From shifting donor expectations to economic turbulence, your nonprofit has probably had to navigate a lot of change and uncertainty over the past few years. While rapidly evolving technology has likely contributed to that uncertainty, it has also opened up new opportunities for your organization.
In particular, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has been both challenging and rewarding for the nonprofit sector. As of 2025, nearly half of nonprofit leaders believe that AI has the potential to significantly increase their organizations’ efficiency and productivity. But while 85% of nonprofits have explored AI usage, only 24% have a formal AI strategy.
In this guide, we’ll cover the basics of how AI contributes specifically to fundraising at nonprofits like yours so you can use these tools strategically to fund your mission. Let’s get started!
How AI Impacts Fundraising: An Overview
Generally speaking, there are two types of AI tools that your nonprofit might incorporate into its strategy:
- Generative AI solutions use the information they’re trained on and the prompts users give them to help your team create marketing and fundraising content.
- Predictive AI tools analyze data, recognize patterns and trends, and make suggestions about how to move forward based on possible future outcomes.
Although generative AI is currently more popular among nonprofits than its predictive counterpart, the best AI fundraising strategies involve both types of tools working together. When this is the case, DonorSearch’s AI fundraising guide explains that your nonprofit can experience various benefits, such as:
- Saving time and money while driving better campaign results
- Automating mundane tasks to increase your team’s bandwidth
- Personalizing the supporter experience through tailored outreach
- Providing accurate, actionable insights that point toward your next steps
- Leveling up your communications to build trust with and engage your target audience
- Tapping into exciting new donation methods that modernize your revenue model
- Measuring your organization’s impact so you know how your fundraisers fuel your mission
By choosing reliable platforms and using predictive analytics to inform content creation, you can take full advantage of the new frontier of AI fundraising and maximize these benefits for your nonprofit.
Popular AI Fundraising Use Cases
While the advantages above describe the general roles AI can play in funding your mission, your nonprofit’s exact approach to using these tools will depend on its needs and goals. Some of the most popular and effective use cases for fundraising AI include:
- Fundraising campaign optimization. AI can speed up donation processing, streamline event planning, and automate other aspects of campaign management that require extensive time and resources when done manually. You might also use AI to collect and analyze donor feedback and fundraising results so you can make data-driven decisions to improve future campaigns.
- Marketing material creation. When you create first drafts of emails, social media posts, fundraising letters, and other promotional materials for your campaigns using generative AI, you can produce higher volumes of content more efficiently. You’ll still need to revise outputs and align them with your nonprofit’s brand to ensure they resonate with supporters, but AI can lay the groundwork for a more robust strategy.
- Donor data analysis. Some prospect research solutions have AI features that make identifying major giving prospects easier. These capabilities include predictive modeling tools that rate prospects’ likelihood of engaging with your organization and prospect report generators that summarize the most important data points on each potential donor for easy reference during the cultivation process.
There are also many AI tools you can leverage to handle administrative tasks, navigate the grant management lifecycle, and enhance almost any other aspect of your nonprofit’s day-to-day work. While these don’t technically fall under the umbrella of fundraising AI, they impact fundraising indirectly and work together to ultimately further your mission.
A Note on Leveraging AI Responsibly
Now that AI has penetrated more aspects of the nonprofit sector, there is less opposition to it than there once was. In the report referenced earlier, only 1% of nonprofit professionals said they were completely against using AI at their organizations. However, public concern around AI as a whole held fairly steady from 2023 to 2025, so you might still face skepticism from inside and outside your organization as you implement these tools.
These AI-related worries aren’t entirely unfounded. There are real risks to using this technology improperly, from data breaches to legal difficulties. But by committing to leverage AI responsibly, your nonprofit can prevent these negative situations, make the most of its tools, and assuage concerns from staff, supporters, and beneficiaries.
To ensure responsible AI use, create a policy for your organization that covers:
- Data security and ethics. Double the Donation’s nonprofit data collection guide provides several strategies for properly handling AI-processed data, from encrypting systems and limiting user permissions to obtaining consent before collecting sensitive donor information.
- Inclusiveness. If AI tools are trained on biased data, they can introduce that bias into their outputs. Always review your solutions’ outputs to make sure they’re fair, equitable, and representative of your nonprofit’s supporter and beneficiary communities.
- Legal compliance. Stay on top of AI-related laws and regulations that apply to your nonprofit, regularly update your internal policy so it always aligns with these rules, and consult a lawyer if needed to maintain compliance.
- Transparency. Keep employees, board members, supporters, partners, beneficiaries, and the community at large informed about how your nonprofit uses AI, and ask for and apply their feedback to your strategy as applicable.
- Continuous learning. AI is constantly evolving, so promote a culture of continuous AI education at your organization. Staff members should be aware of new developments in the field, as well as the social and environmental impacts of these tools and how to navigate them to continue serving your community well.
Ensure all team members are aware of the intricacies of this policy. Then, as part of their AI training, have them sign a document confirming their commitment to responsible AI use. This way, you’ll know everyone is on the same page about how to properly leverage AI, maximizing benefits and minimizing risks across your organization.
AI isn’t just another fundraising trend—it’s here to stay in the nonprofit sector, and there is no time like the present to get on board with it! By following the tips above to create your organization’s AI strategy, you’ll be able to make the most of this powerful technology for funding your mission.
