Bringing the Power of AI to Where It’s Most Needed: Your Workflow
There are two adages about working that are as true in the age of iPhones and AI as they were back in the era of steam locomotives. In practically any endeavor, we are more successful when we are in the right place at the right time—and when we possess the right tools for the job. Cognizant of this truth, DonorSearch is hard at work ensuring that all of our products and services hold true to these rules of success in both new and innovative ways.
But first, just how important is it to be in the right place at the right time? We might ask that of English grandmother Dorothy Fletcher. She happened to suffer a heart attack while flying to Florida for her daughter’s wedding in 2004. When the flight attendant declared an emergency, using the intercom to ask if any doctor was on board, no less than 15 hands went up.
As it (thankfully) turned out, the plane was chock full of cardiology experts on the way to a conference. As you’d expect, Dorothy survived the heart attack. She even made it to the wedding. So what does this tale have to do with DonorSearch AI empowering nonprofit fundraising success? More than you’d might think!
To drive enduring fundraising success, your organization needs to have your team engaged in the right activities at the right time—with the right prospects. Success is unlikely to occur through the dumb luck or divine intervention that saved Dorothy Fletcher’s life. Instead, it’s bound to come down to smart planning and accurate data. Both will help connect your team to those prospects interested in supporting your good works well into the future.
And that’s where that second adage comes into play—having the right tools for the job. As DonorSearch Senior Vice President Nathan Chappell explains, “It’s not enough to have incredible data on donors and prospects that becomes more accurate as time goes by. That data has to transform into actionable intelligence by putting it into the hands of fundraisers and staffers in ways they can really understand and put to work.” Chappell documents in his recent book The Generosity Crisis: The Case for Radical Connection to Solve Humanity’s Greatest Challenes (Wiley & Sons 2022) how the nonprofit sector lags behind the corporate economy in adopting technology. That is certainly the case when combining organizational knowledge with the power of AI.
Integrating AI into tools used daily by employees to interact with customers is a major emerging trend amongst corporations. Example: many employ it with customer relationship management (CRM) software. One of the most popular CRM platforms in the world, Salesforce, has introduced steady enhancements to its “Einstein Copilot” AI utilized by companies for tasks like analyzing consumer behavior and to make personalized recommendations. The goal of such integration is to make employees more effective by putting key data directly into their various normal workflows.
While nonprofits are used to lagging behind corporations, the good news is DonorSearch is closing the gap through its own integration plans. Recently we expanded our partnership with DonorPerfect, a leading fundraising software company. The goal of our collaboration is to integrate DonorSearch AI data directly into the workflows that fundraisers and gift officers already use today. As we know, immediate access to insightful data can open doors and build bridges. This combination of prospect knowledge and AI data is also being explored with other partners including Give Momentum with a similar goal: Delivering AI data when and where it is needed most.
DonorSearch Executive Vice President and Co-Owner Sarah TeDesco explains, “When everyone is busy with many tasks, it’s easy to look at AI data as simply a score to be referred to when things slow down—which rarely happens. By combining AI data with normal fundraising workflows and activities, it takes on a new dimension. Suddenly, this isn’t some score noted in the records, it’s a source of information at your fingertips, driving fundraising success.”
Although the integration of existing data and DonorSearch AI in a single platform is useful across every type of non-profit organization, it has proven to be especially advantageous for nonprofits focused on the arts. Many such organizations often possess lofty goals and aren’t limited by so many rules governing healthcare and other fields. However, they do traditionally suffer from a major silo effect in their data strategies. Yet in many cases, DonorSearch has helped to not just break down such separation, but also to pair existing info with AI data. When this happens, the results can be just as stunning as what an organization showcases on a performing arts stage.
To learn just how DonorSearch can help your organization turn AI data from a score into the key to creating stronger relationships with your community, please contact DonorSearch for a demo today. And if you are an experienced non-profit professional interested in helping new nonprofits build for future success daily, consider a career with us at DonorSearch.
