Leveraging Personalization at Scale with Classy’s Intelligent Ask Amounts

Imagine you have a donor named James. Last year, James generously donated $500 to your spring campaign. However, when James visited your donation form this year, he noticed suggested amounts of $50 and $100. He began questioning if his previous gift was too much, so he only gave $150.

Now, consider another donor, Maddie. Maddie has faithfully donated $30 to your last three campaigns. When she saw your default ask amount was $75, she wondered if her $30 gift could make an impact. She decided to close your donation form and revisit it another day.

At Classy, we see an opportunity for nonprofits to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to create radically personalized donor experiences that drive more giving. With over 10 years of fundraising experience, we’re ready to do exactly that.

Introducing Classy’s Intelligent Ask Amounts

With AI tools gaining traction in the for-profit sector, there’s growing interest in the potential for leveraging AI tools in the nonprofit space to advance fundraising and relationship-building with supporters.

While generative AI, such as ChatGPT, has garnered significant attention, other forms of AI, like machine learning, also present a substantial opportunity for fundraisers. They can facilitate personalized asks, predict donor behavior, and offer tailored fundraising strategies for each donor.

As a first innovation to that end, we’ve built Intelligent Ask Amounts. This new feature uses machine learning to provide a real-time, personalized ask amount for every donor who arrives on your donation forms, so you can run giving campaigns that convert better and raise more.

Intelligent Ask Amounts analyzes a donor’s giving history, predicts what they’re most likely to give, and provides an ask amount tailored to that donor. This empowers you to personalize asks for every visitor landing on your donation pages, aligning with their specific giving history and characteristics.

Why This Matters: Default Ask Amounts Aren’t Cutting It

Many donation forms feature default ask amounts that remain static for every visitor. However, these generic amounts often overlook an individual’s unique giving history and characteristics. This approach can alienate potential supporters who might feel their contributions don’t align with your organization’s needs.

Rather than accepting default ask amounts as standard practice, we offer a solution to help nonprofits create a more effective donation experience.

Overcoming Default Donation Hurdles

Hurdle #1

Donors aren’t one size fits all. Default ask amounts are.

Solution

Classy’s Intelligent Ask Amounts leverages machine learning to predict a donor’s likely contribution and provides a unique, personalized ask amount tailored to that specific donor.

Hurdle #2

Personalized asks are hard to orchestrate at scale.

Solution

Even if nonprofits want to provide customized ask amounts, most lack the necessary tools to generate and serve them to donors in real time. Specifically, they often lack:

1. The means to identify who visits their donation forms
2. The data and machine learning models needed to generate personalized ask amounts
3. A method to dynamically insert these customized asks for every donor

We’ve developed solutions to address these three challenges so nonprofits can optimize their fundraising efforts and enhance donor engagement without a data science degree.

Not only that, but with a community of more than 150 million and $30 billion raised to date across the Classy and GoFundMe platforms, Classy’s Intelligent Ask Amounts is built on a breadth of insights that other nonprofit technology can’t match.

Hurdle #3

Over and underasking pushes donors away and leaves donations on the table.

Solution

An ask amount that resonates perfectly with one donor might be significantly off the mark for another. Increase donation revenue and avoid off-base appeals with amounts tailored to donors’ characteristics and donation history.

Our team has dedicated significant effort to ensure Intelligent Ask Amounts truly lives up to its name. To validate its effectiveness, our data team conducted A/B tests across more than 150,000 sessions. The result: Intelligent Ask Amounts drove 11% more revenue on average in testing.

Responsible and Safe: Our Commitment to Intelligent Fundraising

We’re on a mission to provide the most intelligent fundraising platform, which brings opportunity and responsibility.

The ways we use intelligence and leverage AI need to be responsible and safe. We’re working with our customers, partners, and industry stakeholders to ensure we maintain the highest levels of trust in data and intelligence.

• What does responsible mean? We want to be confident that the models we create and deploy drive the intended results. This means that each intelligence feature will undergo rigorous testing before release and ongoing oversight and maintenance.
• What does safe mean? Data security is of the utmost importance. This means we leverage best-in-class security practices to protect donor data from unauthorized access or disclosure.

Fundraising Intelligence in Action

With AI and machine learning becoming increasingly prominent in the nonprofit sector, fundraising teams face a pivotal decision: Embrace this technology to enhance their personal connections with donors or maintain the status quo and risk falling behind innovative nonprofits.

Read about how Classy’s fundraising intelligence can help you drive more giving.

Copy Editor: Ayanna Julien