The best AI tools for charities

Artificial intelligence (AI) giants – the likes of Meta, OpenAI, and Nvidia – are dominating the world stage. They have been working to create new technology that could shape the future of leisure and work with new assistants, augmented processes, and time-saving shortcuts.  

For the charity sector, often lacking in time and funds, these benefits of AI can make a real difference. To help organisations discover effective tools to help them now, we’re reviewing the best AI tools on the market, and examining what fits and doesn’t for charities.  

The best AI tools for charities

Microsoft 365 Copilot 

Highlighted in our ‘The best AI tools for meeting notes,’ Copilot works seamlessly for organisations using Microsoft. Focusing on work, the tool relies on large language models (LLMs) to grab information from both the organisation and the internet. Examples of what it can be used for include producing first drafts of job specifications, meeting agendas, and event plans, even syncing calendars. If enabled, staff might also find it useful as an assistant for policy information.  

Best feature: Integration into Microsoft – use it across all programmes.  

ChatGPT 

Touted as a generalist, ChatGPT is a tool that many are familiar with, with people often using it in place of a search engine. Indeed, what makes this platform powerful is that from a question, it can produce a comprehensive answer. However, charity users do need to be wary. The answers are not vetted for veracity so there is an element of fact-checking that needs to be done.  

Best feature: Intuitive and user-friendly – virtually no training is needed to access first-draft answers. 

Fundraise Up  

All charities want to supercharge fundraising success. Fundraise Up uses AI to generate leads and convert to donors. The technology deploys AI to analyse its bank of data to answer the question: When is the best time to ask for a donation? Then, it can suggest the amount. There’s also the option for donors to claim Gift Aid. To note, the Salvation Army UK’s use-case shows that they saw 70% of donors choosing the AI suggested giving amounts and a 49% donor conversion rate. 

Best feature: Customised fundraising makes sense for charities of all sizes.   

Salesforce Agentforce 

Charity Digital is no stranger to looking at what role bots can play across internal and external relations. Agentforce may be deployed across Salesforce 360 as a staff resource for CRM and workflow issues. Externally, Agentforce can handle inquiries and suggest next steps through AI integration with data, existing processes, and reasoning.  

Best feature: Deploy with minimal disruption as Salesforce CRM is already extremely prevalent 

IBM Watson Security 

IBM Guardium AI Security’s platform protects charity AI, data, and infrastructure. Guardium’s technology works by risk scoring. The technology assesses what the baseline is and then generates real-time evaluations of performance. Incidents and breaches may also be detected and managed.  

Best feature: Absolutely near the top end of security – charities with sensitive operations should consider the investment.  

Fundwriter.ai 

Take a shortcut to grant, proposal, and content writing. Fundwriter is an AI content generator with built-in expertise in storytelling, appeals, campaigns, and call-to-actions. Shorter-form drafts are also within reach. The platform can help produce materials for hooks, emails, subject lines, and short copy.  

Best feature: The speed at which copy can be produced as a first draft is most helpful. The rest is still up to the author. 

Midjourney AI  

Turning to AI for inspiration, Midjourney AI is a text-to-graphic generator. The AI powered platform turns text descriptions (i.e. prompts) into images. Creators can let loose. By finding prompts from existing images and combining with any other prompts, Midjourney can create art. Charities can use graphics for online content.  

Best feature: There are no restraints here – anyone can use the platform even if they aren’t familiar with prompts.   

Characteristics of AI tools to be wary of 

While these tools may be very useful to charity teams, we must also acknowledge what might not work for charity operations. A few AI problems have come to the fore which may negatively impact charity operations, reputation and data integrity: 

Fact-checking and veracity 

AI-generated written content isn’t fact-checked by anyone. Most platforms grab information from the internet and regurgitate. Charities using these AI tools should do their own verification to ensure that nothing false is shared.  

Another issue with AI is that copyright and authenticity may not be assured. Using content producers with unknown sourcing could be an issue. Charities should follow the rules of editing and crediting when using AI-generated content.