The Fundraising Revolution

The $500 That Disappeared

Here’s a scenario most fundraisers know too well: a donor gives $500 for the first time. Your team sends a generic thank-you email three weeks later. Six months pass with no contact. The year-end appeal arrives — the same letter every donor received. The donor doesn’t give again.

This isn’t a story about one donor. It’s the story of 60% of first-time donors who never make a second gift. Overall donor retention sits at just 18.1%. That means your organization is essentially rebuilding its donor base from scratch every year.

But some organizations have cracked the code. They’re using AI to identify which donors are most likely to give again, personalize outreach at scale, predict who’s about to lapse, and write grant proposals that actually get funded. Their response rates are 85% higher. Their recurring donors stay for an average of 8 years and give $950 per year.

The difference isn’t budget. It’s strategy — and AI is the multiplier.

What You’ll Learn

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:

• Build an AI-powered fundraising strategy with clear donor segmentation and realistic revenue targets
• Use AI prospect research to identify major gift candidates based on wealth, affinity, and giving patterns
• Write grant proposals with AI that match funder language and priorities
• Design automated donor stewardship sequences that turn first-time givers into lifelong supporters
• Create and optimize fundraising campaigns — peer-to-peer, recurring giving, matching gifts, and year-end appeals
• Measure fundraising performance with AI analytics — retention, ROI, lifetime value, and churn prediction

How This Course Works

Each of the 8 lessons builds on the previous one, following the fundraising cycle from strategy through execution to optimization:

Every lesson includes AI prompts you can use immediately, real-world benchmarks to measure against, and a quiz to reinforce what you’ve learned.

✅ Quick Check: What’s the current overall donor retention rate in fundraising? Just 18.1% — meaning more than 8 out of 10 donors give once and never return. This is the problem AI-powered fundraising aims to solve.

The AI Fundraising Landscape

You don’t need to be a data scientist to use AI for fundraising. Here’s what’s available right now:

The course teaches you to use these capabilities — whether through specialized platforms or general-purpose AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude.

Key Takeaways

• Donor retention is in crisis at 18.1% — most first-time donors never give again, making stewardship the highest-leverage fundraising activity
• AI-powered segmentation delivers 85% higher response rates than generic mass appeals
• AI handles the repetitive work (prospect research, draft writing, data analysis) so fundraisers can focus on relationships
• 47% of fundraisers identify AI as their biggest opportunity, and 60%+ of nonprofits are already using it
• This course gives you the prompts, workflows, and templates to start using AI for fundraising immediately

Up Next: You’ll build your fundraising strategy from the ground up — mapping your donor universe, segmenting by giving potential, and setting AI-informed revenue targets.