POV

Efficiency Meets Experience: Why Fundraising Needs Both AI and Human Insight

By: Chris Carter

AI Won’t Replace You. But the Person Using AI Might.

Over the last 18 months, artificial intelligence has transformed the way many of us work. As a fundraising and marketing professional, I’ve never seen a tool move from novelty to necessity so quickly. It’s not just about copywriting or data analysis; it’s about reclaiming time and supercharging strategic thinking.

The real magic of AI in our field? It’s research.

AI excels at sifting through volumes of content, summarizing findings, distilling trends, and even compiling competitive benchmarking in seconds. Need to draft a multi-channel campaign strategy pulling from 10 annual reports and 6 sector studies? AI can lay the groundwork before your second coffee kicks in.

But let’s be clear: the job doesn’t stop at the output.

Those of us who’ve spent years (or decades) in the trenches know that successful fundraising isn’t just about executing best practices. It’s about remembering what didn’t work, the failed pilots, the audiences that didn’t convert, the “great idea” from 1998 that tanked and taught us a critical lesson. Those institutional memories, those scar tissue stories, matter.

AI doesn’t remember the direct mail test in Q2 2003 where the matching gift message backfired. But we do.

That’s why senior fundraisers and marketers are more valuable than ever. Not to write every line of copy or build every segmentation model, but to review, gut check, and guide. To use their lived experience to steer strategy, validate insights, and ask the questions AI can’t anticipate.

Here’s how to leverage AI the right way:

  • Use it to save time on first drafts, content summaries, trend analysis, or campaign ideation
  • Let it help you accelerate decisions by compiling multiple sources into coherent insights
  • Pair it with your hard-won knowledge to avoid past mistakes and sniff out BS
  • Don’t treat it as a creative replacement, treat it as a research assistant with 24/7 availability

In short, the most powerful teams won’t be the ones with the best AI, they’ll be the ones who know how to use it best, combining machine efficiency with human instinct.

Because when AI meets experience, strategy gets sharper, campaigns move faster, and fundraising gets smarter.

Our work:

Our work: