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My team and I have been fortunate to spend this past week connecting in person with advancement teams at three different conferences. My conversations with advancement leaders and foundation board members made it evident that we are about to see a pivotal shift in the digital labor movement, not just within fundraising, but across industries worldwide. From healthcare to education, retail to manufacturing, organizations are implementing digital workforce strategies to solve shortages in staffing, efficiency, growth, and more over the next 1-5 years.
Here in fundraising and with Version2, the entire nonprofit community has the ability to lead in the application of AI and digital labor as we address our fundraising staffing shortage. For the first time, nonprofits are shaping AI for Social Good, rather than inheriting retrofitted technology from other industries. The giving pyramid, long constrained by the physical limitations of human teams, is now being reshaped with the ability for digital labor to provide personal, consistent engagements deeper into the pyramid, even during times of transition when teams are operating with fewer hands on deck.
In 2025, nonprofits that build and implement strategies for managing a digital workforce will see the labor shortage in fundraising finally begin to ease. Autonomous Fundraising is demonstrating that the digital workforce isn’t just about automating repetitive tasks—it’s about scaling fundraising capacity. For the first time, we’ll have tools that autonomously drive personalized engagement, hand off appropriate interactions to human fundraisers, and empower human colleagues to focus on strategy, creativity, and building relationships.
Matthew Lambert, Senior Vice President for University Advancement at William & Mary and CEO of the W&M Foundation recently shared, “My staff was ecstatic because fully autonomous fundraising is helping them do their jobs better, without adding anything to their plates! That rarely, if ever happened, with new technologies in fundraising,” while presenting to a packed room at the AGB Foundational Leadership Conference in Washington, DC.
The digital workforce is ushering in a new era of possibility—one where we can scale our impact, expand our missions, and build sustainable solutions for the challenges of tomorrow. Technology doesn’t replace human ingenuity; it amplifies it. And this is our opportunity to lead the way in showing how the digital workforce can transform not only fundraising but the future of work as a whole.