How AI Is Changing Fundraising
Groups big and small are finding way to personalize how they ask for money and plumb data of all kinds to connect with donors.
By Rasheeda Childress
Senior Editor, Fundraising
April 7, 2026 | Read Time: 7 minutes
As a midsize institution, the College of Charleston is not a financial behemoth. Last year it brought in nearly $22 million in contributions and grants — a far cry from some of the bigger and better-known universities. But now it has another helper in the development department: an AI fundraiser that will enable it to reach more donors.
This virtual engagement officer queries alums by text and email about personal details of their college experience, such as what their favorite building on campus was or who their favorite professor was. Responses are recorded and help inform personalized appeals that feature campus photos and include that alumni’s favorite building, for example. That favorite professor might also get involved.
Sometimes professors co-sign a solicitation, and other times they’ll actually tag along on a visit with a gift officer, says Laurie Soenen, the college’s executive director of advancement services, who oversees the AI fundraiser. “We’re collecting all that information to craft messages that our alumni will open, feel passionate about, and engage with us on,” she says.
This use of AI to interact with donors and boost fundraising is starting to show real benefits for nonprofits. Some big institutions, for example, are using AI on the back-end for analytics that help them approach donors in more personalized ways. But some worry that as donors get used to that approach, small institutions that are not delving into AI in similar ways may be left behind. Nonprofits as a whole may be lagging behind on adopting the technology. A recent Mission Partners–Chronicle of Philanthropy survey found that just under half of nonprofits were using AI, though three-quarters agreed or strongly agreed AI would have a positive impact on nonprofits.
Small nonprofits have some advantage — they are more nimble and less bureaucratic and can pivot faster.
“In a static world or a linear world, the digital divide would grow slowly,” says Nathan Chappell, founder of Fundraising.AI, a collaborative that looks at how AI is used in nonprofit fundraising. “But AI is considered an exponential technology. So the digital divide could become a digital chasm.”
However, the divide doesn’t have to reach such proportions. Organizations can slow the gap by using the technology in ways that align with their work, Chappell says.
“Smaller organizations actually have somewhat of an advantage right now because they have less bureaucracy,” he says. “Smaller, more nimble organizations can reimagine things, and they can pivot much faster.”
AI Can Save Time and Boost Donations
AI tools are plentiful, and many are free or inexpensive or part of existing software so groups have ample access to them. And many small organizations have started using generative AI to write donor appeals, newsletters, or grant applications and to research prospects, says C.J. Orr, CEO of the fundraising consultancy, the Orr Group.
While that can be helpful, today too much of the discussion focuses on generative AI that summarizes and writes content, says Allison Fine, president of the fundraising platform Every.org.
“Generative AI is just a tiny slice of the whole pie,” she says. “ChatGPT or Claude, that’s just the beginning; that’s the entryway.”
Some nonprofits are finding that even staff who don’t have any computer science experience can use AI tools to write code. Daniel Lombardi is lead fundraiser for the Furniture Bank, a Toronto charity that provides furniture to those who need it, a group that raised almost 6 million Canadian dollars (or $4.375 million in U.S. dollars) in 2024. Because he has fundraising data in different systems, he used to spend hours each week manually inputting and verifying it. Now Lombardi is using AI coding tools to save time. Lombardi used an AI tool that writes computer code based on plain language prompts to create a program that puts that data into the system for him, allowing him to spend more time with donors.
These AI tools can also help groups better understand their own impact, which gift officers can share with donors. Project C.U.R.E., a nonprofit that distributes medical supplies and equipment to underresourced hospitals and clinics around the world, has spent the past two years upgrading its technology and integrating all its data systems. This allows the organization to better analyze impact — something donors want — and more effectively move resources to the places that need them most, says CEO Douglas Jackson. The integrated database has information about projects, including who traveled to the region, the name of the hospital administrator, what supplies were involved, impact data, and all email correspondence. Its AI system summarizes and quickly pulls reports for gift officers.
Now when a donor calls up and wants to know how his $10,000 was used, a gift officer can quickly find the information, get summaries of the project and its impact, and relay all of that to the donor.
Organizations like the Children’s Miracle Network, which raised $60 million in 2024, are using the technology to figure out which donors to focus on and how to personalize their experience, says Michael Kinney, vice president of donor systems and engagement.
For example, the group knows that active team captains lead to more robust fundraising at walkathons and similar events. The group uses AI to search for anomalies in its data and respond. So if a longtime team captain normally signs up for an event in January but now it’s mid-February and she hasn’t signed up yet, AI will create an alert and reach out to her.
“It’s the ability to launch more targeted and segmented communications towards those individuals at a scale that we hadn’t had done prior,” Kinney says.
Bridging the AI Gap
With small organizations often focused on using AI to streamline tasks and save time, and larger organizations focusing on using data to give donors more personalized experiences, a growing gap could appear, says Chappell.
“The expectation from donors will be that organizations understand me, they understand the impact that I want to make, they understand what drives my decision making,” he says. “The organizations that fail to really think about AI holistically will seem outdated. They’ll seem less relevant to that donor.”
That doesn’t mean small organizations are doomed. Lombardi, with Furniture Bank, has found easy ways to use AI to comb information in his database that helps him personalize appeals. He has gotten so interested in using the technology that he runs a Substack about using AI to translate plain language to code called the No Code Nonprofit. He uses tools that allow him to pull data about total giving and last gifts by a donor to personalize email thank-you letters.
“It’s a huge timesaver,” he says. “Instead of worrying, ‘Am I just going to copy and paste the same message to every donor?’ it becomes personalized.”
As with any effort that taps into data, AI is constrained by the quality of the information in a nonprofit’s database — an issue that can plague organizations regardless of size. A lot of nonprofits don’t have great data, Jackson with Project C.U.R.E. says. “That’s been our biggest challenge.”
AI, like any technology, is only as good as the information it works with, so sound fundraising practices will become more important, says Kinney with the Children’s Miracle Network.
“AI is not going to be this magical tool that just solves your holes in your fundraising strategy or your operating model or anything like that,” he says. “You have to apply it very strategically. If your segmentation strategy is weak and you add AI, you’re just going to scale weak segmentation strategies. It’s not this magical silver bullet.”
