The Australian not-for-profit (NFP) sector is currently navigating one of its most challenging periods. Rising inflation, coupled with a saturated market, has made it increasingly difficult to secure consistent funding to support those in need. As a result, shortfalls in forecasted revenue have led to cuts in spending, further perpetuating a cycle of declining income. With no immediate relief in sight, NFP’s must explore new ways to enhance operational efficiency and fundraising efforts. AI is already making a significant impact in this space, with The Kids’s Cancer Project increasing its fundraising by 83%.
Key Focus Areas for Not-For-Profits
Fundraising
- Leverage AI to identify potential donors by analysing historical giving patterns and demographic data.
- Use predictive analytics to target fundraising campaigns more effectively, maximising donor engagement and retention.
- Implement AI-driven email and social media campaigns that are tailored to individual donor preferences, increasing conversion rates.
- Automate the donor outreach process with AI-powered tools to enhance efficiency and maintain regular communication with supporters.
- Optimise fundraising events by using AI to predict attendance and donations, ensuring resources are allocated efficiently.
Operation Efficiency
- Automate routine administrative tasks such as scheduling, reporting, and data entry, allowing staff to focus on high-value activities.
- Use AI-powered decision-making tools to streamline resource allocation and budgeting processes, improving overall financial management.
- Implement AI to monitor inventory and supply chain logistics for NFP operations, reducing waste and ensuring timely delivery of services.
- Optimise volunteer scheduling and deployment based on real-time demand and availability.
Service Delivery
- Use AI-powered chatbots to provide instant assistance and guidance to beneficiaries, improving the speed and accessibility of services.
- Analyse data from service users to better understand needs and tailor programs to individual or community requirements.
- Implement AI tools to track and evaluate the impact of programs, helping to measure success and make data-driven improvements.
Donor & Stakeholder Engagement
- Enhance donor experience by using AI to deliver personalised thank-you messages, updates, and impact reports based on individual contributions.
- Analyse donor engagement data to identify at-risk supporters and re-engage them with targeted communication strategies.
- Implement sentiment analysis tools to monitor social media and public perception of the organisation.
- Segment donor and stakeholder communications, ensuring tailored messaging that resonates with specific groups.
Compliance & Risk Management
- Automate compliance reporting and ensure that the organisation meets regulatory and legal requirements.
- Detect potential fraud by monitoring transaction patterns.
- Implement automated risk assessment tools to identify vulnerabilities in operations.
Selecting the Right Use Case
Demonstrating the end to end feasibility of initial AI use cases is paramount. A steel thread approach finds a feasible path, and unearths key risks in the end-to-end delivery of demonstrable value through AI.
Ecosystem
Choose a mature data domain.
Choose a business domainn with sound data maturity. This will enable the right focus on AI, rather than addressing existing operational issues.
Process
Simple means feasible.
Demonstrating early value from the AI use case is more important than scale. A simpler process to execute the AI use case will contribute to delivering meaningful outcomes.
People
Find a business champion.
Find and collaborate with a business champion, who can drive the AI initiative forwards, and act as the evangelist in driving the AI adoption within your organisation.
Technology
Don’t over engineer.
Focus on delivery of the AI use case to deliver business value. Build the technical foundations once initial business value is delivered, and there is support to scale.
Data
Ensure data quality is right.
Bad data = Bad AI.
Ensure the use case leverages datasets with fit for purpose data quality to give the best chance of success for the use case.
Cost
Low cost means low risk.
Don’t start with a high cost use case. A use case which is feasible, delivers tangible business value and is low cost, lowers the delivery risk and makes funding approvals easier.
By partnering with Codex, our team of experts can help you with AI strategy, use case identification, model development and operationalisation helping you realise value from your AI investments.
Reach out to Codex today to learn how we can help you harness the power of AI to transform your operations.
Talk to Us
We would love the opportunity to connect and understand more about the problems you are trying to solve.
Adrian Cambpell
Associate Partner, AI
Get in touch to coordinate a meeting with one of our technical experts.
Australia: +61 7 3132 3002.
