Hey Reader,

If you've scrolled through your inbox lately, you've probably noticed: everyone is talking about AI. Including me ;)

I recently attended a fundraising conference, and every second session focused on AI. If you're like the many fundraisers I talk to, your immediate reaction is somewhere between “I know I should figure this out” and “I don’t know when I’ll have time to figure this out.”

My client, Maria, manages a two-person development team at a local animal rescue organization. In late March, she was facing a year-end appeal, a board report, and three pending grant applications. You guessed it: all due within the same two weeks.

One of her colleagues suggested she try ChatGPT to help draft the appeal. She was skeptical. “I didn’t want it to sound like a robot wrote it,” she told me. Never blessed with time, she tried it anyway.

She added some notes about the rescue’s most memorable story of the year, where one of her coworkers helped pull a litter of puppies out from an abandoned property, and asked for help shaping an email appeal.

The first draft was far from perfect, but the tool gave her an outline to work from. It took 20 minutes instead of two hours. She rewrote it in her own voice, sent it, and it became one of their best-performing year-end emails in three years. Crazy, she thought!

The best part was that it freed up the rest of her afternoon to call her donors. The work that only she could do. She started to see that using AI wasn’t a bad thing. Using her time more efficiently was the whole point.

AI tools are not here to replace you or your relationships. It aims to handle the parts of your job that eat away at your time without requiring your best thinking. Or, it’s the first draft of your appeal or recording the meeting notes. Getting a few hours back can shift what’s possible and move toward deeper donor conversations.

Without those extra hours? You'll likely rewrite the same thank-you email for the fourth time this week. That donor who gave for the first time three months ago still hasn't heard from you, not because you don't care, but because there are only so many hours and not enough people to fill them.

You might complete those grant reports by 10 pm. Those relationships you’d like to continue? Most likely out the window. That's not a strategy problem. It's a capacity problem, and it remains one of the most common realities in the nonprofit sector.

AI won't fix it entirely, but it can take repetitive work off your plate, allowing you to make the calls, write the stories, and create genuine connections with your supporters.

Here are eight tools worth knowing about. And no, you don’t need them all at once. Pick one or two that match where you spend or lose the most time.

​Claude, ChatGPT, and MS Copilot: These three are the most widely used AI writing assistants that perform similar tasks: drafting donor appeals, thank-you letters, and grant narratives, as well as brainstorming campaign ideas. If your team uses Microsoft 365, Copilot is likely already available to you. ChatGPT is a solid entry point. I lean toward Claude now, as it handles context and longer writing particularly well. But the best one is the one your team will use.

​Canva: Already popular in the nonprofit world, Canva’s AI tools let you generate graphics, resize designs, and write social captions even if you’ve never studied design.

​Grammarly: Remains one of my favourite tools because it catches grammar and spelling issues and can also flag tone, clarity, and any passive writing in your donor emails and appeals. Think of it as a second pair of eyes that’s always available.

​Otter.ai: Records and transcribes your donor calls, board and team brainstorms in real time, so you can be present in the conversation instead of frantically taking notes. (Be sure to check your policy or inform meeting attendees you’ll be doing so.)

​Gamma: Creates polished presentations, reports, and one-pagers from a prompt or a rough outline. Great for board decks, donor impact reports, or grant presentations without the formatting headache. My new favourite!

​Perplexity: A research tool that finds information and cites its sources. Use it to look up grant funders, research sector trends, or fact-check something before it goes out the door.

​Google Gemini: Built into Google Docs, Gmail, and Sheets. Useful for drafting emails, analyzing data, summarizing documents, and researching without leaving your browser.

​Goblin.tools: A collection of small, free AI tools designed to make tasks feel less overwhelming. Break a big project into steps, estimate how long something will take, or turn rough notes into a polished email—a great first stop for anyone who finds AI a little intimidating.

Here’s a quick idea to try out this week: pick one tool from this list and give it a task. Not “help me figure out AI”. Ask it something concrete, like, “Draft a thank-you email for a first-time donor” or “Summarize the notes from my last team meeting.” See what comes back. You might be surprised.

What’s eating up too much of your time right now? If you’re comfortable sharing, reply and tell me what tool you chose and how it worked for you. I read every response, and love hearing from you.

Link 💜

Since we're linkful today, I'll be back in two weeks with new links to share!