Dataro + Virtuous: How to make AI work for your charity

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

It's widely known that non-profits are encountering challenges in donor engagement. How donors interact with and support the causes they care about has evolved, and today's donors have new expectations, seeking more personalised, meaningful connections with the organisations they support.

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

For non-profits, this shift presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Those who find innovative ways to advance their fundraising programmes—by adopting a responsive fundraising approach and leveraging technology to engage with donors more effectively—are witnessing growth in generosity.

These organisations 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 place the donor at the heart of the fundraising process.

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

The collaboration: Virtuous + Dataro

Virtuous and Dataro are teaming up to offer non-profits a top-tier solution for managing and activating donor data. Together, these platforms provide the tools necessary to increase generosity by enhancing the relationships between non-profits and donors.

At the core of this integration is the concept of responsive fundraising, an approach that prioritises placing the donor at the centre of fundraising efforts. Responsive fundraising grows giving by crafting personalised donor journeys that address the specific needs, preferences, and behaviours of each individual donor.

Instead of treating donors as "one-size fits all", responsive fundraising pays attention to the signals 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 paired with top-notch CRM and AI tools, non-profits can embrace a new level of donor engagement.

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

Why AI-driven fundraising is revolutionary

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

Instead, Dataro performs the heavy lifting by identifying patterns in donor behaviour and making actionable recommendations, allowing fundraisers to focus on building relationships and engaging in high-value activities.

Here's how the integration can make a difference:

1. Decoding Donor Behaviour: Every donor interaction contributes to their narrative. Whether it’s a donation, newsletter signup, or a click into new content on your website, each touchpoint provides valuable clues about the donor’s interests and level of engagement. Dataro's AI analyses these signals across multiple channels, aiding non-profits in uncovering insights they might otherwise overlook. By incorporating these insights with Virtuous, non-profits can create a comprehensive view of each donor and respond to their needs in a more personalised manner.
   
   

2. Crafting Personalised Donor Journeys: Responsive fundraising entails listening to your donors, connecting with them, and then suggesting the right next steps that resonate. 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, non-profits can design donor journeys that feel personal and relevant.
   
   

3. Scaling Responsiveness: Non-profits often struggle to maintain a personal touch as they expand. The sheer volume of interactions can make it difficult to respond to every donor in a timely and meaningful manner. By employing powerful automation within Virtuous and AI-driven segmentation within Dataro, non-profits can maintain the level of personalisation that donors anticipate, even as their supporter base increases.

Making the most of the integration

To truly harness the potential of the Virtuous + Dataro integration, non-profits can apply AI-powered insights to key areas of their fundraising strategy. Below are some examples of how fundraisers can combine specific Virtuous features with Dataro's AI segmentation:

1. Grow your recurring giving programme

Monthly giving programmes are a key driver of sustainable revenue for non-profits. However, identifying the right existing donors to transition from one-time to recurring can be a challenge. With Dataro, non-profits can quickly identify which donors are most likely to switch to recurring giving. These insights can then be combined with Virtuous's email, SMS, and optimised donation forms to create targeted campaigns that spur recurring support.

2. Optimise multi-channel campaigns

Effective fundraising requires reaching donors using the right channels, with the appropriate message, at the ideal time. Dataro's AI evaluates each donor's interaction history to ascertain their preferred outreach channel.

By integrating Dataro with Virtuous, non-profits can coordinate seamless multi-channel campaigns that optimise donor engagement. For instance, based on the interaction data stored in Virtuous, Dataro might determine 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, enhancing response rates and campaign effectiveness.

3. Free up time for your fundraising team

One of the major challenges for fundraising teams is the time spent on manual tasks like segmenting donor lists and analysing data. By utilising Dataro's AI to automate these processes, fundraisers can construct complex, precision-targeted donor lists in seconds. With less time spent on mundane tasks, teams can focus their efforts on meaningful work. Automation within Virtuous complements this by permitting non-profits to trigger personalised communications and follow-ups.

4. Establish a unified, data-driven fundraising strategy

With the assistance of AI, non-profits can fully capitalise on the wealth of data they're already collecting. Dataro's campaign segmentation assesses the entire multi-channel donor interaction history stored in Virtuous, equipping fundraisers with actionable insights to guide their strategy.

By adopting data-driven decisions, non-profits can forge more targeted, effective fundraising campaigns that empathise with donors and boost generosity.

Conclusion: Unlock the potential of AI to bolster generosity

The integration of Virtuous and Dataro furnishes non-profit organisations with a formidable tool for enhancing donor engagement, increasing generosity, and streamlining fundraising efforts.

By exploiting AI to decode donor behaviour and recommend personalised actions, non-profits can forge more meaningful connections with their supporters and foster generosity sustainably.

As donor expectations persistently evolve, non-profits that adopt responsive fundraising and AI-driven technology will realise tangible results in growing their donor base and retaining their current donors.

With Virtuous and Dataro, non-profits have the necessary tools to engage donors where they are, build enduring relationships, and cultivate greater generosity.