Fundraising Update

Welcome to Fundraising Update. This week, we look at how nonprofits can create policies for A.I. use that focus on their values and prevent reputational harm. Plus, we learn how nonprofits are using remote work to lure and retain top talent.

I’m Rasheeda Childress, senior editor for fundraising at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. If you have ideas, comments, or questions about this newsletter, please write me.

Thanks to our sponsor OneEach Technologies for supporting Fundraising Update.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time covering the way fundraisers use A.I. in their work. One concern that comes up time and time again, is whether A.I. use can negatively impact a nonprofit’s reputation, which would ultimately hurt its fundraising. To explore the issue, I spoke to a variety of experts on ethical uses of A.I. and how to guard against practices that can potentially cause harm, such as not saying when images are created by A.I. or not verifying that A.I.-produced content is accurate.

“I’m very hopeful about the promise of A.I. to help nonprofits do amazing things,” Nathan Chappell, a co-founder of Fundraising.AI, told me. “The reality is that we could diminish trust at scale if we use A.I. inappropriately or irresponsibly.”

Unfortunately, few nonprofits have policies to make sure A.I. is being used appropriately: Chappell describes the current state as “very Wild West.” But if more nonprofits put on their good cowboy hats, the A.I. frontier can be tamed.

To create policies for ethical A.I. use for fundraising and other common nonprofit activities, Chappell and others say it’s crucial to start with organizational values, focus on key concerns like privacy, bias, and transparency, and remember that humans, not the technology, should be top of mind in all the work.

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Even nonprofits whose leaders don’t intend to use A.I. need to have a policy, says Beth Kanter, a technology consultant and author.

“There’s shadow use going on,” she says. “People aren’t telling their bosses, but they’re using it. And I think that’s where we can run into trouble.”

When nonprofits create policies to use A.I. ethically, organizational values have to be at the core, says Kanter, co-author of The Smart Nonprofit: Staying Human-Centered in an Automated World. For example, if an organization values equity, then A.I.-use policies should start from there.

“You need to have in your acceptable-use policy some kind of value statement: ‘We carefully review A.I.-generated content through an equity lens to avoid perpetrating harmful stereotypes and for accuracy,’” she says. “So that’s the value, but operationalizing it, you might make sure that content’s being reviewed by a diverse team with a diverse point of view.”

The organization’s values are the starting point because they are not going to change; the same can’t be said about technology, says Karen Boyd, director of research at the Policy & Innovation Center.

To learn more about crafting policies for A.I. use, read the rest of my story.

— Amount of interest in remote job posts on the nonprofit job site Idealist, compared to in-person job posts

Ann Mei Chang took the helm of Candid in October 2021, during the days of pandemic office shutdowns. At one of the first in-person meetings with her leadership team, she and her colleagues debated the pros and cons of whether and how to return to the office. Would the staff of about 200 continue to work remotely? Should they be required to return to the office a few days a week?

“Across the board, our executive team felt like we had been able to maintain, if not improve, our productivity while having gone remote,” Chang says. “That said, there was also a feeling that, over time, there would be an erosion of the personal connections and the culture if we never saw each other.”

Nearly five years removed from the beginning of the pandemic, there’s a whole spectrum of ways to work at nonprofits, reports my colleague Eden Stiffman. As organizations balance their recruiting needs, financial pressures, the demands of delivering their mission, and the preferences of leaders and staff, they’re coming up with a variety of ways to work.

Job seekers are increasingly looking for flexible work arrangements. And organizations that can offer fully remote or at least hybrid work arrangements have a leg up in recruiting and retaining staff.

The nonprofit job site Idealist analyzed postings on its job board and found remote positions receive nine times as many applications as onsite roles. Hybrid jobs receive twice as many as in-person roles.

One of the reasons the nonprofit world still embraces remote and hybrid work is because employers recognize that flexibility of location is something they can offer that corporate America may be less willing to do now, says Jeannie Lloyd, a senior consultant at Nonprofit HR.

“When you’re looking for unique ways to add benefits, this could be a great way to do that, which probably isn’t going to cost much or add anything to their bottom line,” she says.

For more on remote work, read Eden’s entire article.

• From Autonomous Fundraiser to Addictive Intelligence. In addition to creating policies on A.I. use, a bevy of A.I. topics will be cropping up this year. Two A.I.-related words make the list of buzzwords Lucy Bernholz compiles each year for the Chronicle.

  Bernholz writes of autonomous fundraisers: “You knew this was coming. Autonomous fundraisers are A.I. avatars or chatbots that respond quickly, and presumably politely to donors, so they feel cared for. At least until they don’t. This is likely a terrible idea, but nonprofits everywhere will likely want to try it. The big ‘what if’ is whether making fundraising more efficient will also make it more obnoxious and transactional.”

  “Inevitably, the bots will negotiate a gift a donor doesn’t actually want to make — or even trick some people into thinking they’re human. Nonprofits should prepare for some spectacular backlash when a donor feels angry or duped.”

  To see what Bernholz has to say about addictive intelligence and other buzzwords, read the full list.

Mark Pincus gave $5 million to the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. The gift will launch the Pincus Artificial Intelligence Lab for Organizational Innovation, where researchers will work to incorporate A.I. into organizational structures, and understand how A.I. can assist businesses with product management and other tasks.

Pincus founded a number of Silicon Valley startups, including Zynga, a mobile social-gaming and generative A.I. company. He was an early investor in social-media giants Facebook and Twitter, now X, and he co-founded Reinvent Capital, an investment firm.

For other notable gifts this week, read my colleague Maria Di Mento’s Gifts Roundup column. To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly and has data going back to 2000.

Looking to Boost Your Fundraising? Influencers Are Ready to Help. How nonprofits of all sizes are partnering with social-media personalities to reach new donors

Your Secret Weapon in These Divisive Times? Fundraisers (Opinion). They have the skills to break through polarization and build bridges to donors with a wide range of views — exactly what organizations need as the new administration takes office and red-blue tensions simmer.

Fundraising and Wealth Inequality. More and more, when celebrities raise money for a cause, they get backlash. We saw it in 2023 when Oprah and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson set up a fundraiser for the Hawaii fires. We saw it in 2024 when Alyssa Milano set up a GoFundMe for her son’s baseball team. And this year, we are seeing backlash amid fundraising for the L.A. fires, as This is Us star Mandy Moore was attacked online after sharing a GoFundMe for her brother- and sister-in-law who lost their home.

A new opinion piece in the Guardian discusses the ways the everyday donors so many fundraisers are aiming to reach are turned off by pleas for help by people they perceive have enough money that they shouldn’t be asking.

While online trolls are certainly a part of the equation when it comes to celebrities, the sentiment is present in some working-class donors who want to give to those truly in need. Those folks, the article says, are mobilizing for mutual aid. How? By helping communities that have typically been left out of GoFundMe largesse. A 2021 study showed that the GoFundMe campaigns that raised the most money were by the wealthiest people, who got donations from their network of high-income friends and acquaintances.

Donors who want to help the neediest in L.A. are going beyond the general GoFundMe page dedicated to wildfires fundraisers, and searching for pages that support traditionally marginalized groups that have been displaced by the LA fires, including those for Black families, Latino families, Filipino families, and people with disabilities. And those campaigns are earning more everyday donations. The Guardian notes these donors want to see more justice and equity in how their funds are dispersed. These examples may offer fundraisers courting everyday donors a lesson about effective messaging. (Guardian)