The results of a new study on donors and artificial intelligence are a signal for nonprofits to pause and consider whether their use of the technology could negatively impact trust, according to the report’s authors.
“The rate of A.I. adoption is profound,” said Nathan Chappell, study co-author. “Most, if not every, organization has taken some things for granted, specifically what donors think.”
Chappell, who serves as senior vice president of DonorSearchAI, co-authored the self-funded study with Cherian Koshy, vice president of Kindsight. The report is not affiliated with either company or Fundraising.AI, an industry collective founded by Chappell in 2018 to promulgate safeguards around the use of A.I. in philanthropy.
It’s important for nonprofits to get A.I. use right, Chappell says, because “the nonprofit sector operates in the currency of trust.”
Nearly a Third of Donors Are Apprehensive of A.I.
The study, conducted in August, surveyed 1,006 donors in the U.S. who have given to a nonprofit in the past year. Survey respondents were asked about their familiarity with A.I. and whether its use would affect their willingness to donate.
Thirty-one percent of respondents said they would be less likely to donate to charities that used A.I., which the authors said indicates some apprehension towards the technology’s adoption.
“A third of people are questioning if this is good or bad,” Chappell said. “It’s an easy takeaway to say, ‘Look, we need to safeguard and promote transparency and trust.’”
Thirty-four percent of respondents said A.I. use would not affect their donations either way, while 9 percent said they would be more likely to donate.
Overall, 82 percent of respondents had some knowledge of A.I. Eighty-six percent of those surveyed said they considered transparency in A.I. usage to be either “very” or “somewhat important.” When it came to personalizing donation appeals with A.I., such as chatbots or avatars resembling humans, nearly 40 percent of respondents expressed some level of discomfort.
Overall comfort levels with A.I. use appeared to coincide with the individual’s familiarity with the technology itself, the authors noted. The youngest respondents, ages 18 to 29, reported higher levels of A.I. familiarity, while those older than 60 were less familiar with the tech.
Bill Stanczykiewicz, director of the Fund Raising School at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, called the report a “positive step forward” in helping the philanthropic community make sense of what role A.I. should play in their organizations.
“What we have right now is anecdotes,” Stanczykiewicz said. “The plural of the word anecdote is not data. We need data. This is the first step to data.”
Stanczykiewicz said concerns over A.I. adoption are not dissimilar to the fears once expressed about a myriad of disruptive technologies that we now take for granted, such as television or smartphones. But the dynamic nature of A.I., an ever-evolving technology that builds upon itself, does require organizations to take a proactive approach, including asking questions about how A.I. may be unknowingly embedded into tools and software they are already using.
“A.I. in fundraising is here, and this is an emerging tool and resource that all nonprofits need to be aware of,” Stanczykiewicz said. “At its best, A.I. does a lot of the rote, mechanical tasks of fundraising and then that frees up the fundraiser for the best part, which is spending time in person with donors.”
Upsides to A.I. & Recommendations
Stanczykiewicz said smaller nonprofits stand to gain some of the most benefits from A.I. use by allowing them to become more efficient.
When it comes to potential upsides, those surveyed believed A.I. could help nonprofits detect fraud, improve their operations, and ramp up fundraising efforts.
For Koshy and Chappell, the findings show that many donors believe A.I. can help nonprofits, but transparency remains key. They also were relieved that many donors shared their concerns when it came to the potential for A.I. to diminish the human role in philanthropy.
Sixty percent of respondents cited a lack of human touch in interactions as well as data-security risks as their top concerns for A.I. use by charities. More than 40 percent also said they were significantly concerned by the prospect of A.I. adoption replacing humans and resulting in job losses in the charity sector.
The report outlines several considerations nonprofits may want to assess and implement around A.I.:
- Prioritize the use of A.I. behind the scenes with fraud-detection tools and improvements in operational efficiency
- Clearly communicate how A.I. use will add value to the organization instead of replacing humans, including any impacts on staffing
- Develop and communicate robust strategies to protect data privacy
- Create and share clear guidelines on how A.I. is being used, including how the technology factors into decision making and what ethical considerations were made
- Tailor A.I. messaging to specific age groups to build greater overall awareness and understanding of the technology
- Provide users with mechanisms to opt-out of A.I. usage when possible and implement the technology gradually
- Share real-life examples of how A.I. use is improving the organization’s efficiency or detecting fraud or other ways of tangible impact
More long-term and international research is needed to assess how attitudes change as adoption of A.I. becomes more commonplace throughout the world, Koshy and Chappell said. They contend nonprofits have an opportunity to lead the way when it comes to responsible A.I. guidelines in a way that the private sector does not.
“There’s no way the market is going to solve these types of problems,” Koshy said. “It’s smart of nonprofits to be ahead of the game.”
