There is a lot of talk at the moment about Generative AI and machine learning. We’ve been asked recently if we are implementing any AI features to our goDonate platform, so we thought we would share some of the things we are doing in this fast-moving space.
We have been working on AI features, but we are also very mindful of the ethical concerns around using AI within charities for fundraising purposes. In a recent webinar we asked questions of the charities on the webinar such as “Is it ethical to use Generative AI to create copy or images to use in fundraising campaigns?” 47% of charities said there were concerns with generated content and an overwhelming 77% of charities were concerned with using images generated by AI for fundraising campaigns.

So here at goDonate we want to introduce features where we believe it will benefit the charity and help them raise more money online, but always being mindful of the ethical concerns. Here is what we are doing at the moment:
- Fraud protection – AI can effectively analyse patterns of donations which is useful in helping identify any suspicious activity. We use a number of AI-powered fraud detection tools for goDonate to help prevent charities from losing money.
- Intelligent data analysis – AI is also currently being investigated to enable additional insights from the data we gather to give a broader perspective to our charities to help with the planning of future appeals and campaigns.
- Behaviour nudges – We’re building AI features that will help influence donor behaviour and increase overall donations. For example, when a donor arrives onto the donation form, our algorithm will intelligently use a variety of criteria to determine whether it is appropriate to encourage that donor to make a monthly donation instead. We are currently building this capability and will be looking for some of our charity clients to help test it before rolling it out across the platform.
- Personalised donation prompts – We’re also currently looking at the opportunities of how we can use the anonymous data from a donor to further personalise donation prompts to help increase the average gift using machine learning.
- Used internally within our teams – We are already actively using AI tools internally; our development team are using AI for identifying performance improvements and to assist in writing code (co-pilot as they call it).
Read more about the practical tips for using AI that our MD, Vicky Reeves, gave in the webinar in our blog: ‘Harnessing the Power of AI in Digital Fundraising: A Practical Guide’ or to watch the 30 minute webinar drop us an email at hello@godonate.digital