are perpetually understaffed when donor engagement demands have never been higher.”
Givzey launched Version2.ai to address fundraising’s staffing shortage by inventing the world’s first autonomous AI fundraisers, Virtual Engagement Officers (VEOs). VEOs independently manage portfolios of 1,000 donors. In the past year, about 150 VEOs across all nonprofit verticals have raised over $4 million, closed 25,000+ gifts, and managed 80,000+ donors with personal, two-way communications via email, text, avatar videos, and robotically handwritten notes.
Results challenge early assumptions about AI and fundraising. Martel’s team expected $5-$10 donations. Instead, the largest gift to date is $42,000, with $10,000-$20,000 gifts also common. “I believe that next year, we’ll be talking about a $500K-$1M gift closed fully autonomously by a VEO,” Martel predicted.
Results also teach lessons about donors’ perception of AI. Donors between the ages of 50-72 are most likely to engage with Autonomous Fundraising, and VEOs boast just a 0.1% opt-out rate. “The number one response the VEO gets is ‘Thanks for the note. I haven’t heard from the organization in years,” Martel explained.
Martel drew a critical distinction between “Autonomous AI” and “AI enablement,” a difference he believes will define the sector’s technological future. His first company, Gravyty, built AI enablement tools to help fundraisers manage more donors. “AI enablement tools require fundraisers to take an action or make a change in their process, which can take months or even years of change management to bring everyone on board.”
Autonomous AI is different. Rather than making one person more efficient, it independently generates revenue and builds new fundraising capacity. VEOs cultivate, steward, and solicit donors previously only managed by mass marketing techniques, and they go beyond prompt and suggestions – they actually initiate and complete these activities.
Martel emphasized, “Autonomous Fundraising does not replace fundraisers. It augments the work of a frontline fundraiser so you can get further down your giving pyramid to grow revenue, increase retention or participation, build pipeline, identify planned gifts, and more.”
Results demonstrate this promise. Parkland Health Foundation’s VEO, “Nicole” raised $175,052 from 1,282 gifts in year-one. JPS Foundation’s “Jazmin” closed $33,646 from 173 lapsed donors and generated $37,500 in upgrades in six months.
As the sector grapples with persistent staffing shortages and mounting pressure to engage more donors, Autonomous Fundraising offers a solution that builds fundraising capacity that can scale with the donor base.
