Top 5 Ways Charities Can Make Use of AI

In last year's CanadaHelps Giving Report, data showed staff capacity and burnout remain top concerns for charities. Heavy workloads and tight resources increase staff turnover, underscoring retention, another concern facing the charitable sector. 

With the cultural zeitgeist over artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years, relatively little digital ink has been spilled on how charities can leverage these tools. AI holds tremendous potential for the charitable sector to better allocate staff resources, increase efficiency, and reduce costs. 

Think of AI as a tool to help your charity work smarter, not harder. AI can help maximize the value of donation dollars, freeing up the time and resources for staff to focus on the tasks that require personalized elements only you can bring. 

With all AI tools, you power their use. Your knowledge and expertise leads your charity’s use and implementation of AI. Without your hands at the wheel entering the prompts, asking the right questions, or moving the research forward, AI could not be effectively harnessed.

Keep ethical considerations top of mind when using Artificial Intelligence tools. AI-generated material needs to be verified and fact-checked by a human. Since AI sources material from all over the internet, accuracy is not guaranteed, and biases will be present. 

Barring ethics in mind, Canadian charities should explore the potential of AI to increase donations and help tell your story.

‍

‍

What are the top ways charities can leverage AI?

These examples can inform your charity’s adoption of AI technology, and showcase how AI can benefit your mission. 

‍

AI can analyze files and data sets 

Predictive AI can digest and analyze large volumes of data to forecast and model out future outcomes. 

Your charity will feed the computer program an aggregate of files, such as revenue information or historical donor records. The AI will analyze the data set and identity patterns, make predictions or anticipate future behaviour. Charities can leverage the predictive capabilities of AI for tasks like audience segmentation or personalizing donor journeys.

‍

‍

AI Chatbots can provide customer support 

You have probably encountered AI chatbots on the landing page of various tech or e-commerce websites. Did you know they're useful for charities too?!

Integrating a friendly AI chatbot assistant onto your website is a worthwhile investment. Chatbot mimics human conversation. They field questions and provide real-time answers that are customized to the user’s specific inquiry. 

Chatbots function by interpreting the inputted information and translating it into a custom output – providing fast, personalized customer support to your website visitors at all times of the day or night. You will need to train, test and refine your chatbot over time. 

‍

AI can create graphics and images

Various AI image and graphic generation programs exist. These programs produce unique, high-quality imagery based on the information, prompts and parameters you input. While offering the obvious benefits of lowering costs and saving time, AI-generated images allow charities to sidestep the ethical and privacy concerns of exposing, or dehumanizing, real people in vulnerable circumstances. 

‍

AI images can help charities protect the safety of people accessing charities

Many charities carry out work in highly sensitive areas. To protect the privacy and safety of people accessing services for addiction or mental health, or to safeguard the confidentiality of individuals, especially minors, who use food banks or crisis shelters, charities often opt against sharing photos or images of real people. 

Without photos, however, the visual stories these charities can tell about why people should donate to their cause are limited. By using AI-generated images charities can overcome the ethical and privacy challenges of depicting real people. AI-images allow charities to illustrate their story with life-like photos that don’t stigmatize, or jeopardize the safety, of the people pictured. The AI-generated image below is a great example of this phenomenon.

‍

AI images can help charities avoid stereotypes

Using AI-generated photos can help charities avoid inadvertently playing into, or amplifying, stereotypes about the people they are seeking to help. As this 2021 study shows, American charities were still found using photographs that stigmatize, or misrepresent, the people they are trying to help.

Traditionally, charitable organizations have been limited to using photos of people who would, or could, consent to their use. With AI, however, charities have the ability to generate any images they wish. Charities can create photos that disrupt harmful stereotypes and tell a fresh story about the types of people organizations can help.

‍

‍

AI can be your writing assistant

Ask AI the right questions, refine those questions, input your new written prompts and receive a final output of a unique copy.

From generating user experience copy for your website, first drafts of email newsletters, social media posts, marketing campaign materials or press releases, generative AI is a useful writing assistant. We suggest turning to AI generators for a first draft or to copy-edit a piece of content. Remember, since AI is prone to bias and/or factual error, whatever it generates will need to be edited and fact-checked by a human. 

‍

‍

AI can source and write grants 

Securing grants and funding is the bread and butter of the charitable sector. It’s also an area where AI can assist and help your organization successfully source grants and assist with the cumbersome aspects of writing proposals. 

AI contains powerful features for charity grant writing. The research capabilities of AI can be leveraged to find the relevant grants that your charity will apply for. And charities can employ the generative capabilities to create first drafts, refine narratives for clarity or meaning and help streamline the entire grant process. 

At a time when many charities are facing funding insecurities, these grant sourcing and application tools can be especially important. 

‍

Be aware, predictive AI can analyze massive amounts of highly sensitive data.

Before uploading any secure information to an AI, your charity should assess the security risks involved and establish an organizational policy outlining ethical use of AI. Research the privacy policies of the major AI platforms on the market and select one where data security is paramount. Unethical adoption of AI can result in privacy violations, legal breaches and damage the integrity of your organization.

‍

‍

Want to upgrade your digital abilities? Charity Growth Academy is a free, transformation program to help Canadian charities growth.