As a fundraiser you know that time is money. You know that money is money, too.

So you see that AI chatbot ready to perform your tasks and do your bidding—and charging very little for its services! Perfect, you think, here’s a technology that can save me time today AND save me the cost of bringing in another employee or hired gun tomorrow.

Not so fast.

It’s true that AI can be a real boon to effective fundraising. I’m no luddite urging you to smash your chatbot (well, maybe I am but only on Tuesdays and Fridays). But the ways you use AI in fundraising might be costing you a whole lot of money—and ultimately time, as well.

So let’s take a minute to do a quick spot-check (or bot-check, if you will), to make sure you’re avoiding these AI pitfalls that may hurt your fundraising.

4 AI Pitfalls That Hurt Fundraising Results

1. Depersonalizing your donor relationships

Never lose sight of the fact that fundraising is about relationships, not efficiency. The more you introduce automation into your donor interactions, the more you jeopardize the underlying relationship—the donor’s feeling of close connection to your mission and of being valued by you. A recent study found that acknowledging AI use in charitable appeals depressed donor engagement and donations.

Think about it this way. It might be more efficient to use an AI agent to deliver a birthday phone call to your parents or a thank you note to your spouse. But will it strengthen the relationship? I would suggest not.

Don’t make the same mistake with your donors.

If you want to strengthen your relationships with your donors, save this resource for future use.

2. Offloading your important thinking

Clarifying your mission, giving shape to a gen ops proposal, strategic planning—these tasks are time-consuming and arduous. But it’s only through actually doing the cognitive work that you can truly understand and own it.

Digitally generated jargon is shiny. It might occasionally sound good. But it won’t give you or your audiences confidence in the substance behind the words.

AI must remain a tool, not a mission generator.

The process of wrestling with how to express your mission makes you better at fundraising conversations, donor meetings, and grant presentations. Don't outsource that learning.

3. Erasing what makes you distinct

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote. Increasingly, it’s also filled with “AI slop” that no one wants to see or read. And while it’s true that AI writing is getting better and better, for now it’s also still the case that many bots very much have a telltale “voice.”

The more you rely on AI to produce your content, the more generic and disposable your content could become.

Donors want to support real people, not really polished ones. If you run a soup kitchen, for instance, or a home for the developmentally disabled, you probably shouldn’t sound like a caffeinated tech bro in your donor communications. It casts suspicion on the authenticity of your entire operation.

4. Not using AI at all

You don’t get bonus points with your donors by working harder, not smarter. If you can use AI to dramatically reduce the time to complete mundane tasks like data analysis or basic graphics needs, you’re creating efficiencies that could free up budget space to hire a new MGO or put more money towards programs.

At its best, AI can drastically reduce time on soul-crushing tasks. This frees your team up to be more human, not less, because they’re doing things that humans do best. Meeting with donors and building relationships.

Conclusion

Rightly or wrongly, fake humanity still gives real humans the heebie-jeebies. What people crave, especially in their giving, is human connection. So go easy on the AI slop. It’s like giving a thirsty man saltwater to drink.

Use AI in your fundraising intelligently. But don’t let it usurp your intelligence or contaminate your distinctive messaging. And don’t let it take the reins on your donor relationships.

AI can help you work more efficiently, but authentic relationships are what drive major gifts. Learn more about building strong donor relationships in our complete guide: Major Gifts Fundraising: A Guide to Major Donor Strategy.