Dataro + Virtuous: How to Make AI Work for Your Nonprofit

This post was co-written with the Virtuous team, and can also be found on their blog here.

It’s no secret that nonprofits are facing challenges in donor engagement. How donors interact with and support the causes they care about have changed, and today’s donors have new expectations, seeking more personalized, meaningful connections with the organizations they support. 

They want to be understood, appreciated, and engaged in ways that resonate with their values and interests.

For nonprofits, this shift presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Those who embrace innovating their fundraising programs—by embracing a responsive fundraising approach and leveraging technology to engage with donors more effectively—are seeing growth in generosity.

These organizations are attracting and retaining donors despite the trend of donor disengagement and decline. One key to their success is embracing innovative tools and strategies that put the donor at the center of the fundraising process.

One powerful tool in this new era of donor engagement is AI. By utilizing AI, nonprofits can respond to more donor interactions and touchpoints with greater nuance and scale than ever before. This is where the partnership between Virtuous and Dataro comes into play, offering nonprofits a seamless integration of AI-driven insights with a robust donor relationship management platform.

The Partnership: Virtuous + Dataro

Virtuous and Dataro are joining forces to offer nonprofits a best-in-class solution for managing and activating donor data. Together, these platforms provide the tools needed to grow generosity by improving the relationships between nonprofits and donors.

At the heart of this integration is the concept of responsive fundraising, an approach that places the donor at the center of fundraising efforts. Responsive fundraising grows giving by creating personalized donor journeys that meet the specific needs, preferences, and behaviors of each individual donor. 

Instead of treating donors as “one-size fits all”, responsive fundraising listens to the signals that each donor provides—whether through email interactions, event attendance, donation history, or other touchpoints—and uses these signals to guide tailored outreach efforts.

When a responsive fundraising approach is combined with best-in-class CRM and AI tools, nonprofits can embrace a new level of donor engagement. 

This is where Dataro’s AI-powered technology comes in. By evaluating thousands of multi-channel donor interaction data points stored within Virtuous, Dataro’s AI decodes the signals that donors are sending and recommends the best possible responses. It helps fundraisers quickly understand who is most likely to give, when they’re likely to give, and through which channel they’re most likely to respond.

Why AI-Driven Fundraising Is a Game-Changer

One of the main advantages of integrating Dataro with Virtuous is the automation of data management tasks that would otherwise require hours of manual work. AI eliminates the need to sift through mountains of donor data, identify trends, and segment donor lists. 

Instead, Dataro does the heavy lifting by identifying patterns in donor behavior and making actionable recommendations, allowing fundraisers to focus on relationship-building and high-value activities.

Here’s how the integration can make an impact:

1. Decoding Donor Behavior: Every donor interaction contributes to their story. Whether it’s a donation, newsletter signup, or a click into new content on your website, each touchpoint provides valuable information about the donor’s interests and level of engagement. Dataro’s AI analyzes these signals across multiple channels, helping nonprofits uncover insights they might otherwise miss. By integrating these insights with Virtuous, nonprofits can create a holistic view of each donor and respond to their needs in a more personalized way.
2. Building Personalized Donor Journeys: Responsive fundraising is about listening to your donors, connecting with them, and then suggesting the right next steps that resonate with them. AI makes this more efficient at scale. Dataro can recommend the best actions to take based on each donor’s unique interaction history and with these insights, nonprofits can design donor journeys that feel personal and relevant.
3. Scaling Responsiveness: Nonprofits often struggle to maintain a personal touch as they scale. The sheer volume of interactions can make it difficult to respond to every donor in a timely and meaningful way. By using powerful automation within Virtuous and AI-driven segmentation within Dataro, nonprofits can maintain the level of personalization that donors expect, even as their supporter base grows.

Taking Advantage of the Integration

To truly maximize the potential of the Virtuous + Dataro integration, nonprofits can apply AI-powered insights to key areas of their fundraising strategy. Below are some examples of how fundraisers can pair specific Virtuous features with Dataro’s AI segmentation:

1. Grow Your Recurring Giving Program

Monthly giving programs are a key driver of sustainable revenue for nonprofits. However, identifying the right existing donors to move from one-time to recurring can be a challenge. With Dataro, nonprofits can quickly identify which donors are most likely to move to recurring giving. These insights can then be paired with Virtuous’s email, SMS, and optimized donation forms to create targeted campaigns that drive recurring support.

2. Optimize Multi-Channel Campaigns

Effective fundraising requires reaching donors through the right channels, with the right message, at the right time. Dataro’s AI evaluates each donor’s interaction history to determine their preferred outreach channel. 

By integrating Dataro with Virtuous, nonprofits can coordinate seamless multi-channel campaigns that maximize donor engagement. For example, based on the interaction data stored in Virtuous, Dataro might identify that a particular donor prefers email communication, while another donor responds better to direct mail. With this knowledge, fundraisers can tailor their outreach efforts accordingly, improving response rates and campaign effectiveness.

3. Save Time for Your Fundraising Team

One of the biggest pain points for fundraising teams is the time spent on manual tasks like segmenting donor lists and analyzing data. By using Dataro’s AI to automate these processes, fundraisers can build complex, precision-targeted donor lists in seconds. With less time spent on menial tasks, teams can focus their time on meaningful work. Automation within Virtuous complements this by allowing nonprofits to trigger personalized communications and follow-ups.

4. Build a Unified, Data-Driven Fundraising Strategy

With the help of AI, nonprofits can fully leverage the wealth of data they’re already collecting. Dataro’s campaign segmentation evaluates the entire multi-channel donor interaction history stored in Virtuous, providing fundraisers with actionable insights to guide their strategy. 

By making data-driven decisions, nonprofits can build more targeted, effective fundraising campaigns that resonate with donors and drive generosity.

Conclusion: Unlock the Power of AI to Grow Generosity

The integration of Virtuous and Dataro offers nonprofit organizations a powerful tool for enhancing donor engagement, increasing generosity, and streamlining fundraising efforts. 

By leveraging AI to decode donor behavior and recommend personalized actions, nonprofits can create more meaningful connections with their supporters and grow generosity in a sustainable way.

As donor expectations continue to evolve, nonprofits that embrace responsive fundraising and AI-driven technology will see measurable results growing their donor base and retaining their current donors. 

With Virtuous and Dataro, nonprofits have the tools they need to meet donors where they are, build lasting relationships, and cultivate greater generosity.