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Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell
How AI Is Reshaping Donor Engagement with Juliet MacDowell
00:31:08
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- [00:00]
Juliet McDowell
You pour your heart into every single fundraising appeal. You juggle a dozen different tools trying to piece together a clear picture of your supporters. But what if your fundraising platform was built with a deep understanding of those challenges? That's the difference a purpose built giving platform like Bloomerang can make. Bloomerang customers aren't just fundraising. They are seeing a 27% larger one time gifts than the industry average. They're growing their supporter base by an average of 12% year over year. And that's the confidence to know who to ask and when. It's the joy of seeing your community rally behind you with greater generosity. It's turning passion into unstoppable momentum. Your purpose is limitless and your fundraising tools should be too. Learn how you can start raising more@jcsocialmarketing.com bloomerang that's jcsocialmarketing.com Bloomer B L O O M E R A N G All right, onto the show.
- [01:08]
Julia Campbell
Hello and welcome to Nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell, and I'm gonna sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the Nonprofit Nation podcast to share practical wisdom to help you confidently find your voice, definitively grow your audience, and effectively build your movement. If you're a non profit newbie or an experienced professional who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people, and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started.
- [01:56]
Juliet McDowell
Everyone. This is Nonprofit Nation with your host, Julia Campbell. I'm so excited to be here with you today. The topic we are discussing is how AI artificial intelligence is reshaping donor engagement. The question we're going to answer, can AI actually help you raise more money and build better donor relationships? And this week, we're going to dive into the future of fundraising with Juliet McDowell, a veteran development strategist who has raised over $1 billion for global NGOs and is now the founder of Mission AI. Juliet, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:39]
Thanks for having me here, Julia. I'm really excited to be here and speak with you and others.
- [02:45]
So you have raised over $1 billion for NGOs and causes. That's pretty incredible. What first drew you to the nonprofit sector? You know, sort of what's kept you motivated through the years. Fundraising can be demoralizing sometimes, but sounds like you've got the. The secret sauce here.
- [03:05]
Yeah, thanks. I came into the nonprofit world because I really believed in the idea of a fair, more humane world. I didn't have a single issue focus, so I was interested in social justice in public health, and various other topics. So I worked across sectors. And when you're working across sectors, you're not becoming a technician.
- [03:28]
Right.
- [03:29]
So I was a program manager. And then I was like, I'm more interested in fundraising. And it wasn't because I love money. Well, you know, money is a kind of power, but it's because I saw how resources shape everything and shape programs and can drive impact. So I wanted to help fix the systems that decide what gets funded and why. And now with AI in the mix, I'm helping organizations rethink how they use their time and tell their stories and fundraise.
- [04:00]
So you created and you're now working with Mission AI. Tell us all about your company. What inspired you to launch it? What challenges is it designed to solve?
- [04:13]
Well, I started Mission AI because I kept seeing nonprofits fall behind the AI space. And me personally, I was extremely interested several years ago in AI when it was just talking about big data. And then when large language models came out and other models came out, I just dove right in. And as I got more interested and learned more about AI, I immediately could apply it to the nonprofit space and specifically to the fundraising space, because I could see the. That there were several things that organizations can do to kind of speed up their progress and also take away some of the more mundane things. And so that's what Mission AI does. It helps organizations become a lot more efficient in what they do. And we design custom and ethical AI tools along with the client that reflect how nonprofit work gets done.
- [05:11]
I am a big fan. People know this on the podcast if they listen. My favorite tool. I mean, AI tools are everywhere. They're in my phone, they're on my computer. They're in everything that I do. But my favorite, like, large language model is Chachi pt. And I just discovered a new tool, and this is just not an ad for ChatGPT. It's called Any Do. Have you heard of Any Do? Yeah, it's any dot do. And it basically, you can add your calendar now to Chat GPT, and it can send you reminders and it can schedule things for you. It is saving me so much time, so many headaches, because I'm the executive assistant to my kids, of course, as many of us are. I'm the executive assistant of my house. I'm the concierge to everyone. So I think for those kind of tasks, I find it really, really helpful. I of course, use it for work tasks as well. But in your line of work, how are you seeing AI actively improve fundraising outcomes?
- [06:18]
Well, several. There are several different ways. So when I was developing some of these ideas and they were actually along with, with clients, what I wanted to do is I wanted to reduce the amount of grunt work it takes for fundraisers to do their work. So for example, to find RFPs, we have an RFP finder that finds opportunities across the web. It filters the opportunities according to the organization, you know, whatever your technical area is, and it delivers it to your doorstep. And we've actually developed integrations where not only does it end there, it also filters the opportunity and makes a go, no go decision and drafts you an outline and some of the other matter you would need for the rfp, like an evaluation matrix and, you know, other back matter. So we have been seeing organizations save at least 30% of their time in the glunt work. We also developed another tool that helps find new funders for organizations. So rather than looking for an rfp, we actually look for corporate donors and foundation donors and provide like a leads list. When we launched it a few months ago, I think we launched it somewhere in January. It was right before some of the closings at USAAD happened. And so it came just in time for this organization because it was all these corporate donors and they could do outreach. So we're seeing lots of different solutions and we've created a lot of different solutions to really help organizations with some of the more tedious tasks and time consuming tasks.
- [08:03]
Can you share an example, maybe a practical example of how your AI tools have helped nonprofits sort of either raise more money or maybe build stronger relationships.
- [08:14]
We're not helping build stronger relationships. I want to say that because that's what the entire time I was thinking, I thought, you know what, as a fundraiser, me, myself, I like people and I like building those relationships. But what I don't like is scanning hundreds of web pages, figuring out what the donor wants, figuring out who the decision makers are. That just takes a lot of time. And so we worked with a very large public health organization to help do that for them. And we delivered to their doorstep within, I mean, literally within minutes, a lead list of really qualified leads of 150 organizations now, 150 donors. Now the difficulty there is developing the relationships. And so what we did do is actually develop a marketing funnel for them that at least it starts to open the door and then they have to make the meetings and have the relationship built.
- [09:15]
Exactly. Because that is sort of a concern that I hear, especially in the sector from fundraisers, that AI is depersonalizing the donor experience. That's not what I'm seeing, but I do hear that concern. How do you address this? So how do you think about maintaining this authenticity while using these tools?
- [09:37]
First, I'd like to distinguish the kind of donors we're talking about. We are not talking about individuals. Right. So individual fundraising. We're talking more about institutions. And so institutions like government or foundations or corporate. And in that case, the relationship is more about context and relevance. And it becomes personal, of course, when you meet a donor. But showing your relevance and your technical strength is really important. And that's where AI can really help a lot.
- [10:11]
Absolutely. And I love that idea of really being able to filter out all of that extraneous information and save you hours of time of looking at websites and looking at LinkedIn and figuring out who are the decision makers, who should you talk to? What are they interested in? I think that is just such a huge benefit of these tools built.
- [10:34]
Just as an add on to that, we built a monitor that actually monitors key donors for them and kind of alerts you when there's a change of language or a change of strategy. That way you can get intel immediately. And that's been enormously helpful for organizations.
- [10:52]
Does that sync with a CRM or is that a separate.
- [10:57]
Yeah, so we actually synced it with Salesforce, which is really, really nice. But my experience with integration, so we do a lot of integrations, custom integrations with Salesforce or, you know, whatever other CRM an organization is using. My experience, though, is that it's important to onboard the customer about, you know, what's being synced and actually work within their organization to kind of build out some notifications for them. Because sometimes things just go into Salesforce and then it's, you know, like this black hole. So it's important to work with the organizations, I own it, or whoever the CRM administrator is.
- [11:42]
So, in fact, I mean, an argument can be made. I've had other guests on the podcast make this argument that AI tools can actually make the donor journey more personalized. So talk about that.
- [11:57]
So you're collecting data points and particularly pain points, and then when you're matching the donor or the customer's pain points with your service offering, you could be a lot clearer about how you're positioning and how you're showing up in the market and in correspondence. Now, humans have been really good, some of them at doing this and some of them not but this way, it kind of really helps an organization. I say help, but does not do the work. It helps the organization keep the focus. Of course, I think, at least the way I think is that every AI output does need a human to look at it and to refine it somewhat. So it's like an excellent assistant.
- [12:44]
Well, that brings me to common misconceptions. So what are the common misconceptions that you see about what AI can and can't do?
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I feel like we could have a podcast just about the misconceptions.
- [12:57]
Yes, let's talk, let's break them down. And then also there's some good ones, bad ones, and. Yeah, what are the misconceptions?
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So I think one of the misconceptions is that the AI can do the fundraising for you and it can't. You know, what it can help you do really well is analyze trends, you know, track shifts and donor priorities, look up opportunities for you. We even built this, this tool called Donor Bot Buddy, which is actually a little bot that scans the donor website. It looks like a human. I mean, not the bot, but like, the scan looks like what a human would do, and flags for fresh opportunities. But. And AI can't build trust. Right. So it can't replace the relationship building. Yeah, it replaces some of the words, but still, it won't get you, like, the insider intel that you need. Because what we're doing is we're scanning for publicly available information. But as you know, when you have conversations with people, they will tell you things that maybe are not public information. So that's, that's where really fundraisers should develop their soft skills and become a lot stronger, because AI can't do that. And also, I, I'm a very strong believer that AI cannot write your proposal, no matter how much people love ChatGPT. We're seeing like a flood of bad proposals.
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Mediocrity. Exactly. It's just making the mediocrity more mediocre.
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Like junk in, junk out. But, you know, there's a difference between using AI to support your thinking and dumping your props into a model and hitting send. Right. So we actually built a course and we're going to launch the course soon. We're getting signups. It's about how to use AI for fundraising without embarrassing yourself.
- [14:39]
That's a fantastic title. I love that. That sounds like a book. I love that.
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It could be a book, but it's just like a mini course. And, you know, what we're seeing is that evaluators are saying that it's becoming a huge problem. They can really see they don't have to run any of the program to see it, but you can just see it. After you read so many of these, you could see. See who's used it and who hasn't.
- [14:59]
Exactly. And for me, I just think I did grant writing for many, many years. It would have been helpful if I could put what I wrote and just say, okay, I have 500 characters. Take this to 350. Because we have. There's character limits, there's page limits, there's this and that. So taking your ideas and your content and what you've written, but having it. You know, actually, now that I think about it, it would be fantastic if I had a grant proposal that I wrote and I had the RFP and I just had ChatGPT do a scan and say, does this actually address what the RFP wants? Does it address all the deliverables? What's missing? Like asking questions? Is that how you're seeing it too?
- [15:45]
Yeah. Well, we created some custom GPTs to do this. So we have a GPT for government RFPs. We also built one for building an evaluation matrix. We built another that helps you build a really strong outline. What we're finding, and that's what the course is going to cover, is like really how to prompt, because you can do something like say to Jack GB, you know, this was 500 characters, I needed 300. But then what ChatGPT will likely do is just cut it down and then you'll lose some important information. Okay. And that could actually be time consuming. So if you know how to prompt really well, then you won't have the problem.
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Well, let's talk about prompting. I'm just for people that are not familiar with prompting.
- [16:30]
It's basically how to give the. The model instructions. Large language models all work with a set of instructions. And it's just prompting is really telling it what kind of output you want to see how creative they can be. So, for example, in ChatGPT you can give it a temperature rating. So, for example, a temperature rating of zero means. Well, ChatGPT cannot make something up. They cannot be creative. It has to be very precise in the output. Or you could make it as creative as you want and say your temperature rating is 2.
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So that's a new one for me. I didn't know that. Yeah, learning. I love it.
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Prompting is something really interesting and it's actually a lot more sophisticated than people think. Of course. Course you could get CHAT GBT to do things with if you just write simple instructions, and. And it's getting better over time, but the better you are at giving those instructions, you know, the more satisfied you'll be with the output.
- [17:28]
I love this. So the example that I give to my clients and see if this is an accurate example, it's very basic. So if I just tell my kids, do the dishes. Okay. I just say. I just say, do the dishes, what they will do, they will literally maybe empty the dishwasher and maybe put like one dish in the dishwasher. What I want them to do is go around the house and get all of the dishes that are in your rooms, go look in the basement, clean the counter. There's specific things that I want them to do, but if I don't prompt them, then they're not going to do it. So the way that I like to think about prompting is the more specific and detailed you can be. It's almost like having an intern. If you tell your intern, write an annual appeal letter and you don't give them any other information, they're going to write the most generic, ridiculously boring and bland appeal letter of all time. So I just like to think about it, like when I tell my kids to do something, the more specific, the better. And that's how I have learned. And the more background information, the more examples you can give. That's how I found it to be effective. I don't know what you have found.
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I love this analogy and I hope I can steal it from you.
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Yeah, steal it.
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Because. Yeah, it's precisely that. Yeah. How to be directive. And also not confusing. And also, again, it's back to the question of, like, what can AI do and what can it not do? Not to be political, but I.
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You can be political.
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I think several weeks ago, when the trade tariffs came out, one spokesperson took a look at and said, hey, you know, AI.
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It's written by. Yes, totally written by them.
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Yeah, it was. Because, you know, what they told AI was find where we have a trade imbalance. And of course, places that are not trading with us. Right. So places like Antarctica, the penguins, because they weren't trading with them. So. And. And you know, that's the kind of mistake that large language mod make. So you have to know, like, what are the use cases? And that's where like a mission AI or other people who really understand large language models and other AI instruments come in.
- [19:46]
Right. And maybe not use it to write policy that's going to affect millions, if not billions of people. That's just how I would do things. I know the penguins, the tariffs. I know, it's just. It's like laughable, but yet then you want to cry.
- [20:00]
It's a mistake that people make when using AI. I mean, unfortunately, it shouldn't be at.
- [20:05]
That level, but okay. But that's where we are. So for a nonprofit that's interested in getting started with AI but they're not sure to begin, what is the first step you would recommend?
- [20:16]
So I think what's really important is to know your pain points. So, you know, where are you? Like, time is a really important thing. Like, look at your return on investment with what your staff does and what you're getting in return. You know, are you getting impact on the ground? Are you getting funding in? Right. It's one of those two things. And if it's not one of those two things, most of the time AI can jump in. And even with those two things, AI can help. So take a look and pick one thing and pick processes that are more or less simplified in your organization. Not too complex, like too many departments at once, because it's possible, but it sometimes it takes a long time and it's way too big of an endeavor. So I would start with something small and then move outward.
- [21:08]
What skills or mindsets do you think fundraisers are going to need to have to thrive in the next five to 10 years?
- [21:18]
A few things, I think. Definitely being able to be adaptable because right now the funding landscape has changed. So I've been doing this for over 25 years, like fundraising, and I have not seen such rapid change as I have in the last year.
- [21:37]
Wow.
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So the ability to be dynamic and make those changes, whatever changes are needed, learn how to spot those trends really quickly and, you know, just don't chase every shiny new thing. But, you know, you need to be paying attention. And then set up a simple ways to track the donor priorities. Try to find different ways of fundraising as well. Again, don't be afraid to try something new. But when trying something new, make sure you're learning from others who have done it right. Most of us are not doing it for the first time. We're learning from each other or learning from someone else. And for example, like blended finance, a lot of people are looking at blended finance models. Find another organization or somebody else who's done it and borrow their playbook. You know, there's no prize for figuring it out alone. Right. And don't take too long to adapt. I think that this is, you know, during COVID it was really interesting because I saw the study where they looked at restaurants like here and here in the Netherlands, they looked at restaurants that did well during COVID and it was the ones that pivoted very early to delivery that quickly made it. And the ones that waited, well, unfortunately, they had to close their doors. And I think that the nonprofit space is quite the same.
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I completely see that. And as you were talking, I thought of one idea for fundraisers, something that I have done. I have entered in reports. So, like the fundraising effectiveness project, there's lots of data around fundraising trends, like you're saying, and then having ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, whatever it is that you use, whatever tool it is that you use, having it contextualize it for your specific nonprofit. What can I learn? What am I going to pay attention to? What do I need to focus on in the next 6 to 12 months? Just using it, really, as it's. I call it, like, elevated Google. I know especially with my kids, they're always like, google this. And I was like, well, no, because Google will just give me a list of links. Sad to say, I'm gonna ask Chachi pt, like, how do we cook wings in the air fryer? Like, that is a perfect example. So I put articles in and say, okay, this is a fantastic article. Have it make sense for me and my business. What can I learn? What can I pull out? What can I extrapolate? What can I understand?
- [23:58]
And.
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And it's going to help that burden of. We think we need to have our fingers in all the pies, and we need to constantly be following all the blogs and knowing all of the different trends. And I think in that way, it can really help us be more effective. So that was just an idea that I had.
- [24:15]
Yeah, that actually, that's what we've done with building some of this donor intel bot. It's. It's really. You know, we all get lots of mailing lists and newsletters, and at one point, you're just saturated. So we found a way of just centralizing it for your business and, you know, giving you updates weekly and things that you could really kind of absorb.
- [24:38]
So what gives you hope about the future of fundraising?
- [24:43]
I really believe in people, and I think that most people want to do the right thing, and I think most philanthropists really want to do the right thing. And, you know, it's that belief that keeps me going. And recently I read a book by Rutger Brechman, if you know who he is, and it's called Humankind, and he has the story in there that really stayed with me and Kind of reinforced my. My hope about people. It's. It was the story about During World War II, you know, governments were really afraid that civilians would panic under bombing raids. And the British, like, they even built these psychiatric hospitals, expecting, like, mass breakdowns. But interesting enough, the opposite happened, and communities organized themselves, and people shared what they had with each other and mental health. Not only did it not collapse, but it improved. And so that shows you the resilience of people, the willingness to work together, and the willingness to make things better. And that's what I believe in.
- [25:42]
Oh, I love that so much. I did have another tactical question that I forgot to ask, because this is something that I have had clients ask me. Is there donor hesitation? Is there donor reticence and skepticism around nonprofits that use AI and how do we sort of combat that? If there is, I'm not sure if there's a study on that.
- [26:04]
There is not. But, you know, if you keep your finger on the pulse and take a look at. At what's being written and shared on LinkedIn. If you asked me this question a year ago, I would say, like, hide the fact that you're using AI. But right now, it's moved so quickly that it's like telling people to go back to the typewriter, and donors are accepting it, and they're not only accepting it, they're starting to use it in smarter ways. And in fact, I think that if you can show that you're using AI to really help increase your impact. We're working on some. Some models of impact. We don't only do fundraising, but we do other things, too. And if you could show your donors that, hey, you know, we're reducing overheads, we're. We're creating more impact, and we're leveraging AI to do it, I think that they would be extremely excited. And just to add to that a little bit more, in the last two or three months, I have seen so many RFPs about using AI in various different ways. Some of it for monitoring and evaluation, some of it for counterterrorism, which we actually built a whole project around it. So I think that we can't ignore it anymore.
- [27:11]
Yes, I know it's really tough to know what to tell your donors and maybe what not. I mean, did you. If you hired a fundraising consultant, do you need to tell your donors? If you're doing research with AI, do you need to tell your donors? I always think honesty is the best policy, but I also think you're right that people in general are becoming more comfortable and your Donors want to see that you're creating more impact, serving more people, doing the job more efficiently and scaling and. And really helping around a cause they care about. And at the end of the day, that's what they really, really care about. I don't think they care what your database is and what email client you use. They just care that you're pushing the needle, making impact.
- [27:55]
Exactly, exactly. And that's what you should care about, too. I mean, that's what organizations need to care about. And I am really lucky in that I've been around long enough that I actually remember using a typewriter for university with whiteout. And I've seen technology increase, like, tremendously. And I remember organizations being reticent to building web pages. I mean, this is. I remember that discussion back then, oh, should we have a webpage? And quite frankly, those who got on board earlier were the ones who were more successful in fundraising and visibility and a whole bunch of other things.
- [28:34]
Absolutely. This has been fantastic. Julia, where can people find you, learn more about you, and connect with you? Mission AI.
- [28:42]
Yeah, sure. So we're, of course, on the web. Mission AI IO Also, Juliet, Mission AI IO is my email address and you can find me on LinkedIn.
- [28:54]
Oh, fantastic. I'll put all the links in the show notes. We'll have to have you on in probably six months to a year because so much has. Will have changed. That's a good. Actually, I would love to ask that question before we wrap up. How do you keep on top of trends and changes and just sort of the overwhelming amount of information that is constantly coming out about AI?
- [29:18]
Two things. One, I have a really good staff, so I do still rely on humans. And, you know, I've built my own custom integrations where basically it collects all the news and then makes a summary for me. And I can look at the exact article if I want, but I get that weekly.
- [29:37]
Oh, my gosh, I need that in my life. It's almost like Google Reader before Google Reader died. But this has really been very helpful. I've learned a lot. I hope that my listeners have gotten a lot of different ideas for practical ways to use the tools. But everyone listening, I would encourage you to connect with Juliet on LinkedIn, go to the Mission AI website, get some more free resources there. So thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
- [30:04]
Yeah, thanks for having me. Foreign.
- [30:14]
Julia Campbell
Thank you for tuning into my show and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast. App and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or review because this this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact.
- [30:41]
Juliet McDowell
So that's pretty much it.
- [30:42]
I'll be back soon with a brand.
- [30:44]
Julia Campbell
New episode, but until then you can find me on Instagram juliacampbell77 Keep changing.
- [30:51]
Juliet McDowell
The world you non profit unicorn.
- [30:57]
SA.