• Microsoft has announced AI enhancements to its to Cloud for Nonprofit solution.
• The enhancements will help non-profit organisations with their operations through automation of certain activities.
• Microsoft is working with organisations to improve the solution by adding functionality and capabilities.

The technology du jour is artificial intelligence and one seemingly can’t visit an ice-cream store without encountering the term.

While much of the attention surrounding AI is squarely on ChatGPT and Bard of late, the technology can be used in other applications. For businesses, the technology can be used to assist in trend spotting and automation of certain tasks.

This week, Microsoft announced enhancements to its Cloud for Nonprofit solution that leveraged AI to help non-profit organisations “accelerate their missions”.

“While AI could be used across many parts of a nonprofit organization, putting AI to work to amplify fundraising and marketing efforts allows nonprofit professionals to spend more time working with the communities they serve. It’s a practical place to start our AI journey together and solves issues common to almost every nonprofit on the planet,” wrote vice president of Tech for Social Impact at Microsoft Philanthropies, Justin Spelhaug.

The new capabilities coming to the suite include:

• A new Fundraising performance dashboard that offers up-to-date views of campaign performance, donor conversation and other analytics built on Power BI’s data viz platform.
• Organisations will be able to use plain language queries to segment donors, volunteers and constituents through Dynamics 365 Marketing.
• AI is being implemented into Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit’s Fundraising and Engagement through the use of Viva Sales AI Copilot capabilities. This allows for the automation of personalised and relevant communications and reminders to donors and staff.
• The same tool is getting a new AI-powered donor propensity model. This will give organisations insight into who is most likely to donate given its data.

“With the new capabilities we are announcing today, we hope to help nonprofits of every size and in every part of the world achieve remarkable results like these. By taking advantage of easy-to-use AI-powered solutions, nonprofits can better understand supporters, increase donor loyalty and lifetime giving, and tailor fundraising to individual donor preferences, all while safeguarding the integrity of sensitive data,” wrote Spielhaug.

Microsoft has established a framework it calls the Nonprofit Common Data Model (PDF). This model is built with the most common non-profit scenarios in mind to help organisations address their causes more effectively by unifying disparate data sources.

However, the firm is working with a range of organisations to enhance the capabilities of the suite further. This includes building an AI-powered Humanitarian Data Insights Tool with DataKind. The tool, once complete, should be able to help organisations get insights, trends, and understanding out of their data so they can more efficiently and effectively respond to needs around the world. An early version of this tool will be available later this year.

“Each and every one of the AI-based solutions outlined in this post conforms to Microsoft’s Principles for Responsible AI. Just as important as going fast is going carefully. We commit to living the principles of transparency, fairness, privacy, and security,” Spielhaug added.

[Image – Markus Winkler on Unsplash]