Field Notes
Practical AI for nonprofit fundraising.
Start with the fundraising task you need to improve. These field notes connect AI-assisted research and operations with source evidence, human judgment, and a way to check whether the work is useful.
Start with the task
Which guide fits your work?
A practical guide explains the process. A case study shows one application and its limits.
I need a better foundation or donor research brief.
Begin with AI in nonprofit fundraising: what to automate and keep human. It includes a first pilot: collect public funder sources, draft a foundation-fit brief, and have a fundraiser verify each claim before deciding what comes next.
Keep the checkpoint: an AI summary or fit score does not authorize contact. Missing evidence stays unverified.
I need research, meetings, and follow-up to stay connected.
Read the foundation partnership pipeline case study for an example of linking public-source research, prioritization, conversations, and institutional memory.
Read the limits: its published pipeline snapshots describe early activity and relationships; they are not confirmed grant awards.
I want to understand a more autonomous AI system.
The Tourney List AI outreach case study documents a separate youth-sports audience-development experiment.
Use the right comparison: it is not a nonprofit fundraising benchmark or permission to automate donor contact. Compare its workflow decisions, not its reported rates, with your own work.
Published work
Real systems. Useful frameworks.
Practical guides and case studies connect the work to its evidence, decisions, and limitations.
AI in Nonprofit Fundraising: What to Automate, What to Keep Human, and Why
Five useful combinations of AI and human judgment across research, outreach preparation, meetings, follow-up, and reporting.
Read the practical guide AI systems · Audience developmentI Gave AI a Goal. It Found the Audience, Wrote the Emails, and Ran the Campaign.
An experiment in moving AI from assistant to operator through an autonomous youth-sports outreach system.
Read the case study Nonprofit fundraising · Applied AIFrom a List of Foundations to a Living Partnership Pipeline
How an AI-assisted system supports foundation research, outreach, meetings, follow-up, and institutional memory at MBI.
Read the case study Nonprofit operations · Practical AIAI Readiness Checklist for Small Nonprofits
Five readiness checks and a first-week pilot using public examples.
Read the checklistThis is an intentionally focused publication. New field notes will be added when there is a real experiment, useful evidence, and something worth sharing.
Follow the work
Practical AI, documented as it happens.
Get occasional updates when a new field note or case study is published.
Evidence and context
Know what you are reading.
Frameworks, examples, and measured results answer different questions.
A small first pilot
Use the practical guide's foundation-fit pilot to test one source-checked brief before connecting a CRM or preparing outreach. Compare time to a verified brief with a manually prepared baseline; record unsupported claims caught and whether the review produced a clear human decision.
How to use the sources
- Practical guide: an author-developed workflow, with links to public source material and risk guidance. The NIST AI Risk Management Framework is voluntary guidance for managing AI risks; it does not validate these case studies or promise fundraising results.
- Foundation case study: an account of one nonprofit workflow. Interpret every snapshot with its stated date, denominator, and outcome definitions.
- Outreach case study: a different audience and operating context. Engagement is not equivalent to a gift, a grant, or a lasting relationship.
These public notes share methods and context, not private donor or contact records. A source link supports the claim it accompanies; it is not an endorsement of the site. Read about James Graham's work.
Guide selection and context reviewed . Individual article dates and reported results remain those stated on each article.