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 K-12 Schools lens
A school's donor file overlaps its enrollment file more than almost any other sector's, so current-parent data and a minor's information deserve the tightest custody rules this module names, and in a community small enough that everyone knows everyone, an inferred detail reads as recognition, not analytics. The annual fund letter that goes out in the head of school's voice has to actually be the head's words, read and meant, not a draft nobody edited before it carried a signature that implies personal attention. AI-generated images or stories built around a student are out entirely: a child cannot consent to synthetic representation the way an adult donor can, and this module's ban on composite people presented as real applies with extra weight here.
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
- 22 minStart →
Video lesson
What AI can free up and what it should not touch
I Pause · Ethics, Accountability and Professionalism
- 20 minStart →
Field guide· PDF
Where AI belongs in each movement
II See · Current and Prospective Donor Research
- 18 minStart →
Template· DOCX
AI use policy for a development office (starter)
VII Multiply · Ethics, Accountability and Professionalism
- 16 minStart →
Worksheet· XLSX
AI use audit: what is already running in your shop
III Discern · Ethics, Accountability and Professionalism
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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