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Three weeks ago, in partnership with Matthew Lambert, Dan Frezza, Meghan Dauler Palombo, Bruce Aird and Laurie Soenen and their teams at William & Mary and College of Charleston, we completed the first set of tests with the world's first fully autonomous fundraiser, a Virtual Engagement Officer.
The VEO was assigned 119 donors and tasked with soliciting end-of-year gifts from these LYBUNTS, SYBUNTS and lapsed donors. These early tests were designed to prove that donors would be comfortable engaging with a VEO and that the VEO could inspire a few donors to make end-of-year gifts. The outcomes of these tests were conclusive, encouraging, surprising and exciting.
Of the 119 donors engaged, 13 gifts were made. These gifts are the most powerful evidence we have that autonomous fundraising is viable and that there are a subset of donors (potentially 10-20% of an organization’s donor pool) who might prefer or be willing to be engaged by a VEO.
This was also the first time we’ve had a glimpse into how productive an autonomous fundraiser could be. With the VEO closing 13 gifts, representing $3,400 from 119 donors over, at most, three engagement points in one week, we can loosely conclude that with a 1,000 donor portfolio, a VEO could generate at least $34,000 and maybe even $50,000-$150,000+, over a year’s engagement.
This revenue is important as, for the first time ever, the financial viability of an autonomous fundraiser has been conclusively proven. If a VEO costs $15,000 a year and generates $150k from its portfolio, there would be a 10:1 ROI, clearly displaying the monumental impact that's possible.
The VEO also made three fully independent email introductions to traditional staff members for donors. This proved that the VEO could find ways to engage donors and naturally pass them along to traditional fundraisers for a variety of reasons.
Finally, donors asked the VEOfive unsolicited questions, two of which related to past giving. Our team quickly came to the conclusion that donors expect the VEO to be able to answer specific questions about their past giving. We now strongly believe that if donors have a better understanding of their own past giving, they will likely make more thoughtful and informed decisions about their current and future giving. The problem, however, is that donors have never had direct access to their past giving data.
In response to this powerful insight, this week we will be announcing that the autonomous fundraiser now has direct API access to Blackbaud's Raiser’s Edge NXT. This ground-breaking integration will enable the autonomous fundraiser, for the first time ever, to use the database as its memory to securely answer specific questions that donors might have about their past giving.
There's still so much exploring to do, but it's clear that the impact of autonomous fundraising could have generational consequences on how donors are engaged and how fundraising happens for nonprofits of all sizes.