The Human Advantage

Every nonprofit I know could use more time.

More time to think. More time to listen. More time to visit a donor, call a volunteer, thank a longtime supporter, understand why someone became involved, or simply sit across from another person and learn what matters to them.

Technology has promised us more time for years. Today, artificial intelligence and a new generation of customer relationship management systems may finally begin to deliver some of it.

AI can help research prospects, summarize years of donor history, identify patterns, segment audiences, suggest next actions, draft routine communications, automate workflows, and surface information that once required hours of staff work.

That is significant.

But perhaps the most important question is not how much more can we do?

It is:

What will we do with the time we get back?

We are about to get very good at reaching people

M+R's 2026 Benchmarks found that nonprofit email volume increased 15% in 2025. The average subscriber received about 50 messages from a nonprofit during the year, including 31 fundraising appeals. Email revenue increased 16%, while overall online fundraising increased as well.

At the same time, nonprofits are adopting AI for far more than writing copy. Salesforce's 2025 Nonprofit Trends Report found organizations using AI to personalize supporter journeys, analyze donor data, automate workflows, generate impact reports, and support service delivery. Only 26% of the nonprofits surveyed reported not using AI at all.

The tools will get better. The information will come faster. Communications will become easier to create, personalize, test, and distribute.

That presents enormous opportunity.

It also means every organization will be competing in an environment filled with increasingly sophisticated communication.

When everyone can communicate faster, human attention becomes more valuable, not less.

Better information should lead to better relationships

A modern CRM can tell us a great deal.

Who gave. When they gave. What they responded to. Which events they attended. Whether their engagement is increasing. Which communications they opened. Who has capacity. Who hasn't been contacted recently. Who might be ready for a deeper conversation.

AI may make it possible to see those patterns much sooner.

But information about a person is not the same thing as understanding that person.

A database may tell us that someone has the capacity to make a significant gift.

It cannot, by itself, tell us why that person would care enough to make one.

That distinction matters.

The 2025 Bank of America Study of Philanthropy found that among affluent donors, 68% cited personal values or beliefs as a reason for choosing a cause or organization. Fifty-seven percent cited interest in a particular issue, and half cited firsthand experience involving themselves or someone they knew.

Those are deeply human motivations.

People give because something matters to them.

• A place they love.
• An experience their family had.
• A community that shaped them.
• A disease that changed their life.
• An opportunity they once received.
• A belief about what the world could become.

Technology can help us recognize clues. Someone still has to listen carefully enough to understand the story.

Who are the “right people”?

This is where better technology can become particularly powerful in a moves-management process.

The right people are not simply the people with the greatest wealth.

They are people whose interests, values, engagement, experience, and capacity intersect meaningfully with the mission.

Better data can help an organization find those intersections.

That matters because significant philanthropy remains enormously important to nonprofit sustainability. Blackbaud's 2025 giving analysis found that gifts of $1,000 or more grew approximately 4.7% year over year, while gifts below $1,000 declined about 1.1%. At large organizations in its dataset, major gifts accounted for 84.5% of annual fundraising revenue.

Smaller gifts still matter tremendously. They build participation, create pipelines, introduce new supporters, and sometimes begin relationships that last for decades.

But as gifts become larger or more complex—major gifts, corporate partnerships, donor-advised-fund grants, gifts of securities, campaign commitments, or planned and legacy gifts—the quality of the relationship often becomes increasingly important.

Someone must understand not simply what a person can give, but what that person hopes their generosity might accomplish.

What will we do with the time?

Imagine that AI and a better CRM give an advancement professional five hours back every week.

There are two ways to use those hours.

• We could send more messages.
• Build more lists.
• Generate more appeals.
• Process more names.

Or we could spend some of that time differently.

• Call someone we haven't spoken with in a year.
• Visit a longtime supporter.
• Ask a volunteer why they have remained involved for fifteen years.
• Invite a family to see a program firsthand.
• Show a donor what changed because they helped.
• Thank someone without asking for anything.

Sit down with a prospective supporter and ask:

Tell me why this matters to you.

The handshake still matters.

The thoughtful phone call still matters.

The handwritten thank-you still matters.

So does walking through a building someone helped make possible, standing together on a piece of land that has been protected, meeting a family whose life has changed, or seeing a program at work.

These moments make impact tangible.

They create something a database cannot manufacture: trust.

Perhaps the advancement job becomes more human

There is understandable anxiety about what AI will mean for jobs.

In advancement, many tasks that once consumed significant staff time are likely to become increasingly automated or accelerated.

Research. Data entry. Reporting. Segmentation. Prospect identification. Routine correspondence. Scheduling. First drafts. Background preparation.

But removing some of those tasks does not necessarily make the advancement professional less important.

It may make the best advancement professionals more valuable.

Their contribution moves toward the things that are harder to automate:

• Listening.
• Judgment.
• Empathy.
• Curiosity.
• Storytelling.
• Trust.
• Connecting someone's aspirations with a genuine opportunity to make something possible.

That is not simply fundraising.

It is relationship-building in service of a mission.

And whether an organization protects nature, serves families, educates young people, advances health, strengthens a community, or pursues another public purpose, that human connection remains remarkably similar.

More time for the right people

AI can help us find patterns.

A CRM can help us remember.

Data can help us prioritize.

Automation can help us move faster.

But people still have to listen, understand, thank, invite, connect, and build trust.

Because people still give to what they care about.

And often, it takes another person to understand that care, nurture it, and help turn it into something meaningful.

Perhaps that is the greatest promise of all this new technology.

Not that it gives us a way to spend less time with people.

But that, if we use it wisely, it gives us more time for them.