By Meredith Gray, Head of Marketing at Keela – a complete software solution for nonprofits looking to grow revenue, centralize and manage data, and deepen donor engagement.
Does it seem like everyone you know is raving about a new tool that’s revolutionizing the way employees in all industries are doing their work? Yes, we’re talking about ChatGPT, an AI-powered tool that’s gaining widespread popularity on social media and revolutionizing the common workplace.
While ChatGPT may be all the buzz, have you considered how it and other artificial intelligence tools could enhance your fundraising efforts? We’ve done the legwork and compiled the top ways Chat GPT and AI can help your team save resources, perform tasks, and raise more funds.
So what exactly is this website that’s causing such a stir? ChatGPT is a powerful online tool that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to process and respond to user queries. With the ability to generate human-like responses to a variety of topics, employees of all industries are using it to increase their efficiency! For nonprofits, it’s proving to be a valuable resource for writing communications, deepening engagement with supporters, and fundraising.
It’s no secret that technology is advancing, and nonprofits will need to get on board if they want to stay ahead of the curve and ensure that they are retaining their top donors. But quick technological advancements can be overwhelming, causing many people to feel uncertain about where to begin. Keep reading to check out our list of ways your nonprofit can leverage ChatGPT and use AI to enhance donor relationships, optimize communications, and ultimately increase revenue.
8 Ways Nonprofits Can Use ChatGPT to Raise More
Before diving into the impressive capabilities of ChatGPT, it’s important to acknowledge that it does have limitations. While this tool is a valuable asset for nonprofits, it shouldn’t be seen as a substitute for human interaction. It’s very important to thoroughly review and edit any responses generated by ChatGPT, particularly those that you plan to make public, such as website content. With that being said, ChatGPT is still an exceptional resource for nonprofits, and we’re excited to explore all of the ways it can benefit your organization!
1) Creating Custom Donation Appeals in Minutes
Use ChatGPT to craft a sequence of donation appeals with the goal of encouraging your stakeholders to make a donation. Simply enter a few details to guide it in the direction you want your email to go, and it will generate email and/or letter copy based on what you entered. This will create a great first draft, but it’s important to personalize the content by adding stories from your community or sharing updates on the progress made towards achieving your mission. ChatGPT may prompt you for more context, so providing as much detail as possible will help with the copywriting process and save you valuable time.
2) Promoting an Important Event to Encourage Registration and Ticket Sales
Believe it or not, ChatGPT can assist you in drafting compelling event invitations, social media posts, and promoting your fundraising events, including annual galas and fun runs. By using ChatGPT, you can save time on writing promotional emails, recruitment posts, and even on-site signage copy. This can lighten the load on your team, enabling them to focus on what truly matters – making a difference in your community.
3) Creatively Segmenting Donors and Drafting Custom Communications
ChatGPT can be helpful not only for creating segmented communications but also for identifying your segments in the first place. Try entering phrases such as “how should nonprofits segment donors” or “what are common nonprofit donor segments” into the tool to gain fresh insights and innovative ideas for personalizing your donor communications. Tailoring your messaging for each segment can result in increased engagement and higher email open rates, ultimately leading to more significant impact for your nonprofit.
4) Stewarding and Engaging Donors
One of the best things about ChatGPT is its ability to assist with donor stewardship, which is critical to boost donor retention. With ChatGPT, the heavy lifting in copywriting can be handled for you. The tool can draft stewardship emails, create impactful copy for annual reports, and even generate speeches for stewardship events. By using ChatGPT to write these communications for you, you can then use a tool like Keela to automate as much of it as possible and never worry that your donors are feeling forgotten.
5) Maximizing Your Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Efforts
Use ChatGPT to write compelling fundraising appeals for your peer-to-peer fundraisers, and give them all of the tools they need to raise money on your behalf. This could include fundraising email templates, motivational copy for peer-to-peer fundraising pages, and social media posts centered around your cause. Doing this work for your fundraisers helps to grow your nonprofit’s reach and engage new potential donors through your existing fundraisers.
6) Sharing Impact
With just a few details about your organization, ChatGPT can write boilerplate language about your impact, mission, and programs. This information can then be given to your donors and used on your marketing channels. A few places to make sure you have boiler plate language are your website, annual and impact reports, one-on-one donor communications, and newsletters or publications distributed by your organization.
7) Engaging Volunteers and Your Board
ChatGPT can help you recruit, engage, and manage volunteers, including your board members. By creating personalized emails, it can help you streamline processes, share updates, and ensure that the right people are getting the necessary information they need to support your organization. ChatGPT can also craft stewardship emails to your board or provide them with essential mission updates.
8) Creating New and Exciting Fundraisers
Looking for inspiration for a new fundraising challenge or a fresh approach to your campaign emails? Type it in to ChatGPT and let it help you generate new ideas that will excite and motivate your supporters to take action. It’s pretty common to struggle with keeping your communications engaging and relevant, but with ChatGPT’s assistance, you can easily mix it up and add some zest to your messaging.
While ChatGPT is receiving a lot of attention lately, it’s important not to overlook the other powerful artificial intelligence tools that can assist you and your team in reaching your goals. Although AI for the nonprofit sector isn’t a new concept, the possibilities continue to grow. This means that AI tools will play a very important role in the future of fundraising.
In addition to ChatGPT, there are several other artificial intelligence tools that can benefit nonprofits of all types and sizes.
6 Artificial Intelligence Tools for Nonprofit Organizations
1) Predictive Analytics
You might be wondering, what exactly are predictive analytics? We know that term can be a bit of a mouthful, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. Predictive analytics is one of the most powerful machine learning systems and artificial intelligence tools available to the nonprofit sector.
Predictive analytics uses algorithms to give insights into your data, which makes it a little different from traditional data analytics. In simpler terms, predictive analytics shows you valuable information about your donor database and analyzes large volumes of data points to give you actionable takeaways. Whether you’re trying to identify your next major gift donor, prevent donor lapse, or uncover new giving opportunities, predictive analytics is key.
Predictive analytics help ensure that no potential donations are left on the table! Keela is one of the few CRMs that includes predictive analytics, making it an excellent option for nonprofit organizations of all sizes seeking to increase fundraising revenue.
2) Automation
Did we surprise you with this one? That’s right, automation is in fact an AI tool, and one of the most useful ones for the nonprofit sector. It’s time to leave the tedious, manual, and repetitive tasks behind and explore how automation can help you schedule your communications, set reminders and increase efficiency in your organization. Plus, automation is one of Keela’s top features and allows our customers to get thousands of hours back every year, time they now get to spend building relationships with donors.
3) Chatbots
Have you ever been browsing a website and noticed a chatbot pop up in the corner of your screen? While you may assume they’re only used in the corporate world, chatbots can also be a helpful form of artificial intelligence for nonprofits. Organizations such as Kids Help Phone have already recognized the potential of chatbots as an effective support tool on their website. As more donors look for alternative ways to engage with nonprofits, chatbots are likely to become increasingly popular, especially with millennials and Gen Z who are more accustomed to interacting with technology.
One of the more significant advantages of chatbots is their versatility – they can be set up to handle a wide range of tasks. Whether you want to help your donors navigate your website (maybe to help them find that donation button), share mission updates, or promote an event, a chatbot can take care of it for you.
4) Prospect Research Tools
The days of endlessly scouring the internet for information on potential donors are long gone. With the progress of AI in prospect research, you can now access tools that provide valuable insights into your prospects, including wealth indicators and demographic data that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.
A great example of this is Keela’s integration with Donor Search which provides actionable information that will identify the best prospects for major giving, annual giving, and planned giving donors.
Did you know that over 88% of all fundraising revenue comes from 12% of donors – major donors? It’s true! Major donors are vital to any nonprofit fundraising strategy and it’s critical to keep track of major donor information so you can identify the right people for the right campaigns. Download Keela’s Major Donor Profile Template to get started with raising more for your cause.
4) Text and Sentiment Analysis
Text and sentiment analysis is the process of identifying and analyzing information from text. Wouldn’t you love to find out what people are saying about you on social media or in online posts? Text and sentiment analysis will do that for you so that you can better understand how your content is resonating with your audience and do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t!
5) Image and Video Analysis
AI solutions can be harnessed by nonprofit organizations to analyze images and videos, allowing you to identify patterns and trends that could impact your work. This technology is particularly valuable for mission work, such as monitoring changes in wildlife populations or evaluating the effectiveness of conservation efforts.
6) Grammar and spelling tools
Whether you prefer to have your copy written by a human or a machine, tools for correcting spelling and grammar are a prime example of artificial intelligence for nonprofits. Platforms like Grammarly let you to unleash your creativity in copywriting without having to worry about whether you should use a comma or a semicolon!
To sum it up, artificial intelligence is game-changing technology for nonprofits. It can help with operational decisions, support effective data management, enhance the fundraising process, increase donor engagement, and automate time-consuming tasks.
By leveraging AI solutions to analyze large volumes of data, identify patterns, and make predictions, you will be able to make data-driven informed decisions more efficiently and effectively. With an increasing number of AI and machine learning tools becoming available, it’s critical for nonprofits to consider how and when to utilize these technologies. While nothing can replace the personal touch, AI can serve as a valuable assistant, alleviating the administrative burdens that often fall on nonprofit professionals and freeing up time to build stronger, lasting relationships with donors.
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