Why AI and CRMs need to work together

Charities face a fundraising crisis. Research from Charities Aid Foundation revealed that donations had fallen to their lowest level since 2016, according to their UK Giving Report, with only 50% of people saying they had given to charity in 2024. While those who are giving are giving more, the decline in individual donors suggests that charities need to take a serious look at how they engage, attract, and retain supporters, in order to continue delivering vital services to the communities they serve. 

Charity CRM systems are an increasingly valuable tool in helping charities do just that. CRM systems bring a charity’s data together to give organisations the full picture of their supporter base, enabling them to identify opportunities for interaction and areas where support might wane. They help charities create appeals tailored to the needs and behaviours of their various audiences, reaching supporters at the right time to maximise the chance of inspiring action, whether that’s signing up to a fundraising event or pushing the donate button.  

With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), CRM systems are likely to become even more valuable, at a time when charities are seeking creative new ways to engage their donors. Working together with your CRM system and data, AI can help charities forecast trends, analyse patterns, and create targeted campaigns more efficiently – which is crucial in a notoriously time-poor sector.  

Charity CRM provider Beacon has built three key AI features into the CRM, to make data more accessible and save charities time otherwise spent on filtering data, writing comms, and building formulas. With filtering, for example, charities can ask the AI a question in plain English (such as “Who donated over £100 last year?”) and Beacon AI will generate a filter with the appropriate conditions (people with a linked donation record valued over £100). The AI can then help craft personalised, on-brand emails to inspire action.  

Find out more about Beacon 

Such advances are why Beacon is the highest rated CRM system in the charity sector for the sixth year running. According to a survey by Fundraising Magazine, charities rated Beacon’s functionality, ease of use, accessibility, security, and ability to customise at 4.9 out 5. 

“The charity CRM space has seen lots of change in the past 12 months but, as always, our mission remains the same: to help charities run like clockwork with the very best technology,” says Beacon. “One way we’re doing that is by building genuinely useful AI features into Beacon, that save charities time every single day.” 

AI + CRM  

However, while many charities are using AI in their organisation in some capacity, too few are taking full advantage of it in conjunction with their CRM system. While 32% of charities say they are using AI to support their fundraising, fewer than a fifth say it is part of their CRM system.  

The two technologies working apart can lead to data siloes and less relevant results, with AI outputs not being informed by the data held on our CRMs. It also inhibits automation, making it harder for charities to connect the dots between what AI is telling them to do and actually doing it as quickly and easily as possible. It’s a risk not only for charities themselves, but for CRM providers too. One charity respondent told Fundraising Magazine that “[AI will] increasingly need to become integrated with our CRM if we are to remain satisfied with its capability”.  

Indeed, given the urgent need to engage more donors, amid considerable financial uncertainty and rising costs, charities need to be able to take every opportunity to innovate and adapt their fundraising strategy.  

Much has been made of AI’s capacity to transform charity operations, but the sector is focusing too much on using it for content generation, and not on how it can work with their existing tools to enhance what they already know works – tailored campaigns that reach the right people at the right time via their preferred channel of communication. As Beacon’s high ratings show, charities value being able to access the tools that will help them do this in one place: their CRM.  

To find out more about how charities rank their CRMs, and how they’re making use of AI, download the full Fundraising Magazine article below. 

Download the full article