The other day I saw a video about an AI app that writes fundraising letters for you.
How cool. Can you believe it?
Sad to say, the app appeared to feature letters cribbed from a godawful book I remember from the 90s, “101 Fundraising Letters.”
Or something like that.
It was left behind on a bookshelf at one of my jobs. You know, one of those nonprofit positions where you discover (too late!) that you’re the fifth development director in two years.
It only took a glance to see that I’d never use any of the mediocre pabulum found inside the book.
And now examples like these were loaded onto an app that features a drop-down box and heralded as “tech.” They’re “new” and “innovative.”
Am I being obnoxious? Kind of. Yeah, I admit it.
But that’s only because of what I know about my readers, about smart fundraising professionals. They’re wiser than that.
They’ve got an innate curiosity about those wonderful donors who support their good work. And when they write to those donors, they write from the heart.
Case in point, this just-before-Christmas email from Plainsong Farms.
Plainsong Farm is a living laboratory for farm-based environmental education and Christian discipleship. Volunteers and staff grow local, healthy food for their neighbors, including people who can’t afford to buy it. And people learn how our food connects us all to the earth and one another.
And in this email, Reverend Nurya Love Parish (she/her), Executive Director and Founder shares the experience of Plainsong Farm’s Advent Walk. After demonstrating the differences in those present, she goes on to write:
We are all human. We all need healthy food, every day. We all know how important it is to be under an open sky, cultivating wonder and humility. We all need deeper and stronger connections to our Creator, to one another, and to this earth.
A beautiful message to hear right now. One that we all need to hear.
In a world that gets scarier every day, we don’t need more AI. We need more human. Click the image to download this email.
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