A new era shaped by new technology platforms is emerging. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can provide charities and NFPs with greater insight into the patterns of their donation data by predicting likely behaviours from current and potential donors.

“Without the use of AI, many organisations manually divide their donors by gift recency, frequency, and monetary value (also known as RFM segmentation). However, this approach can be time-consuming and inaccurate. AI on the other hand, has the capacity to generate content, analyse data, recommend algorithms to tailor to specific groups, and predict patterns on an automated basis,” said Carroll & O’Dea Lawyer Grace Brophy.

McKinsey expert Matt Banholzer said many business norms, operating models, or products may not be effective in the future so not innovating may be riskier than making big bets on growth opportunities. Generating and leveraging proprietary data is a significant innovation opportunity for Generative AI.

“To take a CRM system as an example … companies can go from identifying customers to having gen AI develop potential prompts to reach out to these customers, to following up. You make it as easy and seamless as possible for salespeople to engage,” he said.

Charities are also using AI to invest in improved services and social impact

Medical research charity, the Wesley Research Institute, is a major investor in an initiative aiming using Artificial Intelligence as part of an early warning system for patients on life support.

Professor Fraser, Director of the St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital Intensive Care Unit and the Critical Care Research Group said AI can help filter the huge amount of data being generated and the overwhelming number of alarms that staff and patients face.

“In one month of analysis, we saw 600,000 alarms – that’s 600,000, beeps and bongs! Roughly an alarm goes off every eight seconds. Imagine you’re at your sickest point. And every second, you’re woken up by something. With this grant, we reckon we can use the already available data – smarter, faster, better. Less bongs means the nurse can care for your loved one even better and we can avoid physiological car crashes,” he said. 

Fraser said computers can also identify subtle changes much earlier than humans. 

“So, for example, on the ventilator, the life support machine, we have a breathing tube down our throat, and it’s just a pipe and air goes in and air comes out. But bit by bit, if you’re producing sputum, it can start to gather in the breathing tube. Now there are subtle signs that the flow has changed in that breathing tube. But unless you recognise this pattern, you might miss the early signs.

“We want to actually teach the computer to learn tiny, very early changes, because if we don’t spot that, until it’s completely blocked, a patient can die.”