A Nonprofit Guide to Streamlining Content Creation with AI

Nonprofit professionals are quickly becoming familiar with AI tools for content creation. Over half of nonprofits now use AI tools in some capacity, and the sector is adopting these solutions faster than for-profit organizations. 

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And it’s not hard to understand why. Nonprofits, especially smaller ones, are often low on staff power, and AI acts as a virtual assistant to increase staff productivity and capacity. These solutions allow organizations to create the same amount of content or more in a shorter time frame. 

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But the best nonprofit websites and blogs, email campaigns, social media posts, and grant applications aren’t thrown together with no human supervision—they require careful collaboration between subject matter experts and AI tools to create valuable content that supports your marketing goals and maintains high quality.

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With that in mind, this guide was designed to help nonprofit professionals determine the best practices for streamlining content creation with AI and a few risks to be aware of. Let’s get started. 

How to effectively use AI in nonprofit content creation

Think about your nonprofit’s standard content creation process for a piece of content like a blog post. One of your staff members may spend 5-10 hours working on one piece of content—essentially an entire work day.

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With AI content support and fundraising solutions (such as Momentum, ChatGPT, Jasper, Grammarly, etc.), you can significantly reduce the time spent creating digital content, giving your staff more time to devote to in-person donor interactions or other top priorities. 

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Specifically, let’s explore a few ways AI tools help facilitate more productive content creation: 

Analyze your audience and create personas

Often, it can be challenging to determine the best ways to reach your nonprofit’s audience. Effective content reaches nonprofit supporters with the right message, at the right time, via their preferred communication channel. 

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AI content creation solutions analyze your nonprofit’s supporter base and create audience personas based on common traits. For example, let’s say your nonprofit typically caters to these audiences: 

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• Major donors
• Mid-level donors
• Monthly donors
• Planned/legacy donors
• Volunteers
• Beneficiaries
• Corporate sponsors

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To build in-depth personas, provide specific details for each audience to your AI content solution. The AI tool will learn key information about each group, such as their giving habits, campaign preferences, and areas of your mission that resonate with their values. The solution will compile these details into distinct groups, alongside insights about every segment’s preferences, values, giving motivations, and behaviors.

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Then, steward donors and other audience members with customized content journeys. For example, let’s say you want to create a series of blog articles with related social media posts to engage mid-level donors more deeply in your work. Reference your mid-level donor personas to understand their motivations and the types of stories that would strongly resonate with them.

Increase content creation efficiency

As mentioned above, increasing your staff’s capacity and productivity is one of the most significant benefits of using AI in content creation. 

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According to Kanopi Studios’ AI guide for creatives, “AI tools can help designers and content creators to work more efficiently by automating repetitive tasks, such as resizing images or optimizing content for SEO. This can save a significant amount of time and allow designers to focus on more creative aspects of their work.”

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Think about your organization’s most routine, repetitive content creation tasks. Which of these tasks can easily be managed by an AI solution? 

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For example, you can save time by using AI tools that:

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• Sync supporter data across multiple platforms to find, prioritize, and conduct outreach to potential donors more easily.
• Automate social media posting, such as generating posts from recent blog content.
• Conduct SEO analysis to reduce time spent on keyword research, SERP analysis, and metadata generation. 

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Your marketing team should still oversee all AI outputs to ensure factual accuracy and consistency with your brand’s voice. However, allocating these tasks to AI solutions will make the human review step much more streamlined and straightforward, allowing your staff to focus on bringing the content to life with their unique insights. 

Generating content ideas and briefs

Writer’s block is something every nonprofit marketing or content creation professional has experienced. Seasoned professional writers, in particular, may struggle to develop new content ideas or strategies after working with your mission for years. 

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Use tailored AI solutions to eliminate writer’s block by generating content ideas, outlines, and briefs. With a content creation tool, you can come up with more ideas for: 

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• Blog post topics
• Email campaign ideas
• Social media post copy
• Grant application outlines
• Infographic ideas
• Outlines for impact reports

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Advanced content creation tools like Jasper or ChatGPT can even create first drafts of each content type. However, as we said earlier, human oversight over this process is essential. We recommend using AI solutions as a tactical tool rather than a complete replacement for all content creation. We’ll explore the key reasons for this in the next section. 

AI content creation risks to know

We would be remiss if we didn’t highlight a few key risks to be aware of when using AI content creation tools. These risks are actually opportunities to improve your AI content creation processes even more, allowing you to create content quickly without sacrificing quality. 

SEO risks

Using AI content solutions poses a few key challenges for your SEO strategy. While Google does not explicitly demote content just because it is AI-written, it can penalize your content if it is not “helpful, reliable, [or] people-first.”

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Without careful oversight, AI content tools can generate generic or unhelpful outputs from time to time. Ensure subject matter experts review your content before it is published or sent to your audience to maintain high quality and originality and provide unique insights for your audience. 

Legal complications

AI solutions have gotten into murky legal territory regarding copyright legislation. Legislators are contending with the question of who ultimately owns AI-generated content. 

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That’s why we recommend nonprofits take a balanced, careful approach to AI solutions. Using these tools for content planning, automation, and ideation will reduce legal risks. 

Poor user experience

A lack of human oversight of AI content not only poses SEO risks but can also harm the user experience. No matter what sector your nonprofit operates in, your audience won’t engage with bland, generic, or inaccurate content.

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Maintain a high website quality and online marketing presence by ensuring your content is accurate, updated, accessible, and valuable. Audit your content regularly to ensure it matches your brand voice and values and helps achieve your audience engagement goals. 

Wrapping up: Assess the effectiveness of your AI content creation process

Set clear expectations and goals for content creation streamlining before working with AI tools. For example, you could set goals around:

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• Reducing the time needed to create content
• Enhancing content quality
• Increasing content output
• Receiving more audience engagement (measured via email opens, social media metrics, website visits, etc.) 

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Track these metrics throughout the content lifecycle to understand where you’re making efficiency gains and where there is room for improvement. Iterate your strategies over time to find a workflow that best fits your needs.

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