Incorrect use of AI impacts your trust and your responses

AI and fundraising. Do you have a protocol in place yet?

Two studies show that foundations must carefully consider how they want to use AI in their fundraising, as the incorrect use of AI impacts your trust and your responses.

1. The first study is about the use of AI (images and use) in fundraising and about how using AI affects your responses.
2. The second study is about the use of AI-generated images in fundraising. This is an increasingly common trend, but is it actually a positive development?

In this article, we will share the main conclusions from these studies.

Study 1: AI, fundraising and your donors

Disclosing your use of AI to your donors can harm your charity’s results and relations, unless you explain how using AI tools saves you both time and money.

Key findings: donations dropped when the use of AI was disclosed.

• When the charity disclosed its use of AI to donors, their motivation to donate decreased.

Why is that? People considered the charity that used AI to be less authentic, less genuine and less honest, which are precisely the values that you bring to the table in your relationship with your donor.  They also felt that the charity was more concerned with achieving its financial targets than with actually helping people.

• • In a follow-up study, the charity explained that it used AI to “save costs and give more aid to children”. This single sentence eliminated the negative impact.

It is worth noting that charities were met with this negative reaction, but businesses were not.  Donors have different rules for charities than they do for businesses, because their relationship with a charity is different than their relationship with a business.

Tip: start with this question: “What would you send to a good friend?” If it is appropriate, you are on the right track. If it is not appropriate, you should be careful!

You can read more about this study in the post by Russell James, J.D., Ph.D., CFP®

Study 2: AI, use of images and ethics

“The possibilities of AI to generate images reintroduce stereotypes in the aid sector.”

AI-generated images are leading to a resurgence of ‘poverty porn’, a researcher says. It is also harmful to the trust in the sector, they claim.

Here’s what is happening:

• It is easy to create AI-generated images using keywords such as ‘poverty’ or ‘poor children’.
• More and more foundations are using such images.
• When budgets are limited, it is tempting to resort to this cheap and easy solution.
• However, these images often have a strong colonial perspective and are stereotypical.
• Instead of moving forward, we are actually regressing.

It is potentially harmful to your donors’ trust, because the images are not truthful. Charities are seen as purveyors of the truth.

The use of AI-generated images poses a danger to people’s overall trust in charities.

• • Another development is to use AI-generated images of people smiling and being happy, yet that is not true to reality either.

Although there is nothing wrong with using positive images, it is important to be truthful.

“Telling our stories better means celebrating progress and performances in creative ways, but also raising people’s awareness of actual needs and injustices that must be addressed.” – Ken Burnett

Or as Tom Ahern puts it: “If there are no problems to solve, there’s nothing for a donor to do.“

What you can do: draw up a protocol

Draw up an AI protocol. Consider how your use of AI might impact your relationship with your donor, the trust you inspire and the response you get to your campaigns.

A good question to ask yourself is this: “What would I send to my best friend?“

Good places to draw up a protocol are:

• • A Framework toward Responsible and Beneficial AI for Fundraising

You can use this framework as the basis for your own protocol for responsible AI use

Fairpicture

Fairpicture has published a wonderful whitepaper that can help you draw up a protocol for your use of images. You can find the whitepaper here.

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