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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 International NGOs lens

Beneficiary imagery and story are this sector's most exposed ground, and this module's rule against synthetic stories lands hardest here: a composite child or composite village presented as real is the specific temptation international fundraising faces that most domestic shops never will. Child sponsorship and safeguarding policies already restrict what images and details may travel at all, and cross-border data protection law means the custody question in this module, where donor and beneficiary data may go, has two or more jurisdictions to satisfy at once, not one. Sanctions screening tools are themselves AI-assisted now, which puts a compliance use inside this module's audit alongside the fundraising ones, each scored the same way: does a person read and own the output before it acts.

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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