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When you’re on a mission to build the world’s most experienced fundraiser for the purpose of expanding fundraising capacity for organizations working to change the world, every time we introduce a Virtual Engagement Officer (VEO) to a portfolio of donors is an incredible opportunity. We’re learning so much about how Autonomous Fundraising can adapt to help VEOs reach this high bar for experience faster.
St. John Fisher University introduced its new VEO Quinn to a portfolio of donors and began engagement last week. Quinn identified donors to prioritize and used highly personalized emails and text messages to thank them for recent gifts, wish them happy birthday, and share autonomously generated cultivation content, much like a human fundraiser would. Quinn even solicited some donors for annual gift renewals.
Quinn’s job is to draw from every donor interaction, gain knowledge, learn, and adapt to create highly-personal relationships that are strategically aligned with SJF’s goals. I’d like to share a few recent discoveries from St. John Fisher and Quinn that are propelling us forward:
Wins:
Hyper-personalization: Quinn pieced together data that many human gift officers wouldn’t by autonomously combining birthday and stewardship messages into a single engagement. Just like the most conscientious fundraisers, VEOs always check every available data point to create exactly the right interaction for the donor at a given point in time.
Connections: Quinn showed the ability to bridge the gap between human fundraisers and donors, offering personalized assistance and ensuring that the right connections are made when needed. Quinn didn’t replace the human touch but complemented it perfectly, connecting donors with a human gift officer to facilitate an introduction to a dean and to learn about recognition opportunities.
Building Memory: We are particularly excited to see VEOs begin to develop a “memory” of donor conversations. These early foundations are critical for future interactions, and empower Quinn to personalize engagements beyond an initial dataset and develop communications and donor journeys that last beyond a single conversation or gift.
Learnings:
Relationship Escalation: In some cases, Quinn learned so much about a donor in a short time that solicitations could have been appropriate and well-received. A question we need to answer: how do we train a VEO to handle asks in ways that mirror a human fundraiser’s intuition. Refining Quinn’s ability to transition insights gained into well-timed solicitations is a focus for ongoing development.
Review and Approval: The Version2 team is taking a "review and approve" approach to the messages that VEOs autonomously generate. We believe this level of quality control will pay off in the long run by building trust with both the donors themselves and the organizations that have entrusted our team with their donors.
Off-Topic Interactions: We have multiple examples of donors asking VEOs, including Quinn, for information that doesn’t relate to their work as fundraisers. We’re working to define how to allow a VEO to engage in these organic conversations while redirecting them back to organizational goals. Establishing boundaries to steer conversations toward specific outcomes is essential for maintaining both personalization and strategic alignment.
Autonomous Fundraising is already adding immense fundraising capacity. We’re on an important track where every interaction strengthens a VEO’s ability to become the most experienced fundraiser possible.