Comprehensive Overview of AI and Nonprofit Communications
Whether we realize it or not, artificial intelligence (AI) has become part of our lives. The AI industry is changing at a rapid pace. The news publishes articles about robots, self-driving cars, chatbots (think ChatGPT), etc. And the nonprofit sector is not immune to these conversations.
For years, nonprofits have used AI, but now there is a heightened awareness of everything about it; both good and bad.
This article is a compilation and summary of AI nonprofit-related content. It contains articles, podcasts, and stats from experts in the nonprofit AI field. This overview will help you understand AI and how your organizations should use it.
I wanted to call it a “complete overview” but by the time I post it, new information will become available. Instead, this document will evolve, as information becomes available.
In the article, you can read about:
Artificial Intelligence - What Is It?
Artificial Intelligence is a broad term that encompasses any system that can perform tasks associated with human cognitive functions. IBM categorizes AI into Strong AI and Weak AI, also called Narrow AI. Examples of Weak AI include Siri, Google Search, and Netflix recommendations. They further distinguish AI as deep learning vs machine learning.
According to TechTarget, there are 4 types of AI.
Reactive AI
Limited Memory
Theory of Mind
Self-aware
One of the well-known types of deep-learning AI is the generative model, known for writing content and creating images.
The State of AI & Nonprofits
According to the Pew Research Center, most Americans (45%) feel equally concerned and excited about artificial intelligence. Fewer people (38%) are more concerned than excited and 18% say they are more excited than concerned about AI.
State of AI in Advancement
In 2019, the AI in Advancement Advisory Council (AAAC) published the State of AI in Advancement Report. The report found that 89% of those surveyed believed AI will make their team more efficient. Ethics is also a major concern with 87% saying the ethical use of AI is either “important” or “highly important.”
Those who responded said that major gift officers will benefit most from AI (69%). While the annual fund team came in second with 63%. Executives, Presidents, and CEOs will benefit the least (38%).
To keep up with AI we will need to master 4 cognitive capabilities.
Critical thinking
Systems thinking
Entrepreneurship (creating value in creative ways)
Cultural agility
State of Artificial Intelligence in the Nonprofit Sector
One year later, in 2020, the team at PwrdBy, Jared Sheehan (QuickMD), and Tim Sarrantonio (NeonOne) released The State of Artificial Intelligence in the Nonprofit Sector.
Their key findings include:
Nonprofit practitioners are aware of AI but have reservations. The majority (59%) of nonprofits hear about AI from their CRM provider.
Nonprofit-specific AI is not widely adopted today, but it is beginning. Nonprofits (73%) believe AI innovation aligns with their beliefs and 75% say AI will make their life easier.
AI adoption is going to be democratized but targeted. Respondents say donor categorization, routine tasks, and mission-driven AI are the most important areas in need of improvement.
The report also found that people want AI to improve their organizational efficiency (52%) and help them fulfill their mission (43%).
While 52% of people are afraid of AI advancements. Most people say they need more time with AI before they will feel comfortable with it.
In contrast to the 2019 report, 83% of those surveyed believe we need an ethical framework before full AI adoption happens.
Ethics in AI
AI is moving forward by leaps and bounds causing many people to fear it. The ‘Godfather of AI’ quit so he could warn us about the dangers. Governments around the world are racing to regulate AI and many tech giants have voiced their own concerns.
While the larger AI ethics remains in question, organizations need to establish guidelines of their own.
Considerations for Nonprofits Using AI
The team at NetHope had conversations with Amy Paul (USAID), Nora Lindstrom (Plan International), Amit Gandhi (MIT D-Lab), and Maria Hycinth Umaran (Plan International) to discuss AI ethics. Here are five big takeaways.
Data is not neutral. AI requires massive amounts of data. You can use data to create and inform solutions or in a discriminatory and exploitative way. Data is never neutral, particularly historical data. The world has never been equal, and neither has data collection practice. We must give data proper attention.
Bias is pervasive, even if unintentional. AI systems can create ethical issues, intentional harm, infringement on rights and values, discrimination, and prejudice stemming from bias. Even with the best intentions, we can create solutions that learn to reproduce existing societal discrimination and propagate bias.
Fairness is complex. To determine the best approach, fairness requires diverse perspectives in context. No one or one thing can guarantee fairness. It's not always obvious how to apply the principle of fairness in a real-life situation. As designers, we’ll often need to engage in a collective process of deliberation and decide what is most important in a given context.
Intentionality is imperative. We need to look for bias and take deliberate steps to optimize for fairness. Lack of intentionality will result in unfair outcomes. In practice, responsible innovation involves several intentional steps:
Form a diversified development team for equal representation.
Decide what problems to solve.
Determine what values to embed in the solution.
Evaluate what a solution might enable, as well as what might no longer be possible. Ask who this solution might empower or disempower.
Work together—including with marginalized communities—to identify how you should embed these values. Review the steps you should take and whether those values are upheld. Responsible innovation needs to be inclusive.
Responsible innovation imparts a role for all of us. The way we get to an ethical technology solution is through the process of responsible innovation. Those of us who conceptualize, build, manage, and deploy AI solutions should use our influence to operationalize the ethical principles and values in a way that is ethically, socially, and environmentally responsible.
Technology is never value-neutral. It manifests the values of its designers and surroundings.
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Ethics for Nonprofits toolkit offers practical advice and solutions to understand the fundamentals of AI ethics.
Advocacy Around AI
In a webinar, Vu Le asked his guests, Beth Kanter (Co-author of The Smart Nonprofit), Allison Fine (Co-author of The Smart Nonprofit), and Philip Deng (CEO at Grantable) to give their ethical concerns regarding AI.
Smart technology can make things worse. We must apply all our training and conversations around equity to AI. If not, it has the potential to make the issues we fight for worse.
AI can help or hinder accessibility. AI has the potential to make things more accessible for people. Yet, it can also generate unintended biases if not checked.
Consider ethics around AI. One of the hot topics surrounding AI concerns AI stealing the work of artists and writers. We also need to discuss issues of privacy, where we store data, and how that data gets used. We need transparency, like including a disclaimer when using AI.
Advocate for laws to keep up with AI. Technology is advancing faster than governments can make laws. We should push for legislation to ensure technology works for us and not against us.
Guidelines for AI-Language Tools
Artificial intelligence for language-based uses has gained popularity with the release of ChatGPT.
Classy recommends 5 ethical guidelines when using AI tools.
Data privacy & security: Ensure the collection, storage, and use of donor data through language AI tools comply with data privacy laws and regulations. This includes the personal information of donors.
Bias and fairness: Language AI tools use large amounts of data which could include biases. Verify all text AI is free of biases and inaccurate information. Before you publish, review it.
Human connection: AI tools help with efficiency, but lack the personal touch. In particular, they don’t have empathy.
Accuracy and reliability: Review the responses generated by AI tools. Ensure they are factual and aligned with the organization’s mission and values.
Impact on staff: While AI can automate tasks to increase productivity, it may affect your staff's job in negative ways. Speak with them before implementing AI tools and provide appropriate training and support.
Benefits of Using AI with Your Nonprofit
With ethical rules in place, it is time to review how nonprofits can benefit from AI solutions. All technology has pros and cons and AI is no exception. It's up to you to weigh both and decide the best path forward.
Boost Nonprofit Effectiveness
As stated in the AAAC State of AI in Advancement Report, 89% of nonprofits say AI will make them more efficient. Zac Amos from Unite.AI shares 5 ways artificial intelligence can boost a nonprofit’s effectiveness.
Manage Donors on an Individual Level: Machine learning tools can analyze information in donor databases. Then enrich it with data from sources like social media to learn more about each supporter. You can use these insights to tailor ongoing relationships with supporters and prevent churn. Further, AI can identify the donors most likely to give or show you how best to communicate with other users.
Automate Outreach and User Service: Nonprofits can use AI to automate their messages to existing and potential donors. You can free up hours daily by automating this process with AI. Use generative AI models to create templates, then customize messages for specific supporters. That way, you can address each person in a way that appeals to them, which in turn, generates more engagement. Automated customer service roles, like chatbots, are another way to use AI for outreach.
Automate Internal Controls: AI can automate repetitive, data-heavy administrative tasks. This will give you more time to focus on strategy and relationship-building with staff and supporters. Enable three central controls to prevent errors and fraud — separation of duties, authorization for transactions, and thorough documentation.
Analyze Public Sentiment: Use AI to scan web articles and social media posts to find out what people say about your organization. This will help you know if you are building or damaging trust with the public. Natural language processing tools analyze text to learn what emotions text portrays, like anger, disappointment, and support. Then they make informed decisions about the most effective steps to take in the future.
Improve Cybersecurity: AI is also an important tool to defend against cybercrime. Machine learning-powered network monitoring tools can learn what normal behavior looks like in your database. Once AI learns this behavior it can spot abnormalities. This software can then contain the potential breach and alert IT staff to investigate. Automated security tools can scan your devices for outdated software, back up critical files, and monitor the dark web for breached passwords. Combined, these AI systems let you stay secure regardless of the size of your IT department.
Perks & Pitfalls
In her podcast, Nonprofit Nation, Julia Campbell spoke with Joshua Peskay (3CPO at RoundTable Technology) about leveraging AI.
Here are the highlights:
12:52 - AI is a force multiplier, the likes of which most humans have never had in their lifetime.
14:23 - We can operate at 10x or even 100x what we were before. AI allows you to create content and produce output at a scale, pace, and quality that took huge amounts of effort before.
20:34 - People have said that technology will make jobs obsolete forever. Instead, we keep finding other things to do. The idea that humans will become obsolete has been proven false time and time again. We just don’t know what work will look like in the future. What jobs someone will do in 10 years is impossible to predict.
21:29 - We are all in different degrees of collaboration and competition with one another— for resources, for jobs, for donations, for attention. If you are using AI tools right now you have a monstrous advantage. If you aren’t using these tools you’re going to fall behind. Use AI in responsible ways.
22:27 - Look at AI as a tool. How you wield it, who wields it, and the purpose for which you wield it are all incredibly important. Don’t look at AI in a vacuum, as something that will take over the world. Rather, how are we leveraging it? How are we using it to do our jobs better?
25:21 - What I love about ChatGPT is that it provides a framework that I can then expand on.
26:25 - AI saves me the terror of the blank page.
26:50 - If you don’t pay attention then AI can be wrong factually. AI will make up information that is false with every bit of confidence as it provides true information—and people can’t tell the difference.
36:51 - When created content is algorithmically determined and gives you more of what you want and less of what you don’t want we begin to live in a world of our imagining. This is an alignment problem
38:54 - As a sector, we have a chance and a responsibility to learn AI, to use these tools, and to focus on how we can use them for good.
Harness AI for Good
In a LinkedIn post, Naketa Jones (Founder of Ethical AI Solutions, LLC) says nonprofits that embrace AI will gain a competitive advantage and improve their impact on the communities they serve. Organizations can automate repetitive tasks, analyze data, and make more informed decisions. They can allocate their resources more effectively and achieve their goals more efficiently. As noted above, nonprofits must use caution to ensure they use AI responsibly and ethically.
How can nonprofits incorporate AI into their standard business practices? Naketa provides 3 examples.
Operations: Nonprofits can use AI to automate routine administrative tasks, such as data entry and report generation. AI in operations will free up time to focus on strategy. Organizations can also use AI to analyze financial data and identify cost-saving opportunities.
Program Delivery: AI can improve the delivery of programs and services. It can analyze data on program outcomes and identify areas for improvement.
Fundraising: Through data analysis of donor behavior and preferences, nonprofits can identify potential donors. With this data, they can create personalized appeals. In addition, AI can recognize the best channels and messages for different audiences.
Artificial Intelligence Tools for Nonprofits
When discussing AI, most people think about generative AI tools, but it is one of the many types of AI tools nonprofits can use.
Meredith Gray, Head of Marketing at Keela, shares 7 artificial intelligence tools for you to consider for your organization.
Predictive Analytics: Provides valuable information about your donor database. It analyzes large volumes of data points to give you actionable takeaways. Whether you’re trying to identify your next major gift donor, prevent donor lapse, or uncover new giving opportunities, predictive analytics is key.
Automation: Leave the tedious, manual, and repetitive tasks behind. Explore how automation can help you schedule your communications, set reminders, and increase efficiency in your organization.
Chatbots: Set them up to handle a wide range of tasks. Whether you want to help your donors navigate your website, share mission updates, or promote an event, a chatbot can take care of it for you.
Prospect Research Tools: With AI in prospect research, you can access tools that provide valuable insights into your prospects. Discover wealth indicators and demographic data that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.
Text and Sentiment Analysis: This allows you to find out what people say about you online. This helps you better understand how your content is resonating with your audience and do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
Image and Video Analysis: Use AI solutions to analyze images and videos. Allows you to identify patterns and trends that could impact your work.
Content Creation: Have your copy and images created by a machine. These tools can also correct spelling and grammar.
Nonprofit & AI: A Success Story
On the NonProfit Voice podcast, Mark Becker (host), Jon Thompson (Associate Vice President of Philanthropic Strategy and Technology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia), and Nathan Chappell (Senior Vice President of DonorSearch AI) explain how they used AI to improve donor engagement.
Here are the highlights of the conversation. My favorite comment happened at the 12:21 mark.
Jon Thompson:
4:37 - Wealth alone is not a worthy enough indicator of someone’s willingness to engage with us. We need to measure how attached someone is to our organization and the psychology of supporters. This leads us to AI.
7:14 - In direct response, we found an 85% improvement in response rate by building our segmentation from all these various scores. With that came a 25% higher average gift.
8:31 - We are stepping to the of saying, “This is how lists have always been put together.” We are creating the philanthropic version of Moneyball. Where we can use all the probable modeling to focus on our efforts and where it will matter most.
Nathan Chappell
8:52 - What used to be is not going to get us there as an industry.
9:14 - Since using our first-version machine learning model, they closed more gifts, faster, and at a higher average dollar rate. This is unbelievable.
Mark Becker
11:19 - What I hear is: when you use AI you better inform your staff so they can have better conversations and get better results.
Nathan Chappell
12:21 - AI is not going away. It’s not a fad. Will robots replace fundraisers? No. But fundraisers that use AI will replace those that don’t.
13:57 - If you use AI from a donor-centric perspective, you can approach people where they are, where they want to be approached, and in a way that will feel personal. That’s where the idea of responsible AI will have a lot of potential for good.
Jon Thompson
17:38 - How does technology advance philanthropy? We are still thinking too myopically in our industry and we’re leaving options on the table. We can reshape the industry if we are creative enough. We need to have the will to ask.
AI Created Content
Image from Google’s AI
It’s time to get to the part we have the most familiarity with about artificial intelligence—content creation. A few experts mentioned it above, but now let’s get into it a little deeper.
How to Use AI Content Creation for Your Nonprofit
In an article on the Nonprofit Tech for Good website, Jessica Fox, writer at Eventgroove explains 5 ways to use ChatGPT to create copy and content. She also provides prompts for each piece of content to get you started.
Social Media Posts: After you’ve written a blog post, ChatGPT can write the social media posts so you can promote them. Make sure to research any hashtag suggestions—chatbots can be wrong!
Prompt: Please write 5 interesting and engaging questions to pose on Facebook to my wildlife refuge nonprofit’s supporters. Include statistics and fun facts where possible, and include a question at the end that would inspire conversation.
Gratitude Email: ChatGPT’s response isn’t personal, but it gets the ball rolling.
Prompt: Write a heartfelt, authentic letter to participants in my walk-a-thon benefitting breast cancer research. It should begin, Dear x. Do not start with “I wanted to take a moment”. Instead, start with something that makes the reader feel important. Please include a fill-in-the-blank where the letter mentions the amount they raised through pledges for the fundraiser. Please mention that the funds raised are going to help local recipients by covering missed wages while in treatment.
Email Announcement for a Fundraiser: Add all the details for this one. Otherwise, ChatGPT will fill in its copy.
Prompt: Please write an energetic and cheerful letter to last year’s participants about the Food for the Community’s Fall fundraiser. The opening should read ‘Dear X’. Prizes that might just top last year’s hot-air balloon ride in wine country and the extremely popular paint-your-pet portrait class! This year, participants can win a trip to swim with dolphins, a birding walk with a local ornithologist Dr. Cardinal, gourmet food baskets from local bakery House of Pie, and more! Raffle tickets can be purchased at our office (insert a blank here for the address), or they can be bought online (blank for the website). Raffle tickets will be available in October. The drawings will take place via Instagram Live on 11/1.
Social Media Content Calendar: Keeping up with social media is much easier when you’ve got an editorial calendar to follow. ChatGPT can create a calendar for all your social networks.
Prompt: Please create a content calendar for Instagram for Purrfect Pets cat rescue. The nonprofit focuses on rehoming strays and spay and neuter programs. Please create a two-week calendar for October 14–31. Please note that National Cat Day is Sunday, October 29—some posts should center around that. Please include posts with energetic calls to action to donate to help support our programs or care for our rescues. When asking people to share pictures, ask that they tag @PurrfectPets to be featured in our stories and site! Please include 2–4 strong, relevant hashtags. For the table, please include the day of the week and times to post.
Write Copy for a Fundraising Page: Your fundraising page should inspire visitors to take action and inform them about your organization. ChatGPT can give you a push in the right direction.
Prompt: Please write engaging copy promoting my raffle fundraiser benefitting Community Cares, a nonprofit supporting underserved kids in the community with after-school enrichment programs such as mentoring, tutoring, sports, and dance classes. We also provide meals to those that need them. Funds raised will go directly to helping these kids and families get the support they need to thrive. The fundraiser is a raffle. The first prize is Taylor Swift tickets. The second prize is a $200 gift card to the best place for pho in town, Pho-Nomenal. The third prize is gourmet baskets donated by a local eatery, Yum Yum. Tickets can be purchased by clicking the buy tickets button. Note—the copy should be focused on inspiring readers to support the cause and buy tickets. Include a strong call to action. The drawing will be live-streamed and take place on 5/31 at the community center.
Tips to Produce Incredible Content from Your AI Colleague
The team at Funraise put together some tips to use when you write a prompt for a generative AI tool.
Be specific about what you’re looking for or the AI will default to generic text.
Ask for the tone you want. For example, you can ask it to rewrite a summary you provide into social copy “with a tone that is funny, witty, and relatable.”
Create a persona for the AI. Tell it to pretend it’s a social media manager writing copy for ABC in a tone of XYZ.
Generate the response several times. Each time, the AI will come up with something new. One of them is bound to work.
Work with the best parts. Take what the AI created and spice it up, or use it as inspiration!
Free AI Content Creation Tools for Your Nonprofit
MightyBlog shared 3 free content creation tools to help you write copy and create images for your organization.
ChatGPT: Understands and responds to human language. The source of its data is textbooks, websites, and various articles. A helpful tool to speed up the process of email & text correspondence. Please note what ChatGPT produces might not be entirely correct.
DALL-E 2: Create realistic images and art from a written description. DALL-E 2 can generate specific images you may have difficulty finding otherwise. It also provides an opportunity to bring together your fundraising storytelling and find creative images.
Copy.ai: Generates written content for various purposes. It offers a range of features, including content creation, content optimization, and content editing. You can generate headlines, product descriptions, blog posts, social media captions, and other types of content by inputting a few keywords and prompts. Use Copy.ai to streamline your nonprofit communication.
Fundraising & Artificial Intelligence
With content creation under control, it is time to look specifically at how AI can help organizations fundraise. Artificial intelligence can help you write appeals for direct response, email, social media, etc., but it can do so much more.
How Nonprofits Use AI for Better Fundraising
When it comes to fundraising, Mike Alonzo, Chief Experience Officer at boodle.ai, provides 5 ways you to elevate fundraising with artificial intelligence.
AI Improves Your Prospecting: Affinity-driving AI models can identify the people who already care about your cause, and have the resources and desire to give. Lots of nonprofits find that they end up discovering hidden audiences they would have never thought to reach out to before. It can also help you know exactly how to reach out to these people. You can use it to discover their specific giving capacity, their ideal ask amount, and even their contact preferences.
AI Can Steward Donors Up the Giving Table: Knowing things like your donors’ degree of affinity with your cause can make your stewardship so much simpler, and more personal. AI helps you figure out how often to contact them, what they want to hear about, and how they need to hear it.
AI Can Find and Steward Major Gifts Donors: You can also use AI to find new major gift donors. You’re no longer limited by your development director’s or board members’ knowledge and interactions with major gifts. Now, you can have deeply nuanced insights into who these people are and what they need from you even if you’ve never met them.
AI Can Help You Make Smarter Outreach Decisions: AI removes uncertainty and gives you insights into what your prospects and donors need. You can then make decisions about your campaigns based on facts instead of guesses.
AI Can Help You Customize Events for Maximum Giving: Want to know what type of events your donors love? AI can give you a clear picture of who among your contacts is likely to attend any event, and what kinds of events they’re most interested in. Then use AI to help craft your invites. Screen invitees for proximity so you only send out invitations to people who live close enough to attend. You can even figure out custom auction items that your attendees will love.
Ways ChatGPT Can Help You Raise More Money
Let’s get into some specifics on how ChatGPT can help you fundraise. Meredith Gray shares 8 ways ChatGTP can help you.
Create personalized donation appeals in minutes. The tool will create email and/or letter copy based on the information you enter, so be as specific as possible. This copy should then be edited and reviewed to add a personal element, such as a story from your community or an update on the important work.
Promote an upcoming fundraising event to boost ticket sales. ChatGPT can help you write event invitations, develop posts for your social platforms, and promote your fundraising events. It will save you time and energy writing promotional emails, recruitment posts for social media, or even copy for on-site signage.
Segment your donors and create custom communications for each group. ChatGPT cannot only develop segmented communications, but it can determine your segments.
Steward and engage donors. This is one of the greatest uses of this tool. ChatGPT will draft emails, copy for impact reports, and speeches for stewardship events.
Maximize your peer-to-peer fundraising efforts. Use ChatGPT to create engaging fundraising appeals for your peer-to-peer fundraisers. This could be fundraising email templates, inspirational copy for peer-to-peer fundraising pages, and social posts about your cause.
Share impact. Enter a few details about your organization, and ChatGPT can provide boilerplate language around your impact, mission, and programs.
Engage volunteers and your board. Use ChatGPT to recruit, engage and manage volunteers. Create personalized emails to streamline processes, share updates, and ensure the right people receive the information. It’s also a great tool to write stewardship emails to your board or to provide them with updates on your mission.
Create exciting challenges and fundraising campaigns. Need an idea for a new fundraising challenge? Type that in. ChatGPT will help you mix it up to generate excitement and motivate your supporters to take action.
Maximize Fundraising with AI
In a podcast episode from Donorbox, Cara Augspurger (Fundraising Coach, Donorbox) and Shawn Olds (CEO, boodleAI) discuss how to use artificial intelligence to impact your fundraising efforts.
2:43 - The best AI team is the human-machine team. What AI can’t do is the empathetic work a development director has learned over years of working in the nonprofit space.
4:17 - Artificial Intelligence is used to allow teams to do what they are good at, which is stewarding donors.
4:55 - AI can help you understand better who your donors or prospective donors are, so you can shape the messaging.
5:17 - AI also allows you to understand the best channel of communication. It is no longer good enough to get the right message to the right person. We have to get it to them in the medium they will act on.
6:40 - AI can keep your donor data much cleaner like cleaner than 90% of nonprofits have in their database now. You can see duplicate records and multiple mailing addresses when only 1-2 are valid.
9:20 - AI will allow you to build a more targeted audience. You can look at your donors and you can build a model around those donors. Use those models to build new audiences—an audience no one else can reach out to. Then you can advertise to them in their preferred channels.
Engaging Donors Through AI: A Success Story
Does artificial intelligence work to increase fundraising? Raise from Gravyty provides a case study they did alongside the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County to demonstrate how AI improved their fundraising efforts.
The Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County used AI to prioritize relationships, prompt actions for fundraisers, surface new donors, and increase revenue.
Results from the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County by using AI-powered tools include:
$1.2 million in new and increased giving.
5,000 new, high-capacity donors
475+ new and increased donors due to personalized engagement
With this type of improvement, it’s hard to ignore the impact AI has on the nonprofit sector.
Analyze Data with AI
With new donors identified, articles posted, emails sent, and money raised, organizations need to look at data to learn what worked and what didn’t. Everything should begin and end with data analysis. This sounds like yet another job for artificial intelligence.
Getting Started with AI Data Analysis
Let’s look at what AI can and can’t do when it comes to data analysis from a Funraise article written by Dana Guterman.
Artificial intelligence can…
Identify patterns and trends.
Provide insights and recommendations.
Apply machine learning to make predictions
Clean up data
Artificial intelligence cannot…
Account for flawed data
Make subjective decisions or recommendations
Consider moral or ethical issues
Provide context beyond your data
How to Use ChatGPT to Analyze Data
Most data analytic tools use artificial intelligence, tools like Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, and Polymer. Did you know that you can also use ChatGPT for some of your data analysis? The downside of ChatGPT is that it won’t generate charts or graphs (text only)
The same Funraise article from above gives you step-by-step instructions on how to ask ChatGPT to analyze your data.
Clarify: Provide context and suggest ways to narrow your request.
Start high-level: Ask for general insights on the data
Ask more questions: For instance, ask to identify key trends.
Request actionable recommendations: Refer back to the data, or ChatGPT will revert to generalized suggestions.
Wrap it up: Ask for a summary of the data or to rephrase the information
Convert the data: ChatGPT can direct you to tools to convert your data to visual form.
Support your findings: ChatGPT can also point you toward websites with data you want to view.
Conclusion
You do not need to fear artificial intelligence. The applications for nonprofits using AI are vast. As AI evolves so will the uses. From here AI will continue to get better.
When used with the correct intentions, and following ethical standards, AI will help save you time, improve performance from staff, and ultimately produce better results for your organization’s mission.
P.S. This compilation article was not written by artificial intelligence, but I did use it to proof and edit it.
