Quarter of French charity professionals suggest donors should get AI veto

Artificial intelligence (AI) could play an important role in fundraising strategies, say French charity professionals, although some believe donors should be able to tell charities to stop using it.

This is according to a new study by France générosités based on 228 respondents, a fifth of whom are fundraising specialists, working at 102 different nonprofits.

While 83% of survey respondents are already using AI, three quarters of those are doing so on an individual basis, rather than through a team- or organisation-wide initiative or policy.

And just 10% of those already using AI are doing so as part of a fundraising strategy – compared with 82% using it in writing newsletters, articles and other documents; 48% using it for research and monitoring; and 44% using it for communications.

However, 66% of respondents said they could imagine using AI for fundraising strategies – such as donor analysis or target identification – in future.

The survey also asks what nonprofits should do to ensure that any use of AI is consistent with their organization’s values. Nearly a quarter (23%) said that donors should be able to request that there be no use of AI in their relationship with the organization.

More common answers to this question were:

• 88% said that the use of AI must always be complemented by human input
• 84% said that the organization should only authorise the use of AI tools which meet certain criteria such as data protection controls, or minimization of their environmental impact
• 60% said that the use of such tools should be made transparent, internally as well as externally

Lack of policies

However, the majority of respondents said their nonprofit was still in the early stages of their relationship with AI.

Most said their organization was either considering its position and strategy towards AI (37%) or keeping an eye on it (28%). Few (20%) said that AI had been deployed internally, but no respondent said that their organization had specifically taken a position against AI.

Larger organizations were slightly more likely than smaller organizations to be advanced in their AI thinking.

In addition, the majority of respondents (65%) said their company did not have any sort of ethical charter governing their use of AI. Others said they did not know if such a document existed (14%), that it was currently being developed (17%) or that they already had one (4%).

Among those with a charter, or with one being developed, half (47%) said that this could be a useful way of ensuring transparency and building trust with donors.

Among current AI users, 61% say they are using it every week, with a quarter of those using it every day. ChatGPT is by far the most common tool being used, indicated by 84% of respondents, followed by Microsoft Copilot (26%) and then Gemini (10%).

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