How NGOs Can Truly Benefit From AI

The pace of advances in AI is faster than anything we've ever seen in human history. Nathan explains how this can create a lot of overwhelm for leaders, leading to a disparate kind of view, with leaders saying, “I don't know what the future looks like if I use AI but I know what it looks like if I don't.” The sentiment is that we know we have to do something with AI, we just don't know what.

If it sounds familiar to you, tune into the episode. Chris Meyer zu Natrup, Managing Director at MzN, and Nathan Chappell, Senior Vice President at DonorSearch AI, discuss:

• What AI can do for a nonprofit organization, not tomorrow, but today.
• The difference between predictive AI and generative AI, and how NGOs can use both together to serve their mission in a much more strategic and precise way.
• The steps every leader needs to take with AI. “I would identify where my biggest gap is, I wouldn't look at AI as this umbrella thing that could solve all my problems, I would get very specific on one gap or challenge that I have in my organization and then and only then would I look at the types of AI technologies.”
• Why Nathan believes that AI is the only scalable solution to reverse declines in charitable giving. There is a systemic decline in the number of people who are giving to charity in almost most developed nations, but Nathan describe two ways that AI can work to reverse this:
  • It can create so much efficiency that an organization can now offload mundane tasks and instead spend more time human to human.
  • By using AI at scale, nonprofits organizations will more intimately know their audience by using thousands of data points and will be able to identify those donors that will have the greatest lifetime value.
• Could AI actually make us more human and more empathetic by cutting through the dead digital overload that we are exposed to every day?
• What responsible AI looks like for humanity, and the outsized responsibility that the nonprofit sector has for ensuring we prioritize safety over scalability.

Nathan closed by quoting Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner, who said “show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome”. If we look at the AI arms race, scale has been prioritized over safety almost every time. What do we think the incentive is for the nonprofit sector?

Resources

The Generosity Crisis The Case for Radical Connection to Solve Humanity's Greatest Challenges, by Nathan Chappell, Brian Crimmins and Michael Ashley.

Sgn up for MzN’s free webinar on proposal writing and AI - link to the webinar

More on Nathan:

Nathan Chappell is a Senior Vice President at DonorSearch AI, where he leads AI deployments for many of the largest nonprofit organizations in the United States. With over 10 years of experience in nonprofit leadership and fundraising, he is a co-author of the award-winning book, The Generosity Crisis: The Case for Radical Connection to Solve Humanity’s Greatest Challenges. He is also an inventor of multiple AI patents and a certified fundraising executive.

Nathan is passionate about the responsible use of AI for social good and the ethical implications of AI for philanthropy. He is the co-founder of Fundraising.AI, a collaborative initiative that aims to guide best practices and accelerate the impact of AI on advancement. He is also a frequent public speaker, a Forbes Technology Council member, and a recipient of the 40 Over Forty Award for his contributions to the nonprofit sector. Nathan's mission is to reignite generosity and transform the future of fundraising through AI.