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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 Higher Ed lens

Advancement offices carry the largest data sets in the sector and the most vendor AI already running quietly inside them: wealth screening, engagement scoring, gift-likelihood models, each one a use this module's audit worksheet asks you to name and rate on its own. FERPA governs student data before donor policy ever touches it, and an alumni "propensity" score has to stay what this module calls it, a hypothesis a gift officer tests, never a verdict that decides who gets a visit. CASE's own reporting standards assume a human accountable for every figure reported upward, which is the same accountability this module requires of any AI-assisted piece before it leaves your office. A score opens a question. It does not answer one.

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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