This blog on Artificial Intelligence highlighting 5 AI tools by Eastside People digital consultant and experienced former Chief Product Officer Chris Dadd, will help charities & social enterprises become more creative, efficient& impactful.
- Dataro – Smarter Donor Targeting
Dataro leverages AI to help charities optimize their fundraising by predicting which donors are most likely to give. Its machine learning models can analyze donor history and campaign data to generate “propensity scores,” enabling more targeted outreach.
Greenpeace Australia partnered with Dataro to refine their direct mail strategies, resulting in a marked increase in campaign efficiency and fundraising ROI. The AI-generated list helped them target donors more precisely, achieving a 5x ROI in segments missed by traditional approaches. They also used it to reduce churn in their regular giving program by making targeted thank-you calls to donors flagged as high-risk, ultimately retaining 64 supporters who were likely to lapse without the intervention.
Using a focused, data-driven approach that enhances both donor retention and engagement, can increase overall revenue from campaigns while minimizing wasted resources.
- Handwrytten: Personalizing Donor Engagement at Scale
Every charity knows the importance of thanking donors, yet handwritten notes are often impractical for large-scale operations. Enter Handwrytten: an AI tool that uses writing robots to produce authentic, handwritten cards that don’t look mass-produced. With Handwrytten, you can create personalized thank-you notes for hundreds of donors in a fraction of the time, while maintaining the warmth and sincerity of traditional correspondence.
This tool enables charities to show genuine appreciation at scale – something particularly beneficial for annual campaigns or special fundraising events. Donors are more likely to stay engaged when they feel personally valued, and receiving a physical note rather than a generic email can leave a lasting impression. As donor retention continues to be a priority for charities, Handwrytten provides a powerful method to nurture those relationships in a way that feels thoughtful and human.
- Craiyon. From the team behind DALL-E mini image generation and Microsoft Copilot
When we need visually interesting content for our websites and documents, in the past we used in-house photography, royalty free images or stock photography. Now, you can simply visit tools like Craiyon or Microsoft’s Copilot built into your Microsoft Edge browser and write a description of what you want.
For example, your text prompt might be: “visualize a scene capturing the excitement and anticipation of stepping into school. Imagine a school gate with a welcoming archway, students with eager expressions, and the vibrant energy of a new school day. The image might show a mix of students in uniforms, backpacks slung over their shoulders, and a school building in the background, bathed in the soft light of morning. This scene would evoke a sense of new beginnings and the vibrant atmosphere of school life”
After a minute or two, it produces this scene.
Source: https://www.craiyon.com/
As you get more skilled at writing prompts you can refine the results by adding words like vintage, bokeh, award winning, colourful, soft, velvet, or super detailed.
Give it a go and expect to lose a few hours of happy experimenting!
Note that Copilot is an add-on to Microsoft 365. Features vary in how detailed you can be with style and output preferences, but the monthly fees for non profits as an add-on starts at $30 per user, per month.
- OpenAI’s ChatGPT
You may have heard of it in the news, but if you haven’t tried ChatGPT, one of the biggest AI tools that can creatively research and generate outstanding words, you should try it now.
It can help with tasks like drafting content, creating marketing materials, brainstorming fundraising ideas, writing newsletters, suggesting social media posts or improving your google ranking by providing writing relevant headlines.
You may know it can write words, but did you know it can also create Office docs like Excel spreadsheets?
For example, ask it “Please generate a content plan in excel for every day and month, catering for posts to Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok.”
And you will get back something like this:
“I can help you outline a content plan! Here’s a structured format you can use for an Excel sheet. Each day will include ideas for posts tailored to Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok. You can expand on this framework for the entire month.”
Content Plan Structure
ChatGPT finishes its answer with: “You can copy this structure into an Excel file and fill it out for each day of the month. Let me know if you need more specific ideas or themes!” This means that you can iteratively ask for changes if it makes wrong assumptions from your initial question, or the answer is not quite what you wanted, so there is no need to worry about making mistakes.
- Gamma.app
Ever been asked to create a presentation on a topic and dreaded it?
Gamma.app simplifies the creation of presentations, documents, and even interactive websites. It was developed to bridge the gap between complex design tools and user-friendly interfaces, enabling users to generate professional content effortlessly.
This makes it easier for charities to share their mission, impact, and updates with stakeholders through polished, interactive formats, without needing the normal IT skills and letting staff focus on their core activities.
To get started, Gamma only needs a simple prompt such as “Create a pitch deck on 10 engaging community centre activities that help those with degenerative brain conditions. Consider sessions which involve music, dance, storytelling and other things you think of. The age group of those in the class will be over 50s and from a mix of cultural backgrounds.”
You will then be given a content outline for each slide and can steer it’s style of words and imagery used.
Not only does Gamma generate an online version of the slides, you can export to PDF or Powerpoint. See the PDF example of the Gamma AI generated PowerPoint presentation from the request above.
The free version is limited to generating 10 slides, which frankly is enough for most people to listen to. If you need to create longer ones, pricing starts from £6/month.
Wrapping Up!
These are only a handful of the many useful tools that can help your charity organization create documents, imagery, mailings and better donor engagement. We advise playing around with them to get the results you need to save heaps of time on an ongoing basis.
Bonus tool…
If you haven’t had your fill of AI conversation yet, give tawk.to the chatbot a glance. Their chatbot can guide your website visitors answering their questions as you train it on your services.
