AI Agents and the Future of Fundraising

Over the past few months I’ve had hundreds of conversations about autonomous fundraising, the impact that independent AI will have on the Social Good sector and just how good agent AI can be for our industry.

These are the type of conversations I imagine all builders of AI have with potential end users. What’s unique about my conversations is that they all now explore how we can push the boundaries of what’s currently invented and what we believe might be possible.

It’s commonly accepted that nonprofit fundraising technology lags behind applied technology in the for-profit space. Broad and general acceptance of innovations like cloud-based CRMs, mobile payment processing and general AI trail behind the for-profit space around three to five years.

One challenge in this history of late adoption is that nonprofits don’t typically have a seat at the table when technology is being shaped and developed. Subsequently, the most powerful solutions are built for sales and marketing purposes, then retrofitted for the nonprofit fundraising sector. These technologies were never shaped at the ground level to be nonprofit solutions, so they inevitably leave unrealized opportunity and value on the table for a very long time.

Part of our team’s goal and mission is to (for the first time ever) lead the technological innovation that defines the future of our industry, from the beginning of the innovation. Our hope is that sales and marketing teams will learn from what fundraisers do with autonomous fundraising.

In early September, we’ll announce the organizations in the first cohort of our AI R&D partnership program. This cohort consists of large and mid-sized higher education institutions, hospitals and nonprofits. Each has thoughtful and courageous leaders who believe that, if we can accelerate the development of agent AI specifically for nonprofit fundraising, we have a shot to change fundraising and, ultimately, change the world.

My team and I believe that we are in a race, not against competitors, but against time as we work to accelerate our research, development and deployment of autonomous AI. No nonprofit has a strategy of raising less money over the next five, ten or twenty years. AI will undoubtedly be a part of helping every organization best engage donors and fund their world-changing missions at levels never seen before.

This week our team is working on continuing our tests around how an autonomous fundraising independently executes stewardship opportunities with donors. It turns out, there are lots of ways for a Virtual Engagement Officer to thank a donor for their gift, which means that the autonomous fundraiser has to discern which ways might be most impactful for different types of donors and learn from both those predictions and the results. Lots of great learnings and, at scale, we believe that this type of personalized stewardship for all donors will redefine the donor experience throughout the entire giving pyramid.

Have a great week.