Chatbots/ChatGPT: The New Ally in NGO Proposal Writing and Fundraising

In the world of NGOs, crafting a proposal can go by many names. It might be known as business development, fundraising, proposal development, or sometimes grant application writing. Regardless of the label, the core remains the same: you need a way to take all the brilliant ideas coming from your project/program design and package them into a compelling proposal for potential donors.

That's where AI tools like chatbots come in. These tools don't replace the teams that design the projects or develop the proposals. Instead, they complement the process by bringing a new level of efficiency and speed.

To answer the HOW? question, I will give you a general idea of the possibilities and leave the exploration to you to know more while using it.

AI in Business Development and Proposal Writing

AI, and in particular, chatbots like ChatGPT, offer potential for NGOs to speed up the research part of the business development process. By using Bing/Microsoft CoPilot, ChatGPT, or Google Bard, NGOs can gather information about potential implementing partners in a specific location. They just need to utilize the search capabilities of these tools to browse online data and generate lists of partners, overviews of their projects, and more. The same can be done for donors—simply prompt these tools to generate a list of donors with calls for proposals for a particular location. Team members who used to spend time checking donors' websites and different platforms for the latest calls for proposals can now save considerable effort. They only need to prompt something like, "Provide a list of tenders, calls for proposals, and grant applications related to location X that are currently available on international development platforms such as Devex, DevelopmentAid, USAID, and other similar sites. Include details such as the funding organization, project/program title, application deadline, and a brief description of the opportunity."

You can also use AI to gain a better understanding of donors' requirements or strategies. Simply prompting it with specific questions like, "What are the primary focus areas of XYZ Donor in location X?" or "What is Donor Y's strategy in Location X?" can yield concise and relevant responses, saving hours of manual search.

The next step, crafting the narrative, is where ChatGPT's capabilities truly shine. It can generate compelling narratives that align with donor requirements. For example, a proposal writer could prompt ChatGPT with, "Read these notes (notes from your project design) and write a project summary for X project in Y location in line with XYZ Donor's guidelines, with a length of XY number of words," and receive a well-structured, articulate summary in return.

Moreover, ChatGPT can serve as an effective tool for review and editing. It can be prompted to evaluate a written proposal, providing suggestions for improvement. For instance, by inputting a project objective statement into ChatGPT with the command, "Please critique this project objective for clarity and alignment with donor XYZ's priorities," users can obtain a quick and insightful feedback loop that would traditionally require multiple reviewers.

Here is an example of chatbots that I designed, specifically to focus on BUA and ECHO proposal development. These bots have been programmed to function as experts in proposal writing for these two donors. Simply provide the location, project activities, and necessary information, and let these bots guide you in crafting compelling US or EU grant proposals. BHAProposalPro & EUProposalPro.

AI in Fundraising & Donor Engagement

In addition to what I mentioned above about AI's ability to support NGOs in identifying potential donors and understanding their strategies, AI can also assist in refining your fundraising strategy. It enables you to observe and understand donors' giving patterns, and craft a tailored fundraising approach that aligns with both your NGO's goals and the donors' areas of focus.

For example, you could use AI to analyze giving patterns by prompting the AI with, "Analyze the funding patterns of Donor X for the past five years in sectors Y and Z in location ABC."

You can use AI to create a fundraising strategy/approach that aligns with your NGO's mission and the donor's focus areas in that location. You could prompt the AI with, "Based on (NGO's mission/sectors/community needs) and the focus areas of Donor X, generate a fundraising strategy for the upcoming year."

AI can simplify your donor engagement by helping you write notes for a meeting with a donor, draft advocacy papers, personalize fundraising emails, and generate a pitch for a donor based on simple notes from your team. It can even assist in planning your donor engagement. Just prompt the AI with something like, "Develop a plan for engaging with Donor X over the next year, based on their funding patterns and our organization's projects in Sector Y." The AI would then lay out a plan for regular, strategic engagement with the donor and assist you in generating the content of each activity.

Moreover, AI can create engaging, contextually relevant social media campaigns, awareness media posts, and articles about your work and the impact you are making.

Ethical Considerations, Challenges, and Limitations

Despite its potential, adopting AI for NGOs' work presents some challenges. These may include a lack of technical expertise, resistance to change, and concerns about data security.

Data privacy is a significant concern. As AI tools like ChatGPT process and generate text based on inputs, it's crucial to ensure that sensitive data, such as personal information or proprietary details about projects, are handled securely and in accordance with privacy laws and regulations, as well as the IASC guidelines.

Keep an eye on AI 'hallucination.' Chatbots have the tendency to generate text that seems plausible but is not based on real data or facts. The best way to mitigate this risk is to combine the use of AI with human review.

Transparency is crucial, and it is one of the things that concerns me when I look at the future, particularly in the context of fundraising and proposal writing. Stakeholders need to understand that a good proposal should always be backed up with technical expertise in the programmatic sectors, accompanied by operational capacity and access. It is not only about writing a nice proposal or fancy strategy, it is about the operational ability to deliver and achieve the goals by addressing the community needs.

To overcome these challenges, NGOs should invest in training staff to understand and use AI tools effectively. They should also foster a culture of innovation and openness to change. Moreover, implementing robust data security measures can alleviate concerns about data privacy.

Perhaps we can all contribute to overcoming these challenges and concerns by using these tools, discussing them, talking about them, raising awareness about them, and investing in finding innovative ways to ensure transparency, data protection, and ethical use.

Ali Al Mokdad

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