AI in Fundraising: Exciting, Imperfect, and Human at the Core

From the AASP Summit to the Fundraising AI Global Summit and a deep-dive with Cherian Koshy, I’ve been immersed in conversations about how artificial intelligence is reshaping fundraising. Here are the principles and provocations I’m carrying forward.

1. Protect Donor Data. Period.

Let’s start with the non-negotiable: protect our donor data. Period. End of sentence. Every conversation, from policy discussions to hallway chats, circled back to this. AI may be dazzling and helpful, but the responsibility to safeguard sensitive information never changes.

2. Build and Use Your Critical Thinking Muscle

Beth Kanter put it perfectly: “Don’t outsource your critical thinking.”
When she said it, I realized how easy it is to “let the robot think for us,” especially when AI feels so efficient.

Critical thinking is a muscle. If we let AI make decisions or interpretations, that muscle atrophies. Use AI to speed up routine work, but hold onto the hard, nuanced thinking yourself.

3. AI Is Powerful. And Imperfect

I’m genuinely excited about AI. It helps me every day, from turning my “salty” emails into something constructive to debugging Power BI dashboards (I’m still a newbie!).

But AI will hallucinate, because it’s designed to make you happy, not necessarily to be right. This is where curiosity and skepticism come in: be curious, be skeptical, double-check.

4. Time-Saving and Game-Changing

Cherian’s practical examples stuck with me:

• Agent mode (paid ChatGPT) for researching public information, no donor data risk, can save hours.
• Uploading his kids’ school calendar PDF and instantly getting an iCal file back? Mind-blowing.
• Building custom bots with GPT Trainer shows how specific we can get with tailored solutions.

These are great reminders to find the things that are not a good use of your time (like transcribing notes) and let AI free you for higher-value work.

5. Draw Your Lines in the Sand

AI isn’t for everything. Ask yourself: What am I comfortable using AI for? Where are my lines not to cross?

For me:

• No donor data in non-secure tools.
• No outsourcing of critical thinking or judgment calls.
• Clear transparency about when AI is in the mix.

6. Hidden Risks and Organizational Blind Spots

One of the most thought-provoking points from Cherian was about shadow or undisclosed AI use.

Imagine a staff member quietly uses AI to meet their goals. They leave, and the job is posted without acknowledging that AI augmented their work. The next person can’t do the job as written.
That’s a culture and knowledge-management issue, not a tech one—but AI brings it to the surface.

And remember: AI can’t read between the lines.
Fundraising is often about what’s not said, the nuance, the subtext, the pause in a conversation. That’s still human work.

7. The Bigger Picture: Sustainability and Values

At the Fundraising AI Summit, one theme kept surfacing: the environmental impact of AI. For organizations with environmental missions, this tension is real, even if we don’t yet have full answers.

And Cherian closed with a truth worth carrying: “There are heartbeats on the other end of what we do.”

AI can help us work smarter. It can spark creativity. But fundraising will always be about people first.