Artificial intelligence offers exciting opportunities to make planned giving teams faster and more efficient, so you can spend more time building donor relationships. But speed isn’t everything. Used carelessly, AI can erode trust or introduce errors that damage your reputation. Success comes from matching the right tools to the right tasks and keeping the most important work—strategy, relationships, and storytelling—with people.
Explore the Benefits
AI was developed to enhance—not replace—human capabilities. Here are a few areas where AI shines, helping you save time and direct more of your energy to donors:
• Automate repetitive tasks. AI can increase speed and efficiency for tasks like data entry, scheduling, or reminders for donor birthdays or other milestones.
• Identify, segment, and forecast. Using predetermined criteria such as age, income, or giving history, AI can identify prospects, segment donor lists, and even forecast gifts.
• Enhance personalization. AI can suggest timing, frequency, and outreach methods tailored to individual donors or segmented groups.
• Analyze and retrieve information. Use AI to quickly compile gift policies, donor histories, or performance analytics.
Consider the Challenges
Unfortunately, without thoughtful oversight, AI can create new problems. Here are key areas where planned giving professionals must stay vigilant:
• Gathering information. AI has been known to provide outdated, inaccurate, or misleading information. Planned giving materials often include complex tax and legal considerations, making accuracy critical. Without consistent oversight and thorough human fact-checking, AI mistakes can slip through, damaging donor trust in your organization.
• Connecting with donors. While AI is helpful for idea generation (topics, headings, email subject lines, etc.), writing genuine donor communications requires a human touch. AI can write quickly, but the finished product often sounds generic and noticeably artificial—putting you at risk of alienating donors instead of connecting with them. To hit on the right combination of warmth, motivation, and education, provide very specific instructions, request repeated refinements, check everything for accuracy, and make final adjustments to reflect your voice.
• Building and maintaining trust. Donors value authenticity and transparency. Those who suspect or discover your use of AI—particularly for outreach messaging—can feel disappointed, misled, or even insecure about the nature of your relationship with them. Older donors especially tend to place a higher value on personal engagement and may hold stronger reservations about the use of AI in general.
• Maintaining privacy standards. Donors of all ages may worry that their personal information has been purposely or inadvertently fed into AI. Planting even a seed of doubt in this area can erode trust—and for good reason. Using AI to work with highly sensitive information (financial records, estate plans, or family situations) runs the risk of exposure to unauthorized third parties and could potentially violate privacy agreements or data protection laws.
• Avoiding bias. AI tends to reflect or amplify social or economic biases if used for prospect identification. This may result in overlooking potential planned giving donors based on demographic data, reinforcing systemic inequities.
In short, while AI can simplify and amplify your capabilities, experienced human oversight remains essential.
Implement Best Practices
You want to strengthen your program, not harm it. To ensure that your use of AI is serving your donors and advancing your mission, you’ll need to follow these best practices:
• Be transparent with donors about when and how AI is used. Even a brief statement in your privacy or ethics policy can reinforce trust.
• Create clear data privacy and security standards, including encryption, limited access, and an explicit policy on sensitive donor information.
• Verify every fact and figure. Treat AI outputs as first drafts or starting points, not final answers.
• Train your team on responsible AI use, including avoiding demographic bias and respecting donor preferences.
• Use AI for efficiency—summaries, analytics, or administrative tasks—while reserving strategy, storytelling, and personal outreach for experienced planned giving professionals.
Pair Technology with Human Insight
Artificial intelligence can dramatically lighten your administrative load, uncover patterns in your donor base, and even suggest fresh ways to segment or forecast gifts. Used thoughtfully, it frees up time and energy that you can devote to what really matters—building authentic relationships and creating a mission-driven strategy.
But it’s essential to keep this tool’s limitations in mind. AI can’t replace seasoned judgment, emotional intelligence, or the nuanced storytelling that inspires donors to make transformational gifts. Your expertise—in conjunction with professional partners like EDS—turns information into insight, and insight into meaningful action.
The best approach is to blend AI’s speed and analytic power with the creativity, ethics, and personal connection that only humans bring. In doing so, you’ll leverage technology without losing the trust and authenticity that make planned giving such a powerful force for good.
