SPEAKER_00 0:00

Yes. And she's also an expert on all things technology and nonprofits, and particularly has done a lot of work around AI over the last decade or so. So she co-authored with Beth Cantor, the The Smart Nonprofit, Staying Human-Centered in an Automated World, which is a really interesting book, and certainly one of the first ones that kind of grappled with the question of the impact of AI on nonprofits. And before that, she also wrote a number of other books, The Network Nonprofit, again with Beth Cantor. And she's written many other sort of pieces and articles all about the intersection of tech and philanthropy. So I sat down with Alison a couple of weeks ago now to have a chat to her about the work of Every.org, but particularly some thoughts she had that she'd written up in an essay, which I'll I'll link to in the show notes as well, about how artificial intelligence might actually be used to make uh fundraising more relational and human again. So we talked a little bit about some of the background context about the uh the fact that there appears to be this kind of decline in giving and uh whether that's the case, and if so, what some of the drivers are and whether that decline is evenly distributed, or whether it's sort of being felt particularly in certain demographics and groups. And we talked about Allison's um sort of concerns about um fundraising having become quite uh transactional, uh, and why that is, and what some of the kind of um uh misaligned incentives in the nonprofit world are, and what some of the drivers from that are, and what transactional fundraising is as approached as opposed to the alternatives. Um we talked a bit about the idea of the leaky bucket problem, um, Alison um kind of identifies, which is this idea that actually without fundamentally fixing fundraising, you're constantly kind of putting resources into trying to get new donors and and then losing them again, rather than being able to kind of retain those donors by building longer-term relationships. Um so we talked then about what relational fundraising might be as an alternative to this and what some of the elements of that are, and then why it is that it's not necessarily as widespread at the moment, certainly when it comes to kind of everyday donors or mass market donors, uh, and what some of the barriers to that are in terms of the resources that traditionally might have been required that mean that it's only something that most organizations do for their kind of high value or high net worth donors. And then we talked a bit about some of the ways in which the capabilities or affordances of AI might actually make it possible to do that kind of relational fundraising at scale in terms of identifying donors, personalizing approaches to them, uh kind of tailoring storytelling and copy to be able to give donors feedback and all that sort of stuff. Um, we also talked about some of the potential risks of uh over-reliance on AI and some of the challenges and things to be wary of as nonprofits are experimenting this area. Um we also talked about the kind of wider question of the way in of the role of giving platforms um and some of the responsibilities that come with that and the impact that it is having on philanthropy as a whole. Um and then we had a brief chat um about crypto philanthropy, um, because every.org takes crypto donations and what they had seen in terms of how big a part of the market that is, whether there's growth and what sort of donors are using crypto at the moment. Um, so without further ado, let's get into the conversation. Um, I will be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping and tidying up. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Alison Fine. Hi there, Alison. Hi, Rogery. Thank you for having me. Oh no, great to have you on the show. Um, and as everyone will have heard from the intro, you are the president uh of every.org, um, which is a really interesting organization doing lots of interesting work. And you've just brought out a fascinating booklet about how to make relational fundraising work at scale using the capabilities of AI and other bits of technology, um, which I really want to dig into. Um, but maybe the best place to start is if you could tell everyone a bit about what every.org is, how it came about, and what the core mission of the organization is.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

Sure, happy to. So every.org is a nonprofit based in the US, and our mission is to make online fundraising as easy and friction-free as possible. In particular, uh, we enable any organization to accept crypto stocks, DAF donations, plus, of course, mobile cards, all the payment um options. We don't charge direct transaction fees, we don't charge setup fees. Our whole aim, Roger, is just to make it as friction-free as possible for donors to give to any um C3 organization.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

And and I guess the um the backdrop to what we want to talk about is to say it's kind of about this idea that you've got that one of the big problems is that um fundraising for various reasons has become too transactional, and there's a sense that it kind of everybody wants to make it more relational, but they feel like it's impossible to kind of do that. Whereas actually, maybe that idea is a bit behind the times and there are now possibilities for doing what would have traditionally maybe been seen as uh kind of major donor fundraising relational approaches, but doing it at scale. Um, but before we kind of dig into that, I just wanted to set some of the backdrop. Um, you know, one of the things you talk about in the paper, and I know lots of other people have talked about, is this idea that there's there's a kind of longer-term decline going on in the background in terms of everyday giving in particular. Do you, you know, is your sense that that is the case? And if so, what do you think are some of the key drivers behind that?

SPEAKER_01 5:34

It is absolutely the case that what we call everyday donors, those giving less than $500 uh in a donation, that there are 20% fewer people giving to a cause today than they did in the year 2000. And, you know, there are lots of factors in this. One is the decline in um religious uh affiliation. But in addition, I think that many people feel uh giving to a cause just creates an avalanche of future solicitations, you know, all the emails we get, all the calls, all the texts. It doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel meaningful. And as a result, only 19% of donors on average will give a second time to a cause. And that is the cause for alarm.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah, absolutely. And and in what you've seen, is there particular declines amongst certain demographics or kind of age groups that we should be concerned about, or is the decline evenly spread across all of these groups?

SPEAKER_01 6:39

No, the the the decline is very clear in younger people. Uh people younger than 50 years old are not giving to causes. Now, one of the beautiful things about every.org is that our donors are on average 45 years and younger because it's so easy to give, because the user interface is so uh joyful and uh engaging, and because we allow them, people to give any kind of payment method that they want. You know, so Roger, my kids who are in their 20s, they're not walking around with credit cards, but they'll give by Venmo, right? If they can give right in that instant. If there's any friction in that system, they're done and they're not coming back.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

And just touching on that, I guess we'll probably come onto this later. Um, but you you mentioned that those different types of payment methods that younger donors want to use. Do you have any sense that also in terms of what they're giving to, there's a difference? Because I know when I've talked to other people about this, there's a sense that maybe part of what we're seeing as a decline in giving is actually more of a shift towards people giving to things that we're not measuring in the same way. So it's kind of there's still a lot of generosity, but people are supporting informal groups or kind of peer-to-peer requests for donations rather than maybe traditional 501c3s.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

I think that's certainly right. And we saw it during COVID, right? That mutual aid and giving through GoFundMe became a you know a terrific mechanism for giving directly to people. I also think, though, it's a reflection, Roger, of traditional nonprofit organizations not creating meaningful, meaningful engagements with donors. And it doesn't feel good. And um you don't feel like your you or your donation matter to those organizations. So why would you give again?

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Yeah, absolutely. And I I want to something, you know, I know you've said very clearly in this in the paper, and I've I've heard lots of other people say that in many ways, fundraising, particularly as done by traditional nonprofits, has become very transactional. It's just kind of about can we get your donation in? And the level of kind of engagement or feedback for the donor is quite minimal beyond that point. Why do you think it is that that so many organizations have kind of fallen into this paradigm of seeing fundraising as something quite so transactional?

SPEAKER_01 8:54

This is decades in the making. There is a conventional wisdom that the business model for gaining low-dollar donations uh is to repeatedly ask for those donations. So the word that digital fundraisers use is cadence, right? The number of solicitations that they make becomes just I used the word a few minutes ago, an avalanche, uh solicitations. And it doesn't feel personal and it doesn't feel like you were having a human conversation with anybody. So it it feels more like nonprofits are selling shoes, right? And they're just going to keep treating you like a consumer rather than a donor, a potential volunteer, potential ambassador for a cause. And I think the real tragedy of this, Roger, is that people come into causes and into development because they want to make a meaningful difference and because they care about people. And yet we are putting them in systems that are sucking out the humanity and that are just about supersizing the hamster wheel of transactional fundraising. That's in part why the burnout rate for development staff is so high. People stay on average 18 months, and why the um donor retention rates are so low. It's a system problem, not a people problem.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah, and I I think that's such an interesting point. And I thought it was really interesting in the the report. Was it, you know, it's not really the people on the front line, the fundraisers usually who are pushing this? You know, most of them, as you say, don't want to be doing fundraising in this way because it's not why they got into it in the first place. And it is more systemic than that. So what is it that's kind of keeping everything focused on this way of doing things? I mean, is it that the the kind of systems we have for measuring effectiveness are geared towards a particular view? And so actually, it looks on paper as though these approaches are working well, even as we're getting this attrition. Um, and also is that is there a failure of leadership here as well? Because I'm kind of hesitant to blame individual fundraisers. Is it more about the leaders of nonprofits maybe having slightly taken their eye off the ball and sort of said, you know, allowed fundraising to be something that happened over there in a corner and didn't really question, you know, how they were doing it and what some of the longer-term impacts might have been?

SPEAKER_01 11:23

I think anytime you have this uh significant values gap between what an organization values and how it feels to people on the outside, uh, it's multifactory, right? It uh and I don't lay this on development people at all. They really want to raise money for their causes and they're working very, very hard. But you have a very large industry of consultants who make money off of transactional fundraising. They make money off of volume, right? Whether it's a software or, you know, an advisor, um, sending out more solicitations is in their best interests, not in the organization's best interest necessarily. And um, you have boards that are looking at cash in the door, right? Most of the board agenda is focused on the balance sheet and whether you're hitting those revenue targets. Not how you're hitting those revenue targets, not whether that is creating long-term health and sustainability for the organization. But this month or this quarter, are we hitting those numbers? And that pressure to bring cash in the door makes it feel uh urgent for organizations to just keep asking, asking, asking, right? And and when you create a system, Raji, where the expectation is a three or four percent response rate is great, there's something wrong with the system.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Yeah, absolutely. And and and in terms of that pressure to kind of get the money in through the door, I mean, obviously some of that is inevitably external. I mean, the economic condition for nonprofits is is not hasn't been great for a while and certainly isn't great at the moment. And so you can understand why organizations that are facing losses of funding from other places look more towards their uh fundraising from individual donors and feel, you know, the the need to kind of push harder on that. Um, but I mean, to what extent is it just those external factors and what is it also kind of internal factors within an organization? I guess what I'm interested in is, you know, if it feels difficult to the leadership of an organization to make that shift away from those tried and tested, yet not not necessarily effective models of fundraising towards something different, what do they need in terms of a shift of mindset to be able to do that?

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Uh so it is and and mindset is just the right um word to use, right? So the the the first issue is uh a recognition that this model, although tried and tested for decades now, is expensive and doesn't work. Now, I'm not asking organizations to stop doing everything that they've been doing for everyday um uh fundraising. Uh I am asking them to look hard at the data on donor retention rates and to begin to think about the experience of donors, right? That's one of the reasons I came to every.org because the experience of giving through our platform is so joyful to people. And we want them to feel joyful to come back and do it again. The unwillingness of so many organizations, Rodri, to simply ask their donors how does it feel to give to our organizations is astounding to me. It is very hard. In some part, it is because once you're on this hamster wheel, it is very difficult and scary to think about stopping, right? We can't stop the wheels from moving that is bringing in X number of dollars a month. So that's where leadership comes in, right? Leadership has to say we're going to explore creating an experiment, a series of experiments to give us an alternative path forward where those donor retention rates go up, where it feels better to give up to us, where everyday donors want to tell their friends uh about us and create that network effect. So when we think about organizations starting a new pathway, as you said, this is a leadership issue, right? It needs to start in the boardroom that we want our everyday fundraising to fit the values of our organizations. And I can guarantee the values of almost all nonprofits are to be human-centric, to make people feel good, to make them feel invited, to educate them about our cause. And the current system obviously doesn't do that. So let's start a series of experiments. No harm done, right? We're not going to stop what we've what we're currently doing. We're going to add an experiment or two where we're opening up the opportunity to be in conversation with everyday donors. And that's where AI comes in.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah, absolutely. And I I want to get into that and how AI and technology can be used actually almost counterintuitive counterintuitively to make things more human-centric, which I think is, you know, maybe something a lot of people haven't really thought through. And I think is a really interesting kind of potential application of the technology. Um, just before we come on to that, I just wanted to pick up on one thing, which is obviously we've talked there about the kind of individual case for organizations thinking about moving away from a transactional approach to fundraising because of the harm it can do to their own relationship with the donors. Something you mentioned in the report, and I think is really important, is you know, is there also a kind of collective interest in shifting away from those models? Because over the longer term, they have an impact on levels of public trust in nonprofits as a whole. You know, is that something you that you think should be added as an additional layer of argument for why we need to kind of get away from some of these ways of doing things?

SPEAKER_01 17:05

I think that's a super important point. And we've watched the levels of trust in nonprofits drop uh precipitously this century, along with every other type of institution out there. You know, not as much as government, but still a steep drop in the one place in society where trust is more important than anything else, right? If we don't trust that not that a voluntary donation to a nonprofit is not is going to be used well, you know, this model is not going to exist uh any longer. And there have been a number of opportunities over the course of the last 20 years, Rodri, for nonprofits to step up and build trust into their models that uh have been a little bit disappointed that they haven't. For instance, data policies, right? Nonprofits adopted commercial uh uh policies on how to um secure donor data. And there was an opportunity to take it up a level from that, right? So, for instance, the um, as you well know, the European Union uh has um much stricter standards on data privacy than the US does. And one area in particular that I think is really important is the right to be forgotten, the right to get your data out of systems. This would have been an opportunity for nonprofits to say, if you don't want to be in our system, uh more than just unsubscribe from a newsletter, right? We we want you to own your own data. Um, it might sound a little bit eggheady to talk about that, but I think there is an essence here of humanity and being human-centric that we missed, right? Nonprofits could be the place that is that are run more ethically than any other kind of institution out there. And we see when we're lumped in with commercial and government institutions, it doesn't serve us well, right? That to run ourselves as quote, bus a business, unquote. Um, that's not who we are. We should be better than that. And um, so when it comes to everyday fundraising, when we take um the methods and the systems and the assumptions of commercial uh sales of people, right? Which is sell, sell, sell, and in our case, give, give, give, it doesn't serve us well. And it doesn't suit our purpose, our missions, our values. And that is a place where it's an opportunity to change the trajectory of the entire sector.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Yeah, no, I think that's such an important point. Um, and that definitely kind of brings us on to the question of okay, what then is the alternative? And then this is what you write about in the in the paper. I mean, you're talking there about relational fundraising. And before we come on to the question of how how you then do that at scale using technology, maybe you could just say a bit about what it is that we we mean when we talk about relational approaches to fundraising, you know, what are some of the key components we would be looking for.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Uh yeah, so if you ask a development person, do you believe in relational fundraising? Of course. I take my major donors out to lunch all the time. When you say, what about your everyday donors? Oh, that's that's too big. You know, I can't, how am I supposed to take thousands of people out to lunch? And that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is putting yourself in the shoes of your donors at every level. Everyday fundraising tends to become very organizational-centric. Here's what we need from you to do our work rather than here are opportunities for you to learn about our work, for you to have input, uh, for you to help shape uh the agenda of what we do, and to feel great when you give, right? Uh we want people to feel so good that they want to do it again. Now, here's here's where people tend to get stuck, Roger, when I say to have input, and folks say, oof. One, you know, I don't want thousands of people to be, you know, thinking that they're going to be uh making the sausage here with us. I don't want to show you the sausage, I don't want you to make the sausage with me. And that's not what we're talking about. The first of all, the overwhelming number of people just appreciate appreciate an invitation to be engaged with the organization, right? Then if somebody has some input, let's say your organization does an uh an annual spring gala. Every year you do this. There's an opportunity for a development person to go out to maybe not all of your donors, but a subset of donors at you know below $500 and say, we're thinking about doing this again. What do you think? Now, for most people, the what do you think part uh uh you know sets off alarms because what if someone comes in and says that's a terrible idea? Now, in a conventional model, you know, like the the the customers always right kind of model, then you'd be obliged to change it, right? In our model of relational fundraising, it's an opportunity to start a conversation, right? If somebody comes in and says that's a terrible idea, I wish you would do X, then the staff person has an opportunity to say, well, here's why we think it's a good idea, right? And here's what our parameters are, here are what our constraints are. Can you help us make that better? I feel really strongly, Rodri, that nobody minds being disagreed with. What they mind is being ignored. So if you can't defend why you're doing what you're doing, you shouldn't be doing it. And if you don't want to be in conversation with people, then you aren't really a human-centric organization. People love hearing more about um what an organization is doing, why it's doing it. They want to learn more, particularly your more engaged donors, right? If you have people who've been giving to you for years, um, again, I think all of these are opportunities for conversation. And um, anything you can do to inform, educate, guide, take input from maybe somebody has a better idea than you do. Uh, supporters helps your organization enormously.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting. I think that whole question of what it means to involve people as opposed to sort of give them full participation is kind of and actually the idea that it's a spectrum and it doesn't need to be either, you know, close the doors, nobody can have any involvement whatsoever, or well, we just need to hand over all decision making to our supporters. It's clearly not an either-or. Um, and I think that that idea is kind of unhelpful. Um, you mentioned um already there that one of the barriers to this, you know, traditionally has been a sort of immediate sense of, well, of course we can't do that for everyday donors, because imagine how kind of labor-intensive and and resource intensive it would be. Which I guess then brings us to the question of, you know, why is it that you think there are now new opportunities to genuinely do this kind of thing at scale using some of the affordances of new technologies?

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Right. And and the at-scale phrase is the key.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Right. And that's where AI comes in. So AI is affording two huge opportunities to organizations right now. One, it really is best right now at sucking up administrative tasks that take up enormous amounts of time, right? So the time of reconciling the budget, which can stop the whole organization a week before a board meeting, can be happening in real time with the use of AI. Drafting communications, finding documents, uh, smoothing out the workflow, uh, you know, AI reviewing resumes, right? AI can take these tasks that were uh eating up hours and hours of staff time and do them in an instant. Now, there are a whole bunch of reasons to step into that area carefully. Uh, you can go look at resources on N10, or of course, Beth Cantor has a lot of resources and how to get started in that area carefully, ethically, responsibly. But uh the end goal here, Rodri, is to create uh what I call a dividend of time, right? New time. And that's an opportunity for an organization to make a conscious choice about how do we want to use that time. Do we want to supersise all of the transactional activities from before? I hope not. Or do we want to use that time to pick up the phone and talk to people, right? I mean, that is just a huge opportunity. So that's one huge area, the dividend of time where AI helps. And the other area is being able to use AI to uh uh analyze your current donor base to figure out what stories interest people who might be on the verge of lapsing, right? To get very analytical about uh who your donors are and what they're interested in, to be able to say customize thank you notes with a tool like Loom, uh to be able to send out communications that are customized to people through a tool like Gravity. I mean, they're just a whole bunch of applications that can be used to customize and personalize the communications uh with uh donors and potential donors. But to me, the real, real opportunity, Rodri, with AI is to free up time for humans to do what humans do best, right? That that is you mentioned at the top, this kind of irony of AI enabling us to become more human, not less, by freeing up time for us to speak to one another, to have coffee, to create giving circles uh among your donors to just do what we do best.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

And and on that, when soon assume we've got this dividend of time, we're all using AI in the in the correct way to allow that and just free up human time to spend on you know what humans are good at. Is there also another layer perhaps beyond that where AI tools can genuinely be useful in enhancing those human interactions as well? I'm just thinking, you know, kind of if you freed up the time by offloading rote tasks to AI systems and you then have this sort of more time available to you, could you still then make genuine use of generative AI and other tools for storytelling and for kind of finding out the most effective ways of having a conversation with a donor that's going to be of value to both of you? And what might that look like?

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Absolutely, yes, on Gen AI being used to tell better stories, not more stories, right? That it can uh look at all your social media posts, it can go through all of your internal files and find really powerful stories of impact for your organization, which is really, I don't care what data you see, Rodri, that donors want more data, they don't. They want better stories. People give this is a hard issue, not a head issue in development. Another way that we can use AI, though, are in areas like um there's a platform called Mighty Networks that can create a social network of your donors, and it uses AI to help connect people by common interests uh or by geography. And so this what I call this online on land connection, right? That people we want to organize people online to get to know them better and to figure out how to put them together, but the ultimate together part has to happen on land, which is the elixir to this enormous loneliness epidemic that we have, right? You have a hundred donors in a zip code who have, I'm just let's just say hunger as a common cause. I can guarantee they have other areas of commonality. And how beautiful would it be to help them build friendships among each other? So now the organization isn't a top-down hub and spoke, what Beth and I always call Fortress, but it is a flatter social network where everybody has in common your cause, but also a growing uh sense of social connection as well. And that that would be just an absolutely beautiful thing to create.

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Yeah, absolutely. And I think you're, you know, the really interesting element there around the kind of loneliness epidemic, because I do think there's, you know, there's a part of that argument about the sort of Tocquevillian value of nonprofits as the places where people go to associate, but actually how much of that is genuinely happening now. And again, maybe counterintuitively, these technologies that everybody has up till now sort of thought have been bringing us further and further apart can actually play a role in bringing us back close together in real life again. So I think that's a really fascinating idea. Um, I wanted to ask actually, because we're talking there, uh we're sort of focusing on the idea of an individual non-profit or a kind of cause-based organization and how it could use these tools. But obviously, as a platform, every.org, you actually kind of have a view that's almost one level above that over a whole range of different organizations and causes. And so maybe you're able to see not just the patterns in kind of individual donors to an organization, but in, you know, which donors give to multiple different organizations and where they are in terms of you know geographies and what they're interested in. Have you been thinking about how you yourself will kind of use the technology to try and make value of that information?

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Uh absolutely. And right now, today, Rodri, any nonprofit can come to every.org, claim their profile, get started all for free in an instant. And we know that the organizations that tell better stories on every.org, you can upload a video, you can create campaigns. Um, and let me also just note relational fundraising at scale doesn't mean that you don't have campaigns uh anymore and that you don't need to ask people for donations. You absolutely do. So being able to upload a video, tell a story, uh, create a fundraiser, maybe create a match campaign on every.org, uh, we see every day the organizations that are engaged in that kind of visual and emotional and engaging fundraising are doing very, very well. Uh, one organization we love is Little Bub, which supports um special needs pets. So, yes, it helps. The pictures are about puppies, but the storytelling is really good. Um, and so we're we're seeing that. We're also seeing that organizations that dig into campaigns that focus on sustainers, people who are giving monthly, are very successful. And there's an organization called the Zig Software Foundation that had a campaign last year just focused on monthly donors, right? We want you to come and give, but click the box for sustainers. They did remarkably well. Again, they had a great story to tell, and um, they made people feel very welcome when they're coming in. Uh, so organizations have lots of tools on every.org immediately to become more relational uh with their donors. And in our next phase, we're going to build in more AI into the platform and more ways to help donors find the causes that really um speak to them as well. But uh, you know, over half of the donors who come, they come to every.org and they are searching around for causes that suit them. So we're happy to have them come and find a cause that meets their interests and their passions and be able to make a donation in any payment method.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Yeah, I'm I'm really interested in this area because I think the whole question of um how we potentially use some of these tools to shape or to offer better choices or kind of more tailored or personalized recommendations to people about what they might want to give to you, so fascinating. Because I think there's, you know, on the one side, there'd be justifiable concerns about what might happen if you did this in the in a bad way, it would just end up with, you know, organizations that already had a high profile or worked on kind of well-known cause areas doing better and better at the expense of others. But then equally there's another version of it where actually you open up this whole world of opportunities for people to give to organizations they might otherwise never um be aware of. And I guess in terms of our consumer or or individual expectations, increasingly, you know, we are used to the idea that when we go to the internet or you know, go to a kind of conversational interface, we do want recommendations for things that we might be interested in or want to look for. And we're kind of increasingly happy with that. So it seems odd that we wouldn't get the same thing um when it comes to giving. I'm just wondering in terms of your thinking there, you know, sort of mentioned about opening up opportunities for donors when they come to every.org to find new um new uh new things to give to. How you're thinking about doing that. I mean, where would you think that the balance should sit between kind of recommending things to people based on what you already know about them, uh, as opposed to kind of allowing them to take the lead in sort of looking for things and then guiding them through that so that they still have that agency?

SPEAKER_01 35:22

So I think every.org is always going to be a platform where we are open and inviting all causes, all donors to find each other. We're not going to put um, we're not gonna recommend um particular organizations. Right now, the algorithms are set that fundraisers that are getting more traction uh are seen more in somebody's feed and they can look in particular issue areas. But I think our long-term hope, Roger, is that the nonprofits will be able to tell such great stories that they will find the donors that um that are interested in those causes. And then once that first donation is made, the the thank you, which we can also customize on every.org, is uh heartfelt and personalized. And then more stories are coming before a second solicitation is made. Uh we had an organization do this earlier this year. Give directly provides cash assistance uh to people who are in need, and they had a very successful campaign around the tragic wildfires in LA. Now, I used the word cadence earlier on in our conversation. Their regular cadence would have been we got the first gift in, a quick thank you, and then a second solicitation. Instead of the second solicitation, they matched the donors. Um, they looked at the donors' zip codes and they sent them the data of exactly how many people uh received cash donations in their zip code as a result of this campaign. And the response from the donors was so overwhelmingly happy and grateful to have the information about um how many people were helped in their community, their local community, as a result of this. And for the for Gift Directly, it's for them. They said internally, it was like this great shift of um getting out of that transactional model to think, oh, hang on, our donors really do want to know more about um how their donations are helping individuals, not the you know, the global universal story. And they're going to be doing a lot more of that kind of um reporting back to people on their donations.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

That's really interesting. And as you say, kind of the difference between an individual story, particularly one that has local relevance to the donor, as opposed to statistics, which most of us are very bad at processing. I mean, that's we're just not kind of geared up as humans to do that, I think is really interesting. Um, I just wanted to ask as well, we're talking there about kind of using some of these AI tools for storytelling in really positive ways. I guess you know, there are concerns out there in the world of nonprofits about the ways in which if you kind of rush into this stuff or don't do it in a sensible way, you can get it wrong. And there've definitely been examples of nonprofits that have used generative AI for images around some of their stories and things like that, where, you know, even where they've been explicit that they were using the tools, people have subsequently become quite um uh critical or it's kind of had an impact on levels of trust in the organization. What would you say are some of the kind of key things for organizations to have in mind as they're dipping a toe or kind of exploring and how to use some of these tools for their storytelling?

SPEAKER_01 38:54

The first piece of advice is go slowly. There is no rush to use these tools, even though I know it feels like everybody else is doing this, we have to do it too. Hang on a second, because as you mentioned, there are a lot of ethical concerns with using AI and replacing human work with bot work, right? The idea of automation is um the bots are doing work that only people could do until two years ago, right? So we want to step very, very carefully and um start with very limited uh experiments in how we're going to use AI. I think that the key rule in using a tool like generative AI, which could be ChatGPT or Gemini or Copilot, is to always make sure that the humans are in charge, Roger, right? I don't feel comfortable with AI doing the first draft of something because once a first draft is done of a story or a video, it's very hard to undo the DNA of that piece, right? It has a trajectory of its own. You might be editing around the edges, but the essence of it is machine generated. I don't think we want to be there for storytelling. So I think humans have to um uh be the first crafters of a story. Again, going back a few minutes, AI might grab uh an idea of a story from inside of your um uh share drive, for instance. But again, a human is the crafter. AI can help shape it, can make it more emotional, can make it more resonant, can customize it for particular donors. But then, and most importantly, a human always looks at it before it goes out the door, right? So we have to make sure that the bots aren't out ahead of us. In order to do that, uh people within organizations, Roger, have to really understand the technology, uh, which can feel overwhelming. I totally understand that, but there has to be due diligence done by leadership in organizations of how AI works, how this particular tool that you're using was developed, what biases does it have? Because they are it it was created by humans, it's going to have bias built into it. How do we mitigate those biases? How do we stay human-centric and humans in charge of this uh technology? And then leadership has to be ready to do experiments because I can guarantee in every organization there is somebody using Gen AI right now, whether they're allowed to or not.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

Yeah, absolutely. And it that I think that kind of mind, that mindset of uh engaging staff members who who might already be doing this, or certainly have the kind of enthusiasm and allowing them to experiment or to play or to have kind of sandbox approaches is really important. Because I think there does seem one of the barriers to me in terms of AI adoption does seem to be this sense that you need to decide everything up front, and then you go out and you procure your AI system through your IT department, all this sort of thing. And it's kind of it's just not really how the technology is is evolving. And actually, it's much more important to start small and to do it carefully, but to just kind of get involved. I just I wanted to ask uh something else about something we mentioned right back at the beginning, in terms of when you were talking about what uh evru.org is and what you guys do that's related to a different technology and one that we maybe hear a bit less about now, but certainly a few years ago we were hearing a lot about, which is which is cryptocurrency. Um, I'm really interested because it's something I used to do loads of work in, and then over time I kind of slightly felt as though it was of less interest than AI and some other technologies. But I'm aware that in the background, cryptocurrency giving has been sort of slowly ticking on and building. Um, and I know you know you said that um you guys take it, and actually your experience is that there's a lot of people giving in this. So I just wondered if you could say a bit about what you found at every.org in terms of how much crypto giving you're seeing and whether there are kind of particular kinds of donors that like to give in that one.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

So cryptocurrency is part of our origin story. Uh, the original problem that the founders of every.org were trying to solve uh was how to enable crypto donations. It was very hard to give to a cause, in part because it was very hard for nonprofits to accept crypto. So that's why we're set up in a DAF-like structure that donors give donate to us and we move the money to any nonprofit. We don't hold the money. And that's also why our donors tend to skew you younger, because donors uh tend to be younger than um people who are using credit cards say. Uh, it's a huge market uh place of donors, uh, Rodri, and growing. Crypto is not going away. Uh, and crypto donors tend to give very large donations. So, what we find is uh when a donor is giving an asset like crypto. Crypto or stocks, those donations are very large. We have many, many more credit card donors, and those donations tend to be much smaller. Interestingly, though, there isn't um a pattern as to what causes crypto donors are giving to. It is just a heartfelt gift from them. Now many crypto donors are coming to us because the nonprofit they're trying to give to don't have a way to accept crypto, and they say go to every.org to process the donation, which we do easily and quickly.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Yeah, it's really interesting because I think when in the early days of crypto philanthropy, I think maybe there was a bias towards causes that were more obviously to do with sort of digital freedoms and kind of digital civil society of the sort that you might um expect. And then I guess the really interesting thing is now we're at a point where actually cryptocurrency usage and ownership is relatively mainstream. So actually there are people, you know, donors giving to all kinds of different causes with the same sort of broad range you'd expect. I I'm aware that I'm going to end up taking up far too much of your time, Alison. It's been really fascinating to talk. I just wanted to know if there's kind of any, you know, particular last thoughts you want to leave people with um about the work that you've been doing on relational fundraising or things that you want to point people towards.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

I think people really want to be generous, Rodri. I think they uh love giving to causes, and I think it's the responsibility of nonprofits to make donors feel joyful and make them want to give again. And we have the opportunity to do that right now using platforms like every.org using AI because we need generosity more than anything right now in the world. And it is quite a privilege to be able to do this work and help to facilitate all of these donations to these wonderful causes.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great thought uh on which to leave things. Just means to say thanks ever so much, Alison, for finding the time to come on the podcast. It's been really great to hear about the work you're doing and all the work on relational fundraising. Um, and we'll definitely keep an eye out for how things develop in the future.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

Thank you so much, Rodri. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Alison for coming on the podcast. Uh, great to have a chance to talk to her again. I've uh had the chance uh a few times over the last five or six years um on previous incarnations of podcasts and also just uh generally sort of separate chats, but it's always really great to have a chance to talk to her, find out about the work she's doing and her thoughts on all things to do with tech and non-profits. Um I'll put links in the show notes to places where you can find more information about every.org and about um what Alison's written about relational fundraising at scale, uh, and also to some other things that I've done that you might find interesting around the intersection of tech and philanthropy and civil society. If you want to read any more stuff about philanthropy and civil society, do check out the website at whyphilanthropymatters.com. Loads of articles there, news updates, uh sort of short guides to issues in philanthropy, also all the back episodes of this podcast. So loads and loads of stuff to get to grips with there. If you want to follow me on social media, you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm also there on Blue Sky, so uh do come and seek me out uh and connect. Uh, other than that, if you like, uh subscribe, follow the podcast, uh, if you give us a nice review wherever you pick up your podcasts, that would be great. Other than that, give some recommendations to people that you think might be interested, because I think word of mouth counts for a lot. Um, and we will see you next time. Bye.