These ARE The Droids You’re Looking For 🤖
What feelings come to your heart and brain when you think about R2D2 and C3PO? I’m sure many of us have a warm, positive response to the beloved droids. Although these AI robots have endeared themselves to millions, some of us remain uncomfortably skeptical of modern AI. Why is this? Perhaps it’s just too real?
What can we learn from our response to the Star Wars droids? How can we become more comfortable with AI in our work and personal lives? Here are four ideas:
- Personality and relatability - Increasingly, AI tools are developing friendly, playful interfaces. Try giving your AI tool a name and personality. We often name our cars, homes, boats, plants, etc. How about a pet name for AI?
- Reliability - AI provides consistent performance and transparent operations that can increase its usefulness over time. This helps reduce our fear of the unknown.
- Discover the clear purpose and benefit of using AI - What specific ways can the use of AI enhance your work, your personal life? Are there targeted tasks AI can streamline for you?
- Familiarity and interaction - Using it frequently will help you appreciate the benefits and limitations. Seek to normalize the use of AI within your team, then celebrate creative and efficient uses of the technology.
R2-D2 and C-3PO show us that machines with personality, reliability, and a clear purpose can become highly effective additions to our work. Let's be open to embracing AI as our trusty sidekick, aligning with our mission to make the world a better place through effective and heartfelt fundraising.
With that, I want to invite you to explore my current AI tech stack, showcasing how each tool can be used thoughtfully and strategically to elevate your major gift fundraising initiatives.
Droid #1: ChatGPT - Explore Custom GPTs and Potentially Create Your Own
(BTW - this is the only one that I subscribe to at $20 per month.)
🤷🏻Why it’s helpful:
ChatGPT, in its customized forms, offers immense potential for major gift fundraisers. Use it as a virtual assistant to help draft personalized donor communication, brainstorm fundraising ideas, and even simulate potential donor interactions. By customizing GPTs, you can upload tons of content and tailor GPT to understand your organization's mission, values, and specific needs, ensuring that every output is aligned with your goals.
🕺How to Use It:
💡Personalize Communication: Draft thank-you notes, donor updates, and proposals to create personalized and heartfelt messaging.
💡Idea Generation: Brainstorm new fundraising campaigns, event themes, and donor engagement strategies.
💡Donor Simulation: Simulate conversations with potential givers to practice and refine your pitch.
Droid #2: Llama Tutor - Simplify Your Messaging
🤷🏻Why It's Helpful:
Llama Tutor is designed to simplify complex messages, making them more accessible and engaging. As fundraisers, we often deal with intricate concepts and data that needs to be communicated clearly with our givers. You can tailor messaging on a spectrum of elementary school children to graduate school level.
💃How to Use It:
💡Message Refinement: Run your donor letters, campaign messages, and impact reports through Llama Tutor to ensure they are clear and compelling.
💡Training Materials: Simplify training materials for your team, making it easier for everyone to stay on the same page and execute strategies effectively.
💡 Public Speaking: Use it to refine your speeches and presentations, helping your audience grasps key points quickly.
Droid #3: Rabbit Hole Explorer - Discover Resources Related to the Interests of Your Givers
🤷🏻Why It's Helpful:
Understanding the hobbies of your givers can create deeper connections and more personalized engagements. Rabbit Hole Explorer can uncover these interests by finding unique and relevant links, articles, and resources which you can then send to folks in your portfolio who have those same interests.
🕺How to Use It:
💡Personalized Engagement: Tailor your communications and events to align with the personal interests of your givers. For instance, if a giver loves classical music, you might send them a thoughtful article on the subject.
💡Relationship Building: Show genuine interest in their hobbies by sharing interesting finds and starting meaningful conversations around those topics.
💡Content Curation: Curate content that resonates with your givers, making your newsletters and updates more engaging and relevant.
Droid #4: Think Smarter - Examine Issues from Different Perspectives
🤷🏻Why It's Helpful:
Think Smarter is an AI tool that encourages the examination of issues from various perspectives, incorporating different mental models and cultural biases. This is particularly useful in fundraising, where understanding the diverse viewpoints of your givers can enhance your strategies and communication.
💃How to Use It:
💡Strategy Development: Use Think Smarter to analyze your fundraising strategies from multiple angles, ensuring they are robust and considerate of various giver perspectives.
💡Problem Solving: When faced with challenges, employ the tool to brainstorm solutions that might not be immediately apparent.
💡Cultural Sensitivity: Enhance your understanding of cultural nuances and biases, ensuring your communications and strategies are inclusive and respectful.
C3PO: Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!
HUMAN: Good to know C3PO…good to know. But that’s where your usefulness ends. Now I’ve got a human decision to make… and calculations are not my only consideration.
It’s good to acknowledge there are limitations. The tools I’ve suggested are imperfect even while offering unique functionalities that can make work more efficient and effective. The goal is to use them in ways that complement your expertise and enhance your natural abilities as a fundraiser.
What’s your AI tech stack? I would love to learn what you are finding helpful and enjoyable. Hit reply on this email or reach out to me for a free consultation and let's explore the possibilities together.
I’m pulling for you! Have a great week.
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If you haven't taken advantage of some of the resources I've created to help major gift fundraisers, take a look now! Initial calls with me are free and "no strings attached". Sometimes folks feel like they need to wait and not 'bother' me until they have a pressing issue. No need for that...just make the call. 🕺
Here's where you can access a lot of content for free:
* Follow me on LinkedIn - You'll get short pro-tips and reflections on major gift fundraising every day between 5-7am pacific.
* Breakthru Newsletter - As you've seen here, these are longer weekly posts (audio and written) sent directly to your email.
* Breakthru Blog - the newsletter from the previous week gets posted here each week for everyone (so email subscribers get it a week early).
* Breakthru Podcast - Interviews with high net worth givers about how we as fundraisers can get better at inviting them to the party. And audio readings of Breakthru Blog posts.
Before getting to the PAID stuff: My opinion is that no small ministry with a tight budget should be spending more than $3-5k (total) for major gift coaching/consulting. Most of you will be good-to-go spending far less than that. This was a major issue for me when I was a frontline fundraiser - major gift consultants were an expensive 'black-box-of-confusion' for me. That stops now.
Here's the PAID stuff:
* Online Catalyst Course - This is a full brain dump of my 28+ years of experience - good, bad, ugly. It's built around the fundamentals, the sacredness, and the fun, of major gift fundraising. It's infused with Henri Nouwen reflections. Many people can take this course and they will be 'cooking-with-gas' and not need any additional coaching from me on the core systems. I'm grateful that this course has gotten *great* reviews.
* Live coaching with me - I refer to this as "brain rental". The ROI on live coaching, as you might imagine, is extraordinary.
Finally, be sure to connect with my colleague Ivana Salloum. She's super awesome and can help with scheduling and access to resources, etc.
I look forward to hearing about your good work!
Blessings,
