On my daily crawl down Interstate 95 this morning, I watched the sun rise over Fort Lauderdale's rapidly growing skyline on my way to work, reflecting on how much my approach to fundraising had changed over the past year, thanks largely to my willingness to adapt to artificial intelligence.
When I started my position as a fundraising specialist in January 2025, AI wasn't even a topic of conversation in our office. But when my boss introduced ChatGPT during an "overcoming objections" training exercise last summer, I became intrigued by its potential.
I began experimenting with ways to combine storytelling, fundraising strategies, and information gathered during coaching conversations to create personalized communications for my sponsors.
Rather than relying on generic email templates, I used ChatGPT to tailor messages to each organization's progress, challenges, and opportunities. Eventually, I began analyzing which types of communications were most effective at motivating sales throughout a fundraising campaign.
Over the following months, I watched my average fundraising results steadily climb until I achieved the highest average per campaign in the office.
But there was a tradeoff.
Creating customized communications took considerably longer than selecting a standard template, leaving me less time to make sales calls and develop new business. Although I was managing fewer campaigns than I otherwise might have, the higher average revenue per fundraiser helped compensate for the reduced volume.
Still, as I approached downtown Fort Lauderdale that morning, I felt pretty proud of myself. After decades of adapting to technological change, I'd embraced AI, developed an effective workflow, and improved my fundraising results.
I was getting comfortable.
Perhaps a little too comfortable.
When I arrived at work, I discovered that we were being asked to switch to a new email system.
I cringed.
Not because I thought the change would be bad. I knew it would probably be an improvement. I just didn't want to spend any time that day figuring out how to use something new.
I'd spent months perfecting my workflow, and I wanted to bask in my accomplishment a little longer.
Besides, I had sales calls to make. A lot of them.
I knew the new system was coming. It's the product of months of collaboration between my boss, our talented IT engineers, and the fundraising specialists who would actually use it. It was designed to improve communication and integrate more closely with all aspects of our fundraising platform, with the ultimate goal of improving the customer experience.
But learning how to integrate this new system into my daily workflow would take time, time I wasn't particularly eager to sacrifice on this particular workday.
At first, I thought I'd ignore the mandate to adapt, go about making calls, and deal with the new system the following day. Fortunately, though, I decided to dedicate a little bit of my morning to explore the possibilities.
Within an hour, my entire perspective had changed.
One of my most important responsibilities involves coaching sponsors through their fundraising campaigns. Around the midpoint of a campaign, I typically have a five- to ten-minute conversation with a sponsor, followed by a personalized email reviewing their progress, available incentives, and strategies for increasing participation.
Using ChatGPT, I'd developed an effective process for preparing these messages, but each email still took approximately 20 minutes.
Multiply that by 30 campaigns, and you're looking at 10 hours of work. Across 300 campaigns, that's approximately 100 hours, or two and a half full workweeks, spent preparing just one type of communication.
As I explored the new system, I discovered that it allowed me to build templates using variables that automatically retrieved information from our fundraising platform. Instead of gathering data manually and creating each email individually, I could develop a reusable template that populated the relevant information automatically. And because I'd spent months refining my existing communications, I already knew exactly what I wanted that template to accomplish.
Within about an hour, I'd built it.
A task that previously required 20 minutes could now be accomplished with a click of a button, followed by a quick review and any necessary adjustments.
Suddenly, I was looking at the possibility of reclaiming nearly 100 hours across 300 campaigns.
And that was just one email.
I began imagining additional templates, automated follow-ups, and text messages encouraging sponsors to schedule coaching conversations. More importantly, I realized I might finally be able to eliminate the tradeoff between personalized service and campaign volume.
I could maintain the approach that had helped me achieve higher fundraising averages while freeing up time to develop new business.
Preparing for Whatever Comes Next
As I headed home that afternoon, I couldn't help appreciating the irony.
I'd started the day feeling proud of the workflow I'd spent months developing, only to discover a better way of accomplishing much of the same work.
But without that earlier experience experimenting with ChatGPT, I might never have recognized the possibilities of the new system so quickly. I already understood what I wanted to accomplish. I simply needed to learn a more efficient way to do it.
I've been working with emerging technology since the 1980s, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that the skills we develop while adapting to one innovation often prepare us for the next.
The potential payoff goes well beyond saving time. Those 100 hours could mean more sales calls, more fundraising campaigns, more opportunities to help groups throughout my territory, and more time coaching sponsors through the challenges they face.
Instead of spending so much time preparing communications, I can spend more time doing the work that makes those communications valuable in the first place.
For organizations, there's an important lesson here, too. Giving employees the freedom to experiment with technology and apply their professional judgment can produce improvements that formal training alone might never uncover.
I went to work that morning thinking about how far I'd come in learning to use AI. I came home realizing that the most valuable thing I'd gained wasn't a particular workflow or even better fundraising results.
It was the ability to recognize and take advantage of the next opportunity.
That's the real value of learning new technology. We're not just learning how to use today's tools. We're preparing ourselves for whatever comes next.
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