Another selling point emphasized by solution providers of modern, optimized modal donation forms is that the ask amounts can be driven by predictive AI. This is a switch from the early days of donation forms, which mostly featured static ask amounts.
Trying to optimize the amount you ask donors to give is not a new tactic. For years fundraisers analyzed donations to figure out the right amount to ask for on the form. It makes sense to ask someone who has given large gifts in the past, like $500, to make an equally large gift instead of a default $35.
To implement those customized ask amounts required a lot of back-end work from humans: email segmentation, conditional content or multiple forms, and sometimes personalized URLs. By and large, those calculations for the right ask amount were driven by your own organization’s data, unless you belonged to a co-op or subscribed to wealth profiling tools.
These days, predictive artificial intelligence can do all of that for you–and more. Predictive AI can analyze the donor’s giving history and other data points like their location, past browsing history, device, and more to suggest a donation amount that is optimized for that person. Also, the giving history is not just limited to your own organization’s data.
When combined with other friction-reducing features of modern and optimized forms, as we explored in our previous blog posts on this topic, predictive AI can boost revenue as well as conversion.
Most organizations have (we hope!) experienced unsolicited large gifts online, often to their main donation form that displayed default, static, low-dollar amounts. What happens in those cases? Well, a donor who has the capacity to give a large gift goes to your website, sees the default amounts, and decides to enter a much larger amount into the “Other” field.
For every donor who takes the extra step to do that, are there more donors who could have, but didn’t? Predictive AI can more routinely present higher-potential donors with larger suggested amounts. It can also present people who are more likely to give a recurring donation with prompts to choose a sustaining gift.
Overall, predictive AI can help you to not accidentally downgrade your donors, grow your sustainers, and maximize your revenue.
Want to review some data? Here you go!
- Fundraise Up: Predictive AI for nonprofits – the future of online fundraising
- GoFundMe Pro: Intelligent Asks lift recurring rates for sustained LTV
- Blackbaud case study: Seed Savers Exchange
- Bonterra shared with us some stats that their predictive AI models showed a 35% revenue lift among their customers to reengage lapsed donors, increase recurring donors, make major gift asks, and more.
There are concerns about the environmental impact of AI, privacy and security, accuracy, equity and historical bias, and possible loss of the human touch. Like we’ve said before, we can’t outsource our thinking and feeling to AI. AI is a tool, and a nonprofit who uses donation forms with predictive AI needs to devote significant human-time to stewardship and communication.
If your organization’s software solutions allow you to use predictive AI on your donation forms, we think you should give it a try during your 2025 end of year fundraising. We also think you should allocate even more time to the follow-up and stewardship plans.
- For every gift you receive, make sure your form includes a thank you message that conveys gratitude and mission impact regardless of the size of the gift.
- For unsolicited large gifts, send a personal thank you soon after. A short email from a human is the first step toward building a relationship with this potential new major donor.
- For new recurring gifts, make sure you have a sustainer communication program that welcomes and acknowledges how important sustaining donations are, and keeps your sustainers current on your mission and impact.
- A word about mid-level gifts: while not every organization has the people or capacity to implement a fully built out mid-level giving program, it’s worth figuring out how to get something in place with your current resources.
To find out how Raise HECK can help your organization keep the human touch while boosting conversion and optimizing your ask amounts, contact us or email hello@raiseheck.com.