Transcription
Can ChatGPT be used for non-profit fundraising? Most definitely! In this video, I'm going to share seven ways that ChatGPT, the increasingly popular artificial intelligence chatbot, can help boost your nonprofit fundraising goals.
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Welcome or welcome back! If we haven't met before, I'm Amber Melanie Smith, and I'm a non-profit founder and social impact YouTuber who makes these videos all about how to make an impact through different mechanisms, like starting a non-profit or socially conscious business, or social enterprise, or being a leader in your community, and more. As always, I hope that you find this video useful and helpful! Don't forget to give it a like and subscribe to my channel for more content like this.
Also, if you are in the process or thinking about starting a non-profit, I have some online courses at my website, FounderToFullTime.com, that you can check out to help guide you through the process.
Okay, so ChatGPT has made big news recently for its increasing popularity and people thinking about how it can be potentially applied to both business and personal uses. If you're not familiar, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot that was launched by OpenAI in November 2022, and since then, just that short period of time ago, has already grown to over 100 million users worldwide. Social impact experts have already started to speculate how might we use this new tool to amplify our own goals, whether that's, you know, increasing the reach of a message about a cause, or growing a subscriber base, or in the particular case of this video, with fundraising.
Ever curious, I wanted to try out ChatGPT myself. So, um, through some tinkering around, ChatGPT and I teamed up to come up with this following list of seven ways that it could potentially help with your fundraising goals. Um, I had a lot of fun with this. There were some delightful surprises along the way, and if you haven't tried it out yet, I recommend it just because it's, uh, it's pretty interesting. So let's get into these seven ways ChatGPT can boost your non-profit fundraising.
Okay, way number one, and this one was recommended by ChatGPT itself, was that we could use ChatGPT to create a chatbot for donor engagement. So I haven't fully, um, explored the depths of how this would work. So if you have actually tried this out before, comment in the video and, um, in the video comments, and let us know how this works and how you've been able to use it. But basically, the idea is you think of your donors like customers in a sense, and sometimes they need some customer support, some customer service. And maybe you're not always around to answer them quickly, and maybe they'd be able to find some quick answers through engaging with a chatbot on your site. The idea is that you would set this up, and that it would be able to engage with your donors and help answer some of their questions and even provide some personalized responses.
Now, I was curious what it would look like, um, if I were a donor considering donating to a cause and I wanted to know, "Why should I donate to this cause? What are some of the reasons?" So I actually asked ChatGPT to list off several compelling reasons I should donate to a random non-profit that I picked off the internet, um, which was One Day's Wages, located in Seattle, Washington. Um, I wanted to see what are some reasons I should donate to One Day's Wages. So I asked ChatGPT, and within seconds, ChatGPT was giving me some pretty compelling reasons that I should consider making a donation to this organization. You can see here, I'll show the results of the prompt that I input, um, but it gave me reasons like, well, One Day's Wages is empowering communities by tackling the systemic issues that contribute to poverty. It's also regarded as a very transparent organization, and it showcases its impacts widely all over the internet and has been recognized for these impacts and transparency by, um, major name sites like Charity Navigator and GuideStar. So it basically scoured the internet and compiled these compelling reasons. And what I found very remarkable about this was that it knew what compelling should feel like. Um, it, it almost humanized it in the sense that, um, it kind of knew what I wanted, right? It knew that I wanted to hear about how impactful it was. So that was pretty cool.
So one tip I would have for you as a non-profit leader or someone who's involved with the non-profit is, I think that for a prompt like this to work for ChatGPT, um, the information has to be available and, um, clear and inferable on the internet. So if you don't have an online presence as a non-profit, ChatGPT is not going to be able to scour the internet to find and synthesize information like this for you. So a tip as a non-profit leader is make sure your information is out there, and that it's out there widely, and that you're constantly updating the online world on all your wonderful impacts and work.
Okay, way number two that ChatGPT can help with your fundraising is pretty exciting, and it is that it can help you with grant writing or donation letter writing. Um, basically, it can generate the whole letter for you or a section of a grant proposal if you input some of the important variables or give it like a website link for it to scour and comb through. Um, I was really intrigued by this. Once I wanted to just see what it would do if I gave it another random non-profit. So I input, "Write me a grant letter request for $10,000." For the random nonprofit I chose was called, uh, Big Cat Rescue Corp. So I input this. It's a real non-profit, and I put this organization's website in there, and I asked it to write me the letter requesting $10,000 from a grant maker. And the results were pretty great. I'm showing this, uh, grant letter on screen here, so you can take a look at it. Um, a couple of things to observe here. Yes, it is a short grant letter. So I would actually probably call this more like a donation request letter, not a full grant proposal, because it doesn't include all of the things that you need for a full grant proposal. But it's pretty solid as a basic donation request letter or as the foundation of a larger or longer grant request.
Some notable things about it, um, it did some of the obvious things I expected, like it pulled the mission of the organization into the text here. But a couple of other things that it did was it, once again, um, made an assumption about what the reader, in this case, a grant maker, would want to see in this letter, and it made sure to pull in that information. Um, some things that I'm talking about include the values of the organization. So it says, um, "You know, we operate on the belief that big cats are entitled to a life free of abuse, neglect, and exploitation." That belief statement is a statement of the organization's values, and it's very powerful because when you include a belief statement like that, you're signaling to the grant maker that you want them to believe the same thing as you, and if they do, they should give you the money. Um, they also are very clear about their what they're asking for. They say, um, "You know, we're writing to request a grant of $10,000," and they also say what they're going to spend the money on. So it will include support to our animal care costs, like providing food, shelter, and medical care for the cats. Um, they talk about some of the recognition they've received as an organization, so they're building their credibility and authority here as an expert in their issue. Um, pretty solid for a 10-second prompt that I put into ChatGPT.
The third way that ChatGPT can help with non-profit fundraising is through some degree of prospect research. And if you don't know what that means, that means finding potential donors out there, the right people who might be interested in your cause and have the capacity to make a financial contribution. I was really intrigued by this because, [Music] um, you know, prospect research is really hard, and sometimes you have to be able to know a lot of personal details about people in order to assess whether they might be a potential, um, donor of, of some capacity. Um, so I was curious what ChatGPT could do with this one. Um, ChatGPT actually came up with this idea when I asked it, "How are, how are some, what are some ways that you might help me with fundraising?" And this was one of the ideas that it came up with for me. It said that it could help gather information on potential donors, their giving preferences, their philanthropic history. Um, and I think to a degree that's true. If you, um, know the name of someone who has a strong online presence or is kind of renowned in your community, you might be able to give ChatGPT like a bio of that person or a website, like a Wikipedia about that person, and it could come back and tell you some of the things they're likely to donate to. That's true. But I wasn't able to figure out how I could use this, um, with the free version that I was tinkering around with. So if you have a more advanced version or paid version of ChatGPT and you've been able to figure this one out, let me know.
That said, I did want to kind of figure out what are the limits of what it could do on the free version. So I asked it to, uh, come up with a list of the types of businesses that would be the most likely to sponsor a program, um, meant to combat human trafficking. So based on that issue area, um, it did come up with a list of types of businesses, like categories of businesses or industry types that would be the most likely to donate to combat human trafficking. And from my own experience, I took a look at it. This list that it generated, and I know that it is a pretty solid list. These are the ones that I would probably come up with too, if you asked me as a human to come up with such a list. A couple notable ones that you'll see on here: technology companies, um, because technology can be used to track and identify human trafficking patterns, so that was an interesting fit. Um, yes, I could see how they would have a stake in solving or addressing human trafficking. Financial institutions, banks and other financial institutions may be interested in this topic, um, because financial support is needed to assist with victim recovery. So that was pretty insightful of ChatGPT. Um, you know, scrolling down the list, I'm not going to read all of these, but law firms. Law firms might be interested because they often need to provide legal expertise and support for victims. So even though it's not going to literally spit out a list of people's names, and also I kind of feel like that'd be a little creepy, um, of people who might donate to your cause, you can use it to help you narrow down some of the potential supporters out there based on similar interests. So that is helpful.
The fourth way that ChatGPT can help with fundraising is by helping improve the content of your website and the fundraising webpages on your site. So you could input a donate webpage and ask it, "What are three ways that you would specifically improve this page in order to encourage more donations?" And you have to be clear about that goal because if you just say, "How would you improve this webpage?" it might come up with some ways to make it more aesthetically pleasing or user-friendly, but it's not going to be thinking of it in the, in the context of what does this webpage need to do in order to increase donations. So that additional command is important.
Now, I tried this, uh, by inputting a couple of different donate pages on a couple of different websites because I wanted to make sure that it was going to give me specific customized tips for that webpage instead of just generic advice about how to create a good fundraising webpage. And to my delight, it was specific. So I'll show you this organization that I, um, played around with here. It's the Detroit Dog Rescue. Um, you know, I actually think this donate page is pretty decent. It's got an adorable picture of a dog on it, which is always great. It's got some nice icons, some nice coloring. But I wanted to see how would ChatGPT recommend we improve this webpage even further. So I asked it, um, "What are three specific ways that you would improve the Detroit Dog Rescue donation webpage to encourage people to make a donation?" Um, so here's some of its recommendations. I'll show these on screen. One, it recommended using even more visual content. It says that the text, the webpage is text-heavy, and that is true. If you scroll down on the webpage, there is a lot of text below the top part. So it recommended more photos or videos of the dogs. Provide donation suggestions, so offering suggested donation amounts because ChatGPT has searched the internet and found that it is a common best practice to do this to increase donations. So good on it. And then showcase the impact of the day of the donations. The webpage should highlight the impact of donations and how they contribute to the mission. So all sound advice that I might perhaps give myself.
Okay, so way number five is a big time saver, in my opinion, and it is that ChatGPT can help you write email communications and marketing communications for your fundraising events. Um, I again wanted to test this out. So I found a random fundraising event happening. It's the, uh, the City Parks Foundation Gala happening later in 2023 in New York. I found the webpage for that event and I dropped it into ChatGPT and I said, um, "Write me an email, um, inviting people to attend this event." And here's what it came up with. You got your standard stuff up front. It says right away what the email wants from the reader: "I'm writing to invite you to join us at this event." It's an event that supports our mission. But some of the notable things about this email were that, um, it called upon the importance that parks have to human beings, and I thought that was really cool. Um, it says, "I don't know if you can read this on the screen, but it says, 'Our parks have always been a place where people can come together to enjoy nature, exercise, and connect with their communities. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of our parks and the role they play in our physical and mental well-being. So as we recover and rebuild, your support is more important than ever.'" That's pretty cool. Um, I don't know if it took this language and like synthesized it from another place on this organization's webpage or if it just inferred the importance of parks to people and wrote about it here. But either way, that's pretty compelling, and that's something, um, that I think would inspire someone to attend their event. So pretty cool.
Way number six, uh, that ChatGPT can help is through social media content creation and outreach. Um, similarly to the email language development, this can be a real time saver. Um, and once again, I tried it out to see what it would say, um, about why people should donate to another randomly chosen non-profit. This one is Dwell With Dignity, located in Dallas, Texas. So I said, "Give me three social media posts that encourage people to donate to this organization and why it's important." Here's what it, here's what it said.
Okay, so Post Number One: "Join us in supporting Dwell With Dignity and help provide a comfortable and inspiring..." Interesting choice of words there, "living environment for families in need. Your donation can help us create a positive impact in the lives of so many individuals and families in our community." That's pretty good. But I was actually more impressed by Post Two and Three. Post Two: "Every person deserves a home that feels like a sanctuary." I just want to pause and think about that for a minute. Once again, I don't know if ChatGPT took the same language off of this organization's website or somewhere else that it found it. But if ChatGPT came up with this language itself, that is pretty, uh, intriguing because it's very emotional. Um, and we know that the research shows that people are more likely to make a donation based on emotion than logic. So telling a story and invoking a feeling of sanctuary, um, and home, that's, that's like spot-on fundraising stuff from ChatGPT. Um, so anyway, uh, Post Number Three: Similar, very emotional. "Imagine the joy and relief a family feels when they finally have a comfortable and inviting place to call home. Your donation will do this. That, that, etc. Donate today and be a part of changing lives for the better." So again, pretty good, um, pretty well-written in the sense that it just knows how to call upon the emotions of a human to encourage the donations.
Way number seven ChatGPT can help with non-profit fundraising is a little bit different. It's more about the donor than the non-profit itself, and it is that it can provide personalized giving recommendations. Um, so, uh, what this means is you could tell ChatGPT what you're interested in, what your issues and causes that you care about are, maybe even the city that you live in, or some things that are important to you about what you might support in an organization, like, um, for example, "I only want to support organizations where at least half of the board of directors is women," or, you know, I'm just making something up. Um, you could give it parameters like that, and it could come back with a list of actual organizations that you might consider based on this publicly available information.
I tried this out again, and, uh, what I'll show you first is, um, that it, I just asked it a broad question. I said, "I want to support animals, especially dogs, and the environment." And it came back with these five non-profits that I might consider making a donation to. Um, some of these you might have heard of. Now, the downside is, these suggestions are pretty large, well-known non-profits, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with supporting those larger organizations. But let's say I really wanted to support something that was specific to my local community, or that I really wanted to support a smaller organization. So I tried it one more time, and I asked it, "Okay, I want to support animals and dogs, but specifically I want to focus on smaller non-profits with a budget of no more than $500,000 per year." So here's what it came up with. Oh, and I also specified that my local community in this particular example was Denver, Colorado. So it came back with these three organizations: Pause Co, The Big Bones Canine Rescue, and Harley's Dream. Ah, um, specific organizations with this budget size. And, you know, your organization's financial and budget sizes are basically public information because you're filing, you know, your annual tax forms with the IRS. So people can find that information if they want. So that's how I was able to know what the budget sizes were. It talks about their mission. It talked about, um, how funds could be used. So again, it's like responding to what I want as a potential donor. I want to know these things: the mission, the size, the impact, etc. So pretty cool.
And for us as non-profit leaders, this goes back to the importance of making sure that your information is robustly on the internet, and that it is accurate and thorough and regularly updated.
I'd love to hear what you think. Now, um, do you think you're gonna try out ChatGPT and use it for non-profit fundraising or something else? Or have you already tried it out? Share a little bit more in the comments below about what you've been doing or what you think you might do with this. Um, as I mentioned before, if you are thinking of starting a non-profit and need a little help to get started, check out my website, FounderToFullTime.com, where I have those online courses that you can take to guide you through the process of starting a non-profit and also creating a sustainable fundraising plan. Um, I also have a newsletter for change makers and non-profit leaders. You can get the link and subscribe to that below the video as well.
And finally, I have a group on Facebook called "Change the World or Bust." We've got 4,000 people in there from all over the world making an impact. Come on and join us. It's a great community, and I hope that we'll see you there. I hope that this video was helpful or at least interesting. And once again, I'm Amber Melanie Smith, and I hope to see you next time. Bye!