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Practitioner · typically years 2–7Fundamentals & EthicsFree preview

Ethical AI in Fundraising: Keeping the Donor Free

AI is already in your shop, whether or not anyone decided. A working standard for using it that keeps the donor free, the fundraiser accountable, and the relationship human.

Through the Healthcare lens

HIPAA and the fundraising-use provision at 45 CFR 164.514(f) set the floor before this module's policy language even begins, and no patient information enters any AI tool without a rule your privacy officer has actually written and signed off on, not one a development staffer assumed was fine. Grateful-patient outreach is where a wealth signal and a diagnosis sit closest together, which is exactly the correlation this module warns against letting stand in for a person. The compliance officer co-owns your AI use policy here, not as a courtesy review but as a named accountable party, because the module's rule that every piece has an owner means a healthcare foundation's owner has to include someone who reads regulation for a living.

Continuing education

1.25 points

Ethics, Accountability and Professionalism · Current and Prospective Donor Research

Learning objectives

  • Apply the seven movements as a test for any AI use in fundraising: it may prepare the inviter and serve the record, and it may never stand in for the relationship or decide who a person is.
  • Name the four ways AI use fails a donor (synthetic sincerity, reduction of the person to a score, donor data leaving your custody, and accountability with no one's name on it) and state the disclosure standard that answers each.
  • Adopt a written AI use policy for a development office that names permitted and prohibited uses, the donor-data rules, the human sign-off, and the review cadence, and can be read aloud to a donor without embarrassment.
  • Audit the AI already running in your shop, rate each use by the data it touches and the decision it shapes, and decide what to keep, change, or stop.

Designed for CFRE continuing education. Not yet accepted; no CFRE points can be claimed.

Lessons

Each lesson opens on its own page. Complete written lessons are available now. Downloadable editions open as each one clears review, and video editions follow.

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