EP 105: AI in Fundraising: Building Trust with Stakeholders

This is the Everyday AI show, the everyday podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business and everyday life.

How can we use AI in an area like fundraising? Right. Nonprofits, non government agencies, they can use this. You know, it's, this is actually something near and dear to my heart. I spent 10 years working at a nonprofit. So I'm extremely excited to talk about today how we can use AI in fundraising. So welcome. My name is Jordan Wilson. I'm the host of Everyday AI. This is your daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter helping everyday people learn and leverage AI. Right. I know there are so many people who work in this industry who want to hear some secrets from our guest today. So give us, give us a couple minutes, but first we're going to go over the daily AI news. It's something we do every single day. This is how we keep up, y'. All. We talk about it. All right, so let's start at the top. If you're not getting good results in AI, maybe you should be nice to your AI chatbot chatbots and coach them through it. So a new Google DeepMind study has some surprising results. So they found that the phrase take a deep breath and work on this problem step by step, that was found to be the most effective prompt when using Google's own Palm 2 large language model. And using that and saying, hey, breathe and take it step by step, it caused math scores to soar. Pretty interesting. I believe. I read this a couple of months ago and I've been using this myself. So it's cool to see there's some actual data or science behind it. All right, so is there a new AI startup ready to take on Microsoft in the health field? All right, a new, called a new startup called Cordy aps, I believe is the name. Yeah, that's it. They are a medical software startup and they've raised $60 million to develop an AI powered system to automate paperwork for hospitals and health networks. So they'll also be competing with like the, the large language model we just talked about. Google's Palm Med, Palm 2. All right, last piece of news for the day. The medical field has another tool in the fight to predict genetic diseases. Google DeepMind recently, I guess released or developed a new AI tool to help in identifying these genetic diseases. It is called alpha missance and it can predict whether DNA mutations are likely to cause genetic diseases or not. It's always fascinating, you know, and I've talked about this on the show, you know, sectors that are really embracing AI technology and those that aren't. The medical field is doing some amazing things with AI technology and disease prevention. You love to see it, but you probably came here to see something else. You probably came here to talk about fundraising. So as a reminder, if you're listening on the podcast, check your show notes. A ton of great resources in there, but we always include a link back to a discussion so you can come and talk to our expert of the day and ask them questions. So it's an interactive, everyday AI is an inter interactive community where we all learn AI together. So let's do that. Let's bring on our guest for today and talk about fundraising. So Ann Murphy is the CEO of Empowered Fundraiser, consulting and coaching. And thank you so much for joining the show.

Thanks for having me, Jordan. I'm really excited about the conversation today, especially because we share a background in nonprofit fundraising, and I know we're going to have a great conversation.

Oh, it's, it's good. Yeah. And I think that there's a lot of people that can relate and at least my experience, you know, you know, fun. You know, nonprofits are great, but sometimes they don't have all the resources, they don't have all the funds, obviously. And unfortunately, even with, with technology, things can kind of be behind. So, you know, and I'm, I'm curious, you know, what do you kind of just do? Just kind of lay the groundwork and talk a little bit about what you do at Empowered Fundraiser.

Thanks for asking. Okay, so I've, I caught the AI bug at approximately the same time, you know, other folks did, which was, it feels like 30 seconds ago. It also feels like 10 years ago. I'm sure you can relate to that. But it started with my mom in Downers Grove, like you and I have talked about. We have both have Chicago roots one way or another. She was the first person in the neighborhood to buy an Apple tie. So she taught me and then she launched. She was like the OG side hustler. So I learned the benefit of being an early joiner, and I'm trying to spread that, you know, that message throughout the nonprofit sector. And now I'm expanding into the private sector as well. But what our company does, does is we help organizations and individuals raise more money without years of trial and error because there are best practices that have been in place for a very long time. But as you know, the world has changed, and some of those best practices are really outdated. So we bring the, I mean, we're all practitioners. I have 12 subject matter experts and we bring what's really working today. We do consulting, coaching and we offer very large professional development programs for higher ed.

Love it. Love it. And hey, as a reminder everyone, because we already have some people, you know, that I know are interested here in the live stream. Get your questions in right now. So, so Mike saying good morning community. Yeah. Brian saying good morning super curious. Happy, happy to learn. Deborah saying that and brought her here. Yeah. We got, we got fans. We have, we have connections. I love it. Brian saying nonprofits can absolutely can use AI to their benefit. He works with several. Let's start there. Let's start with the kind of low hanging fruit to speak, but just talking generally and how can nonprofits use generative AI or what are the best ways they can? Because there's no shortage of ways, I'm sure. But if someone comes in and they're like an I work in a nonprofit. We need to, you know, raise more funds. How can I use AI? What's that one or two sentences that you're going to tell them?

I mean the opportunities are endless. So it's always a challenge for me to pick a few. I will share that I have tons of use cases ready for everybody. So just reach out to me on LinkedIn. It's hashtag ANN Murphy Philanthropy and I will share those. I am delighted for you all to get started on some of these. The ones that so seem to be the lowest hanging fruit and make people like breathe a sigh of relief, I would say are the pro, the use cases that allow us to collaborate better. So I always say, you know that when we're project managing, we want to like each other even better at the end of the project. But if you think about something like event planning, we usually don't like each other at the end of that. So doing an event plan, a strategy, the briefings, the invitation copy crunching, the data on the, on the attendees, the mailing list, the thank you notes afterward, the talking points. You can do an entire event. I'm not saying that you know, it's, it plans the event for you, but all the collaboration and the deliverables can be just so streamlined and such high quality. And as you know and lots of your listeners probably know, we can train our, our chatgpt on like let's say your executive director is making remarks. You've probably written remarks for her a thousand times before. You can train ChatGPT so that the first time you kick out those remarks, they're in the voice of your executive Director. So I'll share event planning as a use case. Very helpful. And then the other one that you and I have touched on is grant writing. It's such a pain point. I'll use the example of, you know, you've got one project and it's a fantastic one. It's in line with your mission, it's got all kinds of potential to change the world. And you're applying for six different grants. Well, each one of those RFPs has its own little twist on each question. Different word counts, different data requirements, and using a large language model, especially like with. It's not called code interpreter anymore. What is it?

Yeah, the advanced data analysis data.

Yes, they've. They have, they, they need marketing, they need some branding work. But you know, especially with the advantage of, of all of the technology associated with ChatGPT and OpenAI, things like grant applications can be a breeze. I was talking to somebody the other day who had stayed up three nights, three days, three nights straight to get a grant application in because of stuff like the formatting. Yeah, we don't need to do that. We have passion glasses in the nonprofit sector. But we deserve rest, we deserve spaciousness, we deserve to like our jobs. And staying up three days in a row is not going to make us like our jobs. So grant applications are a great use case.

Are you still running in circles trying to figure out how to actually grow.

Your business with AI?

Maybe your company has been tinkering with large language models for a year or more, but can't really get traction to find ROI on gen AI. Hey, this is Jordan Wilson, host of this very podcast. Companies like Adobe, Microsoft and Nvidia have partnered with us because they trust our expertise in educating the masses around generative AI to get ahead. And some of the most innovative companies in the country hire us to help with their AI strategy and to train hundreds of their employees on how to use Gen AI. So whether you're looking for ChatGPT training for thousands or just need help building your front end AI strategy, you. You can partner with us too.

Just like some of the biggest companies in the world do.

Go to your everyday AI.com partner to get in contact with our team or you can just click on the partner section of our website. We'll help you stop running in those AI circles and help get your team ahead and build a straight path to ROI on gen.

Yeah, and if, if you're listening to this on the podcast, just my face right now is going through a whole range of emotions because everything that Ann's talking About, it's like I felt all these things and, and they were such pain points, but at the time, it, it felt like such a, a labor intensive requirement to, to jump through all these hoops and yeah, get that, get that 10 pages down to nine, you know, and all these, that seemed like silly requirements that now AI and ChatGPT can help with tremendously. But, but in. I do want to shift a little bit and talk specifically about fundraising because anyone in the nonprofit world knows that that's usually one of the most important parts of keeping a nonprofit going is you have to go out there and develop good relationships with, you know, highly visible stakeholders and, and raise money. So specifically, when we talk about trust, how can you, or how can people out there listening or maybe in this field tap into the power of large language models, generative AI, but still maintain or even improve trust with stakeholders when it comes to even just security of working with numbers and money? How can they do that?

Such an important question. I'm, you know, stakeholder trust is our bread and butter in general, right. But particularly in non profit sector where we're asking donors to invest in our mission, it's absolutely critical that they believe that their data in particular, right. That their data is safe and secure. And that's one of the things that we are so focused on in the nonprofit sector. And we see the data leaks in the private sector and it really causes us to kind of retrench. The first thing I would refer people to is funder fundraising AI. This is a movement actually, and includes a framework for responsible AI in fundraising. So you have your go to resource in that framework for any conversation that you're having with donors or your EDs or your volunteers or your colleagues. Is, hey, this is, this is what we do in fundraising, right? Data privacy and security, explainability, bias, legalities. Let's see what are some. There's 10 pillars and each one of those addresses like our biggest fears. So dive into the framework. You can sign it. And there is a. There's a free summit on October 23rd and 24th. Highly recommend. The speakers are awesome. But I'll elaborate on the piece about stakeholder trust. So it makes sense that all of us are focused on, oh my goodness, what if our donors start fearing that their data is getting leaked out or used to train the next model? Very valid concern, right? So we need to be very, very careful about personally identifying information. And I'll give you an example. So in our consulting company, we don't, we don't receive any confidential information from our clients. So we remove all the pip, pii, all of the, you know, anything that can be tracked back. Right. Whether it's an ID number or a name or some other identifier. Because we want to be able to sleep at night, right, Jordan, like some of this stuff, we just don't need it weighing on our head. Would it be dope to have all of the data and be able to push that into the model and come up with. Absolutely. But no. I don't care what system you're using and how sure you are that it's confidential. Just please do not put PII into any of the models. But I will say that it's important for us to take a bigger picture point of view because not only do our donors want us to make sure that their data is safe, they expect us to have well running business operations. Right. The nonprofit sector has a bad rap. Right. Even the word nonprofit, it kind of makes it seem like we're just kind of like over here, la la la. We don't have business plans, we don't have business models, we don't use tech stacks, we don't hire for, you know, skills. So, and you know, we have the overhead myth, right? Donors want their money to go to the thing that they want to designate and they don't want money. Sometimes they don't want money going to operation. So it is absolutely essential as our donors and volunteers whose, you know, companies and families and neighbors are using this ubiquitous technology of LLMs, we have to be doing so too. They expect us to have well functioning business ops that are efficient, effective. Right. That save money, that allow us to do more. And if we're not doing those things because we're scared. Right. It is intimidating. Don't get. I'm, I don't want to sound like I'm not empathetic, but if we're not doing those things that our donors would expect to have a well functioning business, that's going to hurt donor trust potentially more than any concerns about data security. Because we will get that part fixed. Right. We will be able to communicate out. But it's that piece. You can't really explain having a poorly run business.

Yeah.

You can't make excuses for it. So, yeah, diving in.

It's so funny because, you know, when you talk about the expectations, you know, the expectations to have, you know, real business operations and kind of the, the myths or the conceptions around, you know, nonprofits, you know, I would have people ask me back in the day when I, I'm like, oh yeah, I work at, you know, nonprofit called, you know, Triple Threat Mentoring. That's where I worked. And they're like, oh, is that, is that your job? Is that like your full time job? And it's like, yeah, I'm managing 30 staff across four different locations across the country. Yeah, it's a real job, right? Yeah. Speaking of nonprofits, hey, there's so many people, you know, Brian's talking about, he's currently working, you know, pillars for a friends of library org. Bronwyn is talking, says, wow, this is amazing. I volunteer in an animal animal welfare nonprofit. So great, great. You know, comments. But a question from our audience here. So Douglas, Ann is asking what recommendations do you have to tailor AI and you know, depending on what the nonprofit focus is. So whether it's a religious institution, healthcare, child programs, etc. Do you have any recommendations on how you can kind of tailor generative AI for different kind of categories?

I do, Douglas, and I'll say I'm going to answer the question a little bit differently, which is that I think that the differentiator is actually the use cases. And in fundraising there are going to be very similar use cases across religious health care, children, open space, art, stem. You know, every single nonprofit has to do a certain, you know, probably about 80% of the same things, right? You're going to apply for grants, you're going to communicate with donors, you're going to do stewardship, you're going to do events, you're going to do impact reports, you're going to work with your board. You know, they're just standard business operations. And I would say that, you know, putting a wrapper around each of those business, you know, functions. So the rapper is your religious organization, the rapper is, you know, your children's health care, etc. That part's easy, really. Truly, it takes a little bit of work to get your messaging set up just like you would with any other, you know, marketing or sales or fundraising initiative. But really it's about the use cases and perfecting those processes, whether it's like the workflow. Right. How do you work across your organization? How do you work in your verticals? How do you get yourself ready for AI? That's the thing I would focus on. Regardless of whatever the mission of your non profit, I would begin getting ready for AI. So organize your stuff right now. I'm not talking about, you know, being super detail oriented about it, but you know, have your, have your different Google Drive folders all set, have your email, you know, platforms ready, have your CRM, you know, ready to have automations connected. So doing those things now I say going slow to go fast. So start preparing to build in some of those operations and you will be in really good shape when the tsunami hits. Jordan, you didn't mention. But one of the things that's going to blow everybody's mind I think honestly this week is the addition of the extensions to Google Bard that'll allow us essentially now our Google Drives are like chatgpt. It's, it's like a chatbot. And I think for those in non profit, if you're not using Google and you're using Microsoft, you'll need to wait a little while for copilot to come out. But once it does, you'll have the same thing. Yes.

Oh, I can't, I can't wait for that. And it's actually pure coincidence that I'm showing, showing a comment right now from someone that works in Microsoft philanthropy. That's beside the point. But you know one thing that you said there and which is so fascinating, go slow to go fast and there can't be a truer statement. I think when it comes to generative AI in large language models, it's something that we teach all the time. All the time in our prime prompt polish. Our free PPP course is if you just want generative AI to be a shortcut, that's not how it works. You do have to put in a little bit of work up front. Kind of going to Douglas's point about, you know, kind of creating these different, you know, rappers like yes, you have to put the time in. So, so thanks for that question, Douglas. That was great. And we actually have another question from a former everyday AI guest which you got to go check out Yogesh's show. It was amazing. But and what so Yogesh is asking what do you see as the future of fundraising? And I'm guessing, you know, kind of uh, inferring uh, as it come or as it pertains to AI.

As it pertains to AI. So I do predict the same thing that folks are talking about in the other sectors, which is that the folks who are not using AI will just their jobs are going to fade away. And so while, you know, you and I were joking about that, you know, when you go to college, a lot of, you know, the professors are rumored to say, look to your right, look to your left and only one of you, or something like one of the three of you will still be here in six months. I do not like being a doomsayer, but I will say that all signals indicate that we are not going to need as many of us in marketing. Right. Hi, Tyler. We're not going to need as many of us in marketing. And so some of those jobs will fade away. And my passion is for folks who currently are in marginalized groups to seize the power of this technology and be the leaders in AI. Right. Be the one to raise your hand and say, I want to be on the AI Council. Right. I want to go to this, you know, $27 training. You know, I want to. I'm going to watch Jordan's show every single morning and I'm going to become the person that people go to. So I'm super passionate about the power structure in nonprofit. And to yoga Yogesh's question, I do believe that the power imbalance is going to right itself a little bit.

Right.

We've got donors, we've got eds, we've got fundraisers. We've always perceived it to be like this. I believe that this is going to provide the fundraisers the opportunity to work on common ground because we're going to be such efficient leaders and communicators about our organization. We're going to stand out.

Yeah.

But the future of fundraising, let me say one more thing about that is I do believe that the future of nonprofit fundraising workforce will absolutely require that we embrace AI. Gen Z is not joining organizations that are old school. So, you know, we talk about donor retention. I'm talking about, you know, our workforce retention. We have to make this an attractive career path. It's not an attractive career path if we're sitting around saying we're not going to use AI. So dive in. This is a recruiting tool. You're giving people the opportunity to rise above. Do it. Get Gen Z on board.

Such a, such a good point. And because that's another struggle, I would say, from our, you know, from, from my background, you know, being the executive director of operations for a nonprofit is one, fundraising and two, attracting. A lot of times, you know, you, yeah, like, you want to bring in kind of the, the next generation of passionate employees who can help push your organization forward. It's, it's two huge issues and I, I love that you addressed both of them right there. So we've been, we've been a little bit all over. I, I think we've uncovered so many great pieces of insights and in intel in this conversation. But what would your one last takeaway be? So you've piqued someone's interest, you know, and they're like, okay, you Know we talked about a lot. Someone's in a non profit, what's your one piece of advice for them to start using generative AI today in their non profit organization.

So we did this yesterday in a training. Make a list of the things that you don't like to do and then make a list of the things that you do like to do in the list of things you don't like to do. It's going to be a bunch of stuff that a large language model can help you with. Right. It's going to be the grant writing, the grant application, rewriting, you know, the letters, the routine communication, the writing the newsletter and hitting the deadline. So make a list of the things that you don't like doing. Again, this goes back to retention. You deserve to like your job. You deserve to like your job. You dive in with one example of addressing something that you don't like to do. I would love, and Jordan, I'm sure this happens with you. I would love to hear from any member of your audience about a use case that they've decided to dive into. Like DM me on LinkedIn. Let me know. Did you start with an annual fund letter? Did you start with an impact. Oh God, an impact report report. Beautiful use case. Did you start with, you know, a newsletter article? So I would say again, make that list things you don't like to do and start knocking them out one by one. Start with one. So.

Yeah. So good. So good. Yeah, it's similar, similar advice I always give out is, is don't, don't pay attention to all the, you know, the shiny things that are going on in the world of AI. See where you're spending your time and, and see where those manual tasks are. Especially in the nonprofit world. Those, those things stack up quickly just because sometimes, you know, access to technology and information is costly and it's something nonprofits struggle with.

Yeah. And this is free. It's free.

Yeah.

Currently.

Right? Yeah, that's currently it's free or extremely affordable. Right. Like GPT plus at 20amonth, you know, even, even non profits on a budget I think can, can afford that. So, so, and thank you so much for joining us. We covered a lot. But don't worry, we're going to be sharing a lot more in our daily newsletter. So Ann, thank you again for coming on the everyday AI show and talking everything AI and fundraising.

Absolutely. So happy to be here. Invite anybody to reach out to me. I'll help however I can.

Absolutely. Hey, and we did cover a lot. We were talking specific dates and specific conferences, all that, don't worry, it's all going to be in the daily newsletter. So that and more we're going to recap. And that's, that's the other thing. If you're listening on the podcast, you got to sign up for the newsletter. Go to your everydayai.com we break everything down. We break. We spend so much time breaking everything down and, and you know, making sense of all the noise that's happening in the world of AI. And then really with our daily discussions giving you the, the key takeaways and more, I'm actually going to drop in a couple couple unrelated things with nonprofit if you're in nonprofits, make sure you check out today's newsletter and make sure you check out the rest of the shows this week on Everyday AI. Thank you for joining us.

And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going for a little more AI magic. Visit your everydayai.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.