Maximizing AI for Nonprofits [Examples, Strategies & Templates]

As the CEO of Slam Media Lab (Slam), I’ve worked with dozens of nonprofits and seen firsthand how they approach their operations, day-to-day workflows, and what tech they use. Often times, these nonprofits are overwhelmed, tired, can’t find their files, and spend a lot of time working in silos on things that probably can be solved or found in a couple of minutes. Many of these tasks could be automated. When we introduced AI tools into their nonprofit workflow, it was like watching a lightbulb go off. They could suddenly see the potential for growth and efficiency.

We’ve seen this time and again with nonprofits of all sizes. AI has the power to streamline all you are doing – from content creation, to creating copy with the voice of your Executive Director, to optimizing your organization’s project management system and email follow-ups. In fact, a recent study from Stanford found that while 66% of nonprofits believe AI could significantly benefit their operations, but only 26% are currently using AI effectively. This gap represents a significant opportunity for growth and innovation. 

This guide is designed to bridge that gap. We’ll share real-life examples with our clients, practical strategies, and easy-to-follow templates to help your nonprofit leverage AI in a way that feels seamless. Let’s get started!

Why Should Your Nonprofit Use AI?

At Slam, we’ve seen how AI can transform the daily operations of nonprofits, making them more efficient and impactful. Many nonprofits we work with are overwhelmed by manual tasks that AI can easily automate. This means less time spent on repetitive work and more time focused on work you’re really good at.

For example, AI can handle:

• Data entry
• Scheduling
• Managing and writing emails
• Writing copy for social media
• Come up with ideas
• Digest data and give you recommendations

One nonprofit we helped was able to use AI to streamline their donor database management, saving them countless hours each week. For instance, charity: water used AI to optimize their Facebook campaigns, which resulted in a 32% increase in conversions to their monthly giving program. UNICEF’s U-Report platform engages youth with relevant information through AI-powered chatbots, significantly improving their outreach efforts​.

The truth is that if you're not using AI, you're missing out and falling behind. Many nonprofits are already benefiting from it. By automating these tasks, you can move a lot faster and refocus your energy on high-value activities like strategizing, building relationships, and driving your mission forward. Even AI can help with some of these tasks.

Imagine a nonprofit focused on wildlife conservation. They have a massive database of animal tracking data collected from various sources over the years. Manually analyzing this data to identify migration patterns, health trends, or the impact of climate change would be incredibly time-consuming. Chat GPT could analyze tracking data as a CSV to identify previously unnoticed migration patterns of endangered species. You can ask ChatGPT questions based on this CSV and find blind spots way quicker.

With that being said, let’s break down how some people at your nonprofit can use AI in their day-to-day workflow.

Roles in a Nonprofit and Potential Uses of AI

Every person at your nonprofit can use AI. Here’s how.

Executive Director/CEO

The CEO oversees fundraising, strategic direction, and manages the C-suite and ensures the nonprofit reaches its annual goals. Potential AI use cases include:

1. Decision Making: AI can analyze large datasets to provide insights into trends, donor behavior, and program effectiveness. It can help the ED prepare for board meetings, and come up with strategies that would have taken a full-time person do it in a couple of days vs a couple of minutes.
2. Performance Tracking: AI tools for nonprofits can monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and generate reports on the nonprofit's progress towards its goals.
3. Risk Management: AI can predict potential risks by analyzing historical data and current trends, allowing the executive director to proactively address issues.
4. Email Management: You can build a bot on ChatGPT trained with the nonprofit CEO’s voice, so when you’re drafting emails, the AI knows exactly how you write. You can start writing emails way faster.

Fundraising Manager

This is one of the roles that would benefit the most for nonprofits. Most of their job entails a lot of relationship building both offline and online, which requires a lot of automation to be effective. AI can streamline and enhance these efforts significantly.

Here are some areas where AI can help nonprofit fundraisers are:

• Automating email outreach
• Generate insights on past campaigns
• Creating all the email templates and copy for fundraising campaigns
• Event planning and management
• Donor segmentation
• Predictive analytics for donation patterns

Program Director

• Evaluating Program Success: AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude can analyze past and current performance data to determine whether a program is successful. It can help measure the long-term impact of programs by tracking KPIs, too.
• Resource Allocation: AI can help optimize the allocation of resources by predicting which programs will have the most significant impact. By analyzing various factors such as program outcomes, beneficiary feedback, and resource utilization, the AI can recommend the most efficient use of resources.
• Beneficiary Feedback Analysis: AI can collect and analyze feedback from program beneficiaries through surveys, social media, and other channels.
• Monitoring and Reporting: AI can automate the monitoring of program activities and generate real-time reports.
• Program Design and Planning: AI can help you brainstorm ideas for your nonprofit programs and plan, while referencing past projects and what made them successful.
• Cost Management: You can forecast costs and identify areas where expenses can be reduced without compromising on quality.
• Volunteer and Staff Management: AI can optimize the scheduling and management of volunteers and staff, ensuring that the right people are in the right places at the right times to maximize program efficiency.
• Compliance and Reporting: AI can ensure that all programs comply with relevant regulations and standards. It can automate the preparation of compliance reports, reducing the administrative burden on program directors.

Marketing and Communications Manager

At Slam, our MarComms team streamlines our ops with AI every single day. We make it a requirement, so you can have a “second brain.” Here’s how we use AI in our projects:

• Automations Using Zapier: Anytime somebody fills out a form on our website, we create automations using Zapier. This ensures that all inquiries and submissions are promptly addressed and integrated into our workflow without manual intervention.
• Data Analysis for Decks and Reports: AI helps us analyze data for our presentations and reports. By quickly processing and visualizing data, we can create compelling and data-driven decks that highlight our successes and strategies.
• Copywriting Help: We use AI to reference and write copy. We've trained a bot to write just like us, ensuring that our brand voice remains consistent across all communications. This bot helps us draft everything from social media posts to email newsletters.
• Landing Page Copy: For case studies and resource pages, we provide the structure to our AI bot on ChatGPT, which then generates the copy following our exact requirements. This not only speeds up the process, but also maintains a high level of consistency and quality.
• Keyword Research: AI assists us in conducting keyword research, helping us identify the most relevant and effective keywords for your nonprofit SEO strategy. This ensures that our content is optimized for search engines and reaches a broader audience.
• Email Writing: AI tools help us draft and personalize emails. This includes everything from automated follow-up emails to personalized donor communications, ensuring timely and relevant interactions with our audience.

If you’re looking for ideas on how to grow your audience, check out our nonprofit marketing strategies guide!

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Grant Writer

Grant writers at nonprofits can truly level up their game with AI. Imagine having a tool like ChatGPT, who you can brainstorm with, that can pull the best grant opportunities and even analyze RFPs for you. Here's how we use AI at Slam we’ve helped nonprofits with their grant writing process:

• Pulling the Best Grants: One of the toughest parts is finding the right grants. With AI, you can scan through various databases and resources to identify the most relevant and promising funding opportunities quickly. It’s like having a personal assistant who’s always on the lookout for you.
• RFP Analysis and Guidance: When you get an agency RFP, AI can break it down and help guide your responses. It can pull references from the internet and your internal data, making sure your answers hit all the key points.
• Data Integration: You can feed AI all your previous grant applications and outcomes. This means it can learn from your past successes and failures, using that knowledge to craft even stronger proposals. It’s like having all your best practices and lessons learned in one smart system.
• Answering Questions: AI can help answer those tricky questions in grant applications. By analyzing your data and using references from the internet, it can provide well-informed and structured responses.
• Drafting Initial Responses: Starting from scratch is the hardest part. AI can generate initial drafts of your proposals, giving you a solid starting point. This allows you to focus on refining and checking for blind spots.
• Consistent Structure: AI helps maintain a consistent structure across all your grant proposals. You provide the template, and it ensures every proposal follows the same format. This makes your review process smoother and more efficient.

AI Tools for Nonprofits

There are plenty of AI tools out there for nonprofits, all at different costs and with various features. Here's a breakdown of some free, paid, and more expensive tools, along with their use cases.

Free AI Tools for Nonprofits

1. ChatGPT (Free Plan)
   • Use Case: Content generation, drafting emails, and answering queries.
   • Description: Helps in generating text-based content and answering questions with human-like responses. Ideal for creating blog posts, email drafts, and answering FAQs.
2. Claude (Free Plan)
   • Use Case: Writing assistance, content generation, and brainstorming ideas.
   • Description: Provides advanced language understanding and generation capabilities. Useful for drafting reports, generating content ideas, and refining messaging.
3. Perplexity (Free Plan)
   • Use Case: Information retrieval, answering complex questions, and data analysis.
   • Description: Combines search and language models to provide detailed answers and insights. Great for research, gathering data insights, and answering in-depth questions.

Paid AI Tools for Nonprofits

1. Canva Pro
   • Use Case: Graphic design and social media content creation.
   • Cost: Around $12.95/month.
   • Description: Access to premium templates, stock photos, and design AI tools. Perfect for creating professional graphics, social media posts, and marketing materials.
2. Grammarly Premium
   • Use Case: Writing assistance and grammar checking.
   • Cost: Starting at $11.66/month.
   • Description: Advanced grammar checks, style suggestions, and plagiarism detection. Essential for ensuring polished and error-free writing in grant applications, reports, and communications.
3. Claude (Paid Plan)
   • Use Case: Advanced writing assistance, content generation, and data analysis.
   • Cost: Custom pricing based on usage.
   • Description: Higher usage limits, priority support, and access to advanced features. Ideal for high-volume content generation and complex data analysis.
4. ChatGPT Plus

• Use Case: Enhanced content generation, advanced drafting, and more reliable access.
• Cost: $20/month.
• Description: Faster response times, priority access to new features, and improved performance. Great for more frequent use and needing quick, reliable responses. We use it at Slam!

5. Perplexity (Paid Plan)
   • Use Case: Detailed information retrieval, complex question answering, and in-depth data analysis.
   • Cost: Custom pricing based on usage.
   • Description: Enhanced query capabilities, faster processing times, and priority support. Excellent for deep dives into research and detailed analysis.
6. Notion AI
   • Use Case: Content generation, note-taking, and project management.
   • Cost: $10/month/user.
   • Description: Assists in drafting documents, organizing tasks, and brainstorming ideas. Perfect for organizing team projects, creating content outlines, and managing tasks.
7. Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud

• Use Case: CRM and donor management.
• Cost: Varies based on the plan.
• Description: Donor management, engagement tracking, and fundraising tools. Ideal for managing donor relationships, tracking engagement, and optimizing fundraising strategies.

Expensive AI Tools for Nonprofits

1. IBM Watson
   • Use Case: Advanced data analysis, natural language processing, and machine learning.
   • Cost: Custom pricing, usually very high.
   • Description: AI-powered insights, predictive analytics, and automation. Suitable for large-scale data analysis, complex decision-making processes, and automation needs.
2. Tableau
   • Use Case: Data visualization and business intelligence.
   • Cost: Starting at $70/month per user.
   • Description: Advanced data visualization, dashboard creation, and real-time analytics. Great for visualizing complex data sets and creating interactive dashboards.
3. Marketo
   • Use Case: Marketing automation.
   • Cost: Custom pricing, typically high.
   • Description: Email marketing, lead nurturing, and analytics. Ideal for automating marketing campaigns, nurturing leads, and tracking campaign performance.

4. Blackbaud CRM
   • Use Case: Comprehensive donor management and fundraising.
   • Cost: Custom pricing, generally high.
   • Features: Donor tracking, campaign management, and analytics.
   • Description: Donor tracking, campaign management, and analytics. Perfect for large nonprofits needing robust donor management and advanced fundraising tools.

How Slam Uses AI and How it Can Help Your Nonprofit

At Slam, we know firsthand how AI can impact nonprofit operations, making you more efficient and impactful. Here’s a breakdown of how we use AI and how it can benefit your organization.

Brand Writing with AI

One of the coolest ways we use AI is for brand writing. We’ve trained our AI to write just like us, which means we can quickly generate high-quality, on-brand content for campaigns, newsletters, and social media. Imagine having a tool that can whip up engaging content with just a few prompts, ensuring consistency in your messaging across all platforms. Check out how we do it!

Figuring Out What Questions Your Audience Is Asking

Understanding your audience's questions is so important for creating relevant and engaging content. We use Perplexity to analyze what questions people are asking about topics related to our work. It scans the web and provides insights into the most common queries, helping us tailor our content to address those needs directly in our content.

Asking Questions on Your Database

We use it for data analysis. You can ask it questions about your donor database or program performance and get instant, insightful answers. Same with raw data of surveys. You can ask it questions that usually you’d have to manually create charts to figure out patterns and changes that might go unnoticed.

Work with Slam to Learn and Apply AI to your Nonprofit

If you’re ready to revamp your nonprofit workflow and operations, and save a ton of time using AI, Slam is here to help. We offer comprehensive services to integrate AI into your workflows, making sure you get the most out of this tech. Plus, we provide coaching sessions to help your staff learn and effectively use AI tools. Contact us now!

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