How Nonprofit Leaders Are Navigating Today’s AI Landscape
From MissionWired’s Nonprofit Advisory Board
Whether it’s in your email inbox, the next webinar you’re attending, or the last conference session you went to this summer, it’s clear: AI has reached the nonprofit space, and it seems to be everywhere, sneaking its way into every conversation.
Far less consistent is how nonprofits are engaging with AI today – from one organization to the next, there are major differences in AI allowance, hesitation or enthusiasm, and positions on institutional usage. It can be tricky deciding how far to go with AI exploration.
That’s why, for us, as MissionWired’s Nonprofit Advisory Board, we were excited to come together this summer for a conversation around AI and donor trust to share experiences and opportunities and dig into some of the hardest questions nonprofits are facing today around implementing AI in their programs. Together, we discussed the ethical questions at the root of decisions around AI implementation, the latest ways nonprofits are using AI tools, the hard lines they’re observing in their application, and the opportunities the future of AI might bring to mission-driven organizations.
We’re excited to share some of our top takeaways from this important conversation – including a variety of practical ways nonprofits are leveraging AI in mission-centered ways to make their work more efficient. For a broad look at what we’re seeing in the AI conversation across the nonprofit industry today, read on:
Ethical Concerns, Corporate Learnings, and Implementation Challenges
When it comes to ethical AI implementation, the nonprofit sector’s methodical, human-centered approach gives it an inherent advantage over the corporate sector. In many cases, the corporate sector has struggled with false starts around AI – finding, for instance, that after major layoffs to their staff, the realities of the expense of AI have forced them to pull back on its usage. The more methodical, considered approach and slower uptake of the nonprofit sector can actually help us avoid many of the major pitfalls we’re seeing in the for-profit space and may serve as a powerful benefit in the long term to help our industry develop approaches to using AI that will work toward, rather than against, our goals.
For many nonprofits working through this challenge, understanding how to combat agreeability bias is a matter of training on how to challenge and effectively use the language models or develop workarounds for any biases that arise. Limiting use cases for AI and establishing firm guardrails are helping many programs mitigate challenges with false information. Broadly, organizations are finding that human judgment is necessary to assess any responses coming from AI.
Organizations that have begun to incorporate AI into their practice to streamline processes or increase efficiency have seen a few common implementation challenges arise logistically, as teams work out the best ways to implement AI practices or react to the changing digital landscape:
Attribution With Zero-Click Marketing. Whether or not an organization is actively engaging with AI in their own operations, marketing and fundraising efforts are being impacted by the way it’s shifting attribution in Search. When a search engine uses AI overviews, potential donors who enter a search like “Top 3 social justice nonprofits I should donate to” will now first see an AI-generated summary, rather than links to social justice organizations’ websites. These zero-click summaries are preventing people from reaching your site and sometimes impacting brand reputation. Consideration of how AI tools crawl and interpret your brand online has a direct impact on whether your web content gets seen by potential donors.
We’re seeing this push nonprofits toward leveraging AI tools to get a footing on how to increase organic zero-click mentions so that your content shows up in an AI summary for increased visibility and to support tracking that performance in your KPIs. This reality means that AI has already become a necessary part of your reputation management for your brand.
Agreeability bias. Large Language Models (LLMs) can sometimes offer incorrect information because they are calibrated to support your argument and agree with, rather than challenge, your query. In the nonprofit space, this has also surfaced in the form of chatbots giving incorrect medical information or trying to answer questions outside the scope of its role.
For many nonprofits working through this challenge, understanding how to combat agreeability bias is a matter of training on how to challenge and effectively use the language models or develop workarounds for any biases that arise. Limiting use cases for AI and establishing firm guardrails are helping many programs mitigate challenges with false information. Broadly, organizations are finding that human judgment is necessary to assess any responses coming from AI.
For some nonprofit verticals, AI can also pose clearer ethical concerns when its usage has a direct negative impact on the communities their missions serve. Environmental organizations responding to data centers going up around the United States, for instance, or gun violence prevention organizations seeing how AI is impacting children and students or how AI is leveraged when planning an attack. Many organizations are pausing, rightfully, to take stock of the question of how AI might affect their beneficiaries or their ability to realize their mission.
AI Implementation for Internal and Administrative Efficiency
Some nonprofits have begun leveraging AI tools for the kinds of administrative tasks that can save time and make day-to-day work more efficient. For those who have moved into these approaches, there’s a wide range of applications that organizations are trying. Some of the areas where programs are seeing success so far include the following:
AI note-taking can save time, be more efficient for teams, and allow for notes to be shared immediately with the whole team via email. It is best practice here to inform those in your meeting and confirm everyone is okay with being recorded or transcribed.
Premium licenses are helping teams find internal materials more easily. For instance, if you need to look back on a relevant past rapid response from four years ago to refer to in a similar emergency, you can quickly access resources from your archive. Premium licences also allow for closed and secure systems, assuring better privacy with AI usage.
Budget forecasting for organizations that need to prepare regular assessments of data like budgeting: AI can save time by helping teams build out complex spreadsheets to prepare for meetings with far less of an analytics lift.
Cleaning up records with AI can help improve customer relations, from de-duping to merging constituent records to connect records and streamline your audience lists.
Testing AI Tools and Assessing Opportunities
As nonprofit organizations continue to explore how AI can make their work more efficient to maximize the impact of their fundraising and better power their missions, some programs are testing out new tools and assessing their safety and ability to implement them while remaining true to their brand. A few opportunities nonprofits are testing include:
AI decision-making in donation forms. Various donation platforms offer built-in AI tools that use donor modeling to help determine whether to ask for a one-time or sustaining gift. This removes the decision-making step from strategy teams as to whether to default to a sustainer ask and allows the AI tool to make the determination based on its modeling. Nonprofits have seen this impact growth in sustainer revenue without the added effort of a dedicated team.
Predictive modeling in acquisition. AI-powered predictive modeling has also proven to be a powerful tool for bringing new-to-file donors into nonprofit audiences that have a higher propensity to upgrade to mid-level or sustainers. Because AI predictive models identify the supporters most likely to take an interest in your mission for the long term, nonprofits have found them to be high-value audiences for driving full-funnel growth. For one member of our board, new leads acquired through MissionWired’s Digital Co-Op showed higher rates of upgrading to sustainers, without a dedicated sustainer campaign.
AI-powered chatbots. Some nonprofits have begun testing these chatbots on their websites as an AI-enabled search, allowing some automation within a controlled setting. Nonprofits finding success with this approach are avoiding chatbots that offer incorrect information by setting strict guardrails to limit the scope of AI’s responses. “At our organization, human review and control is essential,” says one member of our board. “Our chatbot answers are pre-written, not generated by the AI. The AI-powered chatbot delivers those answers to guide user journeys following our conditional flows. Then our staff can access the tool’s interaction reporting to make AI-informed enhancements and updates.”
Generative AI as a tool for brainstorming and versioning. As a starting point in a broader creative process, some nonprofits are seeing generative AI play a supporting role in donor outreach in the form of building donor personas for their sector or as a tool for brainstorming opportunities for versioning by channel, audiences, or region. “It can be a helpful tool for preventing repetitive appeals and for finding new ways to build out unique versioning when you need to say something a dozen different ways,” says another member of our board. “While we wouldn’t use AI to generate final content, it can be a useful tool for brainstorming and reference.” In this case, nonprofits seem to be in agreement that generative AI can be helpful for ideas but would not be used to create content that goes out directly to donors.
Hard Lines, Guardrails, and Human Touch Review
As an industry, we’re seeing a consensus that leveraging AI can be effective to better support audience selection, inform ask strings, and offer intelligence to messaging strategies – but content developed with a human’s capacity for judgment, emotional connection, and empathy is still the clear gold standard in nonprofit donor communications.
For those considering leveraging AI to speed up content generation by supporting efforts like versioning, we found that most nonprofits are requiring human touch review for all external-facing content as a non-negotiable guardrail to maintain the kinds of human connection that donors expect from the nonprofits they support. Should a donor find out about AI usage and have concerns, the program should be ready to respond by acknowledging where AI was used but also point to a clear policy of human review. AI disclosures should also be clear in privacy policies on nonprofit websites, and lawyers can support in making sure this language is correct and effective.
Ultimately, our Board agreed that a great deal comes down to brand guidelines when determining your own organization’s limits on AI usage. Consider what feels right for your cause and the dignity of your beneficiaries – and choose only the AI tools that you would be comfortable standing by when answering a donor’s questions.
Horizons and the Future for Nonprofit AI Usage
As the ways in which we interact with AI shift rapidly, many nonprofit teams are actively exploring more opportunities to use AI to drive efficiency – so we’re excited to see all the ways this conversation will evolve, even over the next six months to a year.
Nonprofits may begin trying out AI tools like virtual engagement officers, chatbots that manage intake or tip lines, tools for versioning videos and social advertising, and more. And many nonprofits are tuned into the ways AI can support targeting and segmentation to inform appeals for upgrades or cut back on sends while driving the same results.
The future of fundraising, we believe, is in the ability to send messaging to the people who want to hear from us and support our mission, in the way they want to hear from us. As technology evolves and we continue to innovate to create the kinds of tools that support deeper, one-to-one connected communications that help build long-term relationships with supporters, nonprofits can have a great deal to gain from the thoughtful application of expanding technology.
Learn more about our Nonprofit Advisory Board and access more of their strategies and resources.
