AI Coming for Your Job Is Actually a Good Thing

There’s been so much conversation and fear-mongering over the past few months about what the future of artificial intelligence (AI) holds for us. As someone who works on the ground with AI everyday, let me clear the air: AI is coming for your job.

But here's the catch — it's specifically targeting the most dreaded parts of your job. Contrary to the most alarmist speculations, AI will never fully replace humans. Its purpose is not to do that. Instead, AI is designed to handle enormous amounts of data, analyze patterns, make decisions and provide support in record time.

This means that AI excels at tasks that are lengthy, monotonous and time-consuming. Are these the aspects of your job that you would mourn losing? Probably not.

To illustrate, let's delve into three specific areas where AI will revolutionize the way you work.

1. Identifying Your Best Donors and Prospects

Right now, identifying your best donors and prospects is limited by two things: 

• The amount of data you can get on an individual.
• The number of researchers you can put on a task. 

There’s simply no way to work at scale unless you’ve got an assistant who can sift through the data that you’ve collected to deliver the insights you need to move forward. AI can perform this task effortlessly, uncovering key metrics, revealing the potential of your total addressable market, understanding communication preferences and assessing giving capacity in a matter of seconds.

2. Sifting Through Mountains of Email and Drafting Personalized Replies

Inbox zero is a thing for a reason: It’s stressful to have emails piling up in your inbox. But actually going through them, knowing what to keep and what to trash, and writing the same responses over and over again? It’s boring, and it’s a waste of time. 

AI can act as your personal assistant, sorting messages for you and making it easy to delete unnecessary ones. Furthermore, AI can even draft personalized replies that you can review and send. By leveraging AI for these tasks, you not only reduce your workload and streamline processes but also provide more personalized responses to those who need them, fostering deeper donor relationships.

3. Analyzing Data to Create Useful Visual Reports

Gathering vast amounts of fundraising data is beneficial, but it's only valuable if you can comprehend and present it in a way you and your colleagues can quickly understand. AI can assist with this arduous task by swiftly sorting through data to extract the specific numbers you need. 

The advent of generative AI enables nonprofit professionals to effortlessly ask AI-powered applications questions, like "What was my average donation in Q3?" or "Who made the top 10 largest gifts in January?" and receive immediate responses. This capability makes transforming copious amounts of information into easy-to-digest reports for decision-making and board presentations a breeze.

Bottom line? AI’s here to stay. Now we can get to the real work.

The widespread acceptance of AI is a fantastic thing for the nonprofit industry. It is empowering a historically time, cash and resource-strapped industry to delegate the most time-consuming, resource-draining tasks at minimal cost. This new resource is liberating and will free you and your staff up to do the work that really matters in your organization as long as you embrace it — and that can only be a good thing.

The preceding blog was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.