Beth Zimmerman doesn’t have a lot of free time. She is one of three people on the staff of the small nonprofit she founded, Pets for Patriots. So, as executive director, she is also responsible for the group’s fundraising. In the past, Zimmerman would spend multiple days working on each grant the group applied for.
“Grant writing is an extremely tedious, very time-consuming, very gut-wrenching activity,” Zimmerman says. Once, she spent nine hours over two days working on one grant. “I don’t have nine hours in a day to devote to just one thing. Frankly, I think I’d rather have a root canal most days than write a grant.”
So she turned to Grant Assistant, an AI tool for grant writing, and estimates it has cut the amount of time she spends on grant applications by 80 to 90 percent.
Zimmerman isn’t alone. Many nonprofit staff are turning to AI tools as their organizations have to do even more with less funding because of federal budget cuts and increased competition for grants. Grant writing isn’t the only thing nonprofits are using AI for. Many are using it for other fundraising activities, like prospect research, analyzing donor data, and identifying foundations that might be a good fit. Others use AI to write blog posts, newsletters, and other content as well as to streamline some of the administrative and program work their nonprofit does.
“AI could be useful for every department at an organization,” says CJ Orr, CEO of the fundraising consultancy the Orr Group. “It’s for fundraising, it’s for HR, it’s for operations, it’s for programs.”
More Time to Meet with Donors
ChatGPT took the world by storm at the end of 2022, and most fundraisers are well aware that AI functionality is being embedded in some of the professional tools they use. But it’s still hit or miss how much nonprofits are adopting AI, Orr says.
“A lot of them are still in the basic phase, one of understanding what AI is, how they use it responsibly, what their policies are,” he says.
Nonprofit professionals who are looking for ways to make their work more efficient or save time are discovering that AI is a good tool to add to their arsenal. “It’s not going to replace your entire budget, ” Orr says, “but it can help deliver services for less costs.”
He says many AI tools have free or trial versions available, so he encourages groups to “play around with them” to see how they might benefit your organization.
The AI grant-writing program that Zimmerman used helped her organization win a $30,000 grant by crafting a good first draft she could edit more quickly. Because of the time Zimmerman saves with the tool, she’s able to apply for more grants.
“Grants are a numbers game,” she says. “You win some, you lose some. But the more that you put out there, the more you’re going to win.”
Liz Clark at Prospect Sierra, a private school in California, has freed up time to talk to donors and create more engagement messages by using ChalkBooks, an AI prospect research tool.
“It’s a huge time saver,” says Clark, director of development and alumni relations for the school. “It allows someone to not have to sit at their desk and be doing research for hours to put together a report.”
The school is small and hasn’t traditionally had a prospect research department to gather information about donors and alumni, with the duties falling to development staff. But with the AI tool, Clark is able to put together fairly accurate reports she or the head of school can use to help analyze prospects. “Now we’re getting a full report in less than five minutes,” she says.
On larger development teams, where prospect researchers are often stretched thin, the tool allows for quicker turnaround on lower priority requests, says Simon Tumansky, CEO of ChalkBooks. “It’s giving the power of a prospect researcher to every single member of the team,” he says.
Alonda Williams, CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound, is all in on AI. That buy-in empowered chief development officer James Modie to look for ways AI could help him raise money more efficiently. One of Modie’s first experiments: using AI to look for trends in the donor database.
“We identified that we weren’t stewarding our donors in a way that was keeping them coming back,” Modie said at the AFP Icon conference. What donors wanted was more stories about the work the organization does. Using content-generation tools included with Microsoft Co-Pilot, the organization was able to create a steady stream of blog posts, email updates, and other posts to help keep donors engaged.
The security of your organization’s data is an important consideration when using AI. Microsoft Co-Pilot is a closed system, where Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound can upload organizational data to generate blog posts and messages to donors without worrying that information will be shared with others.
But that’s not always true with free tools. Orr has seen nonprofit employees use tools like ChatGPT to create first drafts of mailings, newsletters, and other materials. He says it’s important for organizations to create AI policies that ensure personally identifiable information is protected.
Program Help
AI tools also help nonprofits maximize time in their program work, too — which frees up staff to get more done. Anthos Home is a nonprofit that helps connect people who don’t have stable housing with available units in New York City.
With so much need and the large number of apartments throughout the city, matching eligible applicants to appropriate housing is a taxing process without technology, says Jeremy Morse, deputy chief of program services.
“It can be a complex equation of matching a household that has a certain housing size, has specific accessibility needs, and has a voucher that is approved up to a certain amount to match that with the specific units that are in our bank across the five boroughs,” Morse says.
With funding from the Robin Hood Foundation, Anthos Home turned to AI to streamline and speed the process of matching tenants to homes that meet their requirements and show them the properties more quickly. Previously they were using a mix of systems, including Excel spreadsheets, Salesforce databases, and Outlook calendars.
“It helps take the edge off of high-volume work with a complex system,” Morse says. “It is meant to help solve a problem, specifically to provide a streamlined pathway for voucher holders to find homes and get out of shelters, precarious housing situations, or homelessness.”
Program staff at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound saw similar benefits using AI to recommend matches between volunteer big siblings and children in need, CEO Williams said at the conference. With hundreds of potential big siblings to be matched with children, the previous manual process meant some people who were a strong match for the child, but happened to be at the bottom of a 300-candidate list of possible matches, might be missed. The group received grant funding to introduce AI into its matching process.
Both Anthos Home and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound use the technology to more quickly match people. AI means staff are making choices from 5 to 10 possible matches instead of hundreds.
“There’s no AI that’s ever making any decisions around housing choices,” Morse says. “Rather it’s just informing us of what options may be the best fit.”
Morse encourages nonprofits to consider AI as a way to improve the effectiveness of their programs.
“AI can do a lot of logical problem solving quickly that lets our staff who are passionate about helping people actually help people quicker and more efficiently,” he says. “AI is great because it can navigate all of the many logistical challenges, so we can deal with the complexities of human situations. It creates more pathways for human interactions.”
