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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 Human Services lens

Client confidentiality under VAWA and FVPSA, and the conditions attached to many of your program's other funding sources, set a harder line than this module's general custody rule, and a client's story never goes into any AI tool, full stop, regardless of how the module's editing or drafting uses are framed elsewhere. Dignity-first storytelling means checking not just whether a name was removed but whether a survivor could still be recognized from the details left in, a de-identification standard this module's disclosure test does not fully cover on its own. Consent has to be explicit and specific to how a story will be used, and a program built on trust with people who have already had their privacy violated cannot afford the module's mildest failure mode, let alone its worst 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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