How AI Can Help Your Nonprofit Secure More Major Gifts

Especially for nonprofits with limited resources, artificial intelligence (AI) can provide extra help with a range of everyday activities, from creating donor outreach messages to compiling data to even providing advice for strategic decisions. This has subsequently transformed the fundraising landscape, leading many nonprofit professionals to innovate with these tools and even leverage them to secure vital major gifts. 

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Typically, major giving relies heavily on individualized, one-on-one connections between prospective donors and dedicated major gift officers. As a result, you may assume there is no place for AI in these relationships. However, experts in nonprofit AI tools beg to differ and are ready to share numerous ways your organization can leverage AI to boost its major gift strategy. 

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In this guide, we’ll review three ways AI can help you earn more major gifts, as well as what types of tools to look for and how to use them responsibly. 

Automate repetitive tasks. 

Like any type of fundraiser, major gifts generate a lot of data and require your team to perform many repetitive administrative tasks to stay organized. For instance, you’ll need to maintain donor profiles, assess prospect research data, schedule donor meetings, and establish major gift officers’ workflows. 

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Fortunately, AI can automate many of these tasks, freeing up your major gifts team to devote their time to activities that require a human touch. 

Tools

AI tools are built to save time, and a few top software solutions for nonprofits to consider include:

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• Momentum’s AI Donor Engagement Platform leverages data from all of your other software—like your CRM and wealth screening tools—to provide recommended insights that help you engage donors.
• DonorSearch Ai is a prospecting tool that identifies and organizes major giving candidates based on relevant characteristics to make predictions about their likelihood of contributing. 
• ClickUp AI is a project management solution that streamlines tasks by providing AI-powered progress updates and project summaries. 

Considerations

Review all work completed by AI, even routine processes. While AI can automatically handle many processes with ease, it is always possible that vague directions, open-ended prompts, or incomplete datasets can result in errors. For example, if your AI creates and delivers project updates to your team, review its messages before hitting Send to ensure your tool is accurately highlighting the most important information. 

Identify and assess major giving candidates.

One of the most challenging aspects of securing major donations is finding promising giving candidates. Your team needs to spend time conducting prospect research, analyzing data to identify the best potential donors, and then pursuing those donors to begin the cultivation process. 

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Technology has come a long way in speeding up this process. For instance, wealth and philanthropic screening tools can conduct extensive research on donors for nonprofits, allowing them to uncover valuable information, such as their charitable giving and engagement history, political contributions, real estate holdings, business partnerships, and other markers of a strong major giving candidate. 

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AI takes major gift research a step further. These tools can not only uncover donors’ capacity and affinity for making a major gift but also provide recommendations for how and when your team should approach them. 

Tools

Outside of automation tools, most AI platforms can generally be sorted into two categories: generative and predictive. DonorSearch’s guide to generative vs. predictive AI explains the difference between these two types of solutions:

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• Generative AI produces content, like written copy, images, and videos. These tools are fed large datasets to identify patterns and use that information to create new content.
• Predictive AI analyzes data to forecast future outcomes and provide recommendations.

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Nonprofits looking for assistance in spotting and stewarding major giving candidates should invest in a predictive AI platform. Specifically, look for prospect research tools that include AI functionality to more effectively assess donors’ giving potential and likelihood, as well as how they will respond to various types of outreach. Some tools even provide sector-specific predictive models, allowing healthcare and educational institutions to assess how their missions will impact major giving. 

Considerations

While AI can provide useful suggestions, it shouldn’t be making decisions for you. Assess your predictive AI’s recommendations, read its rationale for each suggestion, and use the results to make your final decisions based on your knowledge of your nonprofit, team, and donors.  

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For instance, a major gift officer might know from personal conversations with a major donor that they plan to slow down their rate of giving in the coming year due to economic concerns. However, because the donor has yet to make that change, your AI tools may still see them as a prospect for increased future giving. In situations like this, you would need to make a note in the donor’s profile and then assess your AI platform’s other recommendations. 

Craft major giving outreach material.

AI can transform the way you engage with major donors, but remember that most major gifts still rely on personal connections with your nonprofit. It’s essential to build an individualized relationship with major giving prospects before making your donation appeal. 

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Additionally, after a donor makes a major gift, you should keep in touch to restart the donation cycle and ideally secure larger future gifts. For example, Double the Donation’s donor stewardship guide highlights a few engagement opportunities you might provide:

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• Invitations to cause-related lectures, workshops, and events
• Meetings with beneficiaries who were positively impacted by their contribution
• Facility and program site tours for a behind-the-scenes look at your work

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To help craft invitations, donation requests, thank you messages, and other outreach materials, you can incorporate AI into your content creation processes. 

Tools

Generative AI can help your major gift officers and marketing team produce a wide range of content to engage your major donors. These AI tools are versatile and can do more than simply produce a message themselves. For instance, you might use AI to:

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• Create message templates for communications you regularly send, like thank-you letters or event invitations
• Assess messages you’ve written, helping identify opportunities for improvement and ensuring your writing stays on brand
• Brainstorm ideas for how you can connect with donors based on their history with your organization

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When it comes to generative AI tools, you're probably familiar with ChatGPT for written content creation. However, some nonprofit AI tools (like Momentum) have similar functionalities that are more tailored to your organization's needs. You can also use various generative AI solutions to develop images, videos, and reference reports of your prospect research data.

Considerations

Like with internal communications, don’t send a major donor a message created by an AI tool without first reviewing it. While AI can quickly generate content, it lacks your team’s deep knowledge of your mission and your donors. As a result, even with highly specific prompts, its content will likely be too generic to effectively contribute to developing personalized supporter relationships. 

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Instead, use AI as an outlining and brainstorming tool. For instance, you might ask it to create templates, then edit the content it produces to create a message that fits your unique needs. 

Start securing major gifts with AI.

From identifying major giving prospects to stewarding donors, AI can improve how you engage with major donors at every point in their journey with your nonprofit. Start researching AI tools to find platforms that can make your operations more efficient and accurate, ensuring you’re working with trusted providers who will help you make the most of your new solutions in a responsible way.