15 Jun Can We Talk About AI?
16 June 2026
By David Allen, Development for Conservation
Last week (F-Stop and Be There), I shared three very real stories of transformational gifts. Gifts that impacted the recipient organizations so strongly, that there was literally a before and after in their history. My point in sharing them was not about wealth. It was about trust. Human to human contact.
I’ve found myself writing about connections – and building trust – a lot lately. See also Snake Mountain, and Who Will Give $5,000 Next Year? Why would a $35 donor give $1,000? Why would a $250 donor give $5,000? Why would a $5,000 donor give a million? Or two?
The answer has been studied for decades and comes down to two primary factors: belief in the mission – that what is being done is worth doing – and trust that the people involved (both Board and staff) can do it – that I’m not throwing my money away.
Belief in the mission is something we can’t do much about. Just about everyone should be interested, but the depth of their interest and especially compared with everything else capturing their interest – well, it’s all over the map. We shouldn’t be “selling.” We should be making it easier for like-minded people to find us.
But trust? That’s something we build – slowly and intentionally over time. In some cases, over years. If we’re lucky, we identify the possibility, intentionally reach out, meet in person perhaps several times, learn from them the kind of project that lights them up, find such a project needing investment, and happen to still be in place when s/he decides to give.
This is major gift fundraising. It’s the most important fundraising we can do, and it’s not even close. In a perfect world, we would be treating every one of our donors as major gift prospects – individually cultivating their interest and matching them with opportunities for them to make a difference. In the universe of things you might spend time on this week, building these relationships should be the first priority.
Enter AI.
I’m a fan of Mark Phillips, as many of you know. His recent post, AI won’t fix fundraising. It will simply feed on what’s been broken for years, is well worth reading. It addresses the promises and risks of leaning into AI for fundraising. But here’s the relevant point he makes:
AI is presented as a tool that helps fundraisers do more, faster, cheaper. It will write your appeals for you, it will analyze your results and tell you what that means … But. And it’s a big but. Are we are supposed to believe that fundraisers will use the time freed up for strategy and human connection? We will, as they say, have to wait and see.
OR – are we in for something else entirely? Blackbaud has already created an AI fundraising agent. It appears to be able to profile donors, build communications, shape the ask, contact supporters automatically, and, in some cases, help move the donation process through to completion, all under the reassuring phrase “human oversight.”
Where is this heading? What are ethical and moral implications? Will AI build trust or erode it?
A couple of weeks ago, a client not appreciating the level of detail in my report asked Claude (an AI product) to rewrite it for her. She then sent the result back to me and essentially asked I use it when presenting to the Board. I will tell you that the result was 95 percent amazing. Claude got a few things wrong (easily identified and corrected) and emphasized several points that I wouldn’t have. But mostly it was a faithful synopsis of my report – in about a third of the words and pages.
The problem I had was in its relative insensitivity. Some things I sugarcoat and some things I couch in language that accepts the possibility I could be mistaken. Claude stripped all of that nuance out. Plainly said, it didn’t sound like me.
And it gets back to the trust thing. I believe people trust me at least to some degree because I own the possibility I could be wrong. I have a lot of answers. And I firmly believe in the value of my lived experience. But I also own the fact that my lived experience might not be your lived experience. Claude took all that uncertainty out. And the result didn’t sound like me.
Was it trustworthy? Or was some part of trust sacrificed in the name of summary and brevity?
Fundraising is more art than science, and so is communication. It is science, too, to be sure. But the art part is important. It’s human. Fundraising, and major gift fundraising in particular, is and should be uniquely human.
I don’t believe AI can replace that, and I don’t believe we should let it.
Cheers, and have a great week.
-da
PS: For another interesting read, try Yuval Harari’s book Nexus. In it, he suggests that all communication created by AI should clearly state that it was created by AI. Imagine putting THAT qualifier in your appeal letter!
PPS: Your comments on these posts are welcomed and warmly requested. If you have not posted a comment before, or if you are using a new email address, please know that there may be a delay in seeing your posted comment. That’s my SPAM defense at work. I approve all comments as soon as I am able during the day.
Photo by DominikRH courtesy of Pixabay.
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