Using Artificial Intelligence to Boost Fundraising
For nonprofit organizations, telethons and other traditional fundraising methods are still a huge way of building awareness, interacting with your community, and bringing in donations to your cause. However, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can also be an effective tool for facilitating your organization with both offline and online fundraising efforts.
AI and Machine Learning have begun transforming industries and businesses around the globe by effectively automating much of the tedious, time-consuming, and human-powered tasks. When these abilities, such as a chatbot responding to a potential donor’s questions can immediately instigate that relationship and begin building trust even more quickly.
Other possible duties that AI can replace at your nonprofit other than chatbots could be:
To develop a data analytics system that can detect fraud or misconduct and alert leaders to investigate these warnings. In many cases, your 990 audit does this when you’re engaging an accounting firm, but understanding it can also help you be a better leader. AI can sort through thousands of bits of data within seconds - faster than any human could possibly fathom, so the chances of any financial information being missed become nearly impossible.
For fundraising, AI can be used to store and remember various donation patterns for both previous donors and the chances of success via fundraising events. Every piece of information your nonprofit stores becomes valuable data you may be missing out on if forgotten. AI can build patterns around locations of donors, times of day for outreach, giving patterns, and recommended requests all within a matter of seconds.
NpEngage says that, “management of that data comes by means of optimizing donor acquisition efforts, proposing logical and subsequent engagement steps and levels, and bulk generating ‘personalized’ messages. Management also can include fostering stronger relationships with an organization’s constituents, while disclosing opportunities to generate more revenue.”
The key benefit is to build transparency and trust between you and your donors. Nonprofits and charities are under far more scrutiny by their stakeholders than an average business which means that donors demand more knowledge as to where their money is going and how it’s being used. Data insights and access to messaging and program insights are only some of the capabilities that AI can provide for added transparency.
There seems to be some controversy over the impact that AI and Machine Learning may have on employment opportunities, personalization, and the human relationships that nonprofits build with their community. Often some organizations may be reluctant to digitally transform due to the fear of how this added AI may negatively impact their purpose. Fear shouldn’t prevent your nonprofit from benefiting from the many outweighing advantages that AI provides.
An example, One human rights nonprofit, Datakind, is utilizing the AI of data science (partnering with Microsoft) to reduce traffic-related deaths on the streets of America’s largest cities.
If you’re serious about where to start with AI integration into your process, it’s important to understand how you want AI to help and to prepare your organization for the changes that will likely come with that intelligence, such as more traffic to your website, etc.
Interested in learning more about how AI can be used to enhance your fundraising, finance, human resources, and many other areas of your nonprofit? Reach out to info@nmblstrategies.com for a conversation today!
